intermezzo
1. a brief entertainment between two acts of a play; an entr'acte.
2. a short movement seperating the major sections of a lengthy composition or work.
okay first off i'm gonna need some woops and cheers for this is my first posting on a blog and coming from a man who has issues with the idea of blogging, this is a big deal.
now that's over i would like to explain something about myself before i explain the title of this blog and the dictionary.com definition a couple ENTER keys upward. very often i get ideas for films from hearing a word or a phrase. it could be anything but usually a word i may have never heard before. based on that word and it's meaning, i will automatically start to build a plotline. sometimes my ignorance of the word also helps me to fashion ideas for film as my imagination starts to fill in the holes of my knowledge of what the given word actually means.
that said, the other day i was at work listening to classical music on 89.7 with my coworker Lynn because that is all the woman can listen to while typing endless a/c invoices. after one piece ended the DJ informed us that we had been listening to an intermezzo by one of the 40 billion composers that have ever lived. this is what came of it...
i started to imagine a film that tells the story of what happens to a character between 2 major events in his or her life. we dont get to see what happens first and the film ends before we see what happens second. what we do see are the emotional consequences, whether good or bad, of the first event and how they deal with that what happens to them as life builds up to to the 2nd event. life is not all major climaxes, big decisions and timely near death escapes; the small and mundane are actually just as important as the "milestone moments". what really interests me is the idea of never letting the audience in on what the two major events are at the beginning and end but instead only showing the effects of those events as life goes on for our character. okay, i think that's it for now and i need a nap so let the constructive criticism...BEGIN!
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4 comments:
matt, love the idea. tons of potential for poetic subtlety and nuance. you're toying with an extreme form of what is called "elliptical storytelling" which omits the major 'plot points' of the story and the viewer is then drawn in to invest intellectually and create the missing scenarios in their minds. It greatly expands the potential for connecting with people's heart via a more 'universal truth'. check out Yasujiru Ozu and Robert Bresson, both of whom omit various plot points throughout the duration of a given film. Your idea is sort of a hyperextension of their methodology. (Dan currently has my copy of Au Hasard Balthazar--get it from him and study it! Look not only at the technique of elliptical editing, but also observe how your mind reacts to the missing information)
I am hesitant to say whether the idea has merit or not because I hate when critics have the power of life and death over an artistic work before it is even complete. That said I will say that it is not a cliche and that is a good start. Please flesh it out, pursue it and see what happens.
(It's funny Josh but I've never seen Ozu and I thought about him when I read Matt's post. Time for me to watch something of his. And I promise to watch Au Hasard Balthazar ASAP.)
But your post got me thinking about where these ideas come from. I've had the same sensation/experience; one moment minding my own business and the next I have a nearly fully formed idea sprouting out of my brain begging me to write it down and bring it to life. Does this point to the all creativity coming from an outside source (God)? If so, what is our role as artists? Josh, I wonder if this is not an oblique way of asking you the same question I asked last in the Japanese philosophy comment thread.
i recommend starting with Ozu's Tokyo Story and Late Spring.
wow, i just now saw that you guys responded to this. thankyou for your responses and rest assured I will try to act on what you both stated.
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