Muybridge's Strings

Muybridge's Strings is a short film by Koji Yamamura telling parallel stories of Eadweard Muybridge’s life and a Mother’s life with her daughter. The connecting theme is time. Muybridge’s sequential photography captures moments in time and in a way the Mother desires to do similarly with her time with her daughter.

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The first noticeable visual element is Eadweard Muybridge’s story was animated in black and white while the Mother’s story was in warm color. The primary purpose is to separate the past from modern day. The secondary purpose is to create a mood that befits their situation. The black and white palette fits Muybridge’s dark and tumultuous life. The warm color reinforces the feeling of love and affection between mother and daughter.

Towards the end, a portion of the Mother’s story was animated in black and white. Just like how black and white is identified with Muybridge’s struggles it is similarly used for the Mother’s struggle against time. After her daughter grew up and moved on, her strong desire to slow down time culminated in a surreal black and white sequence that demonstratively expresses her struggle with moving on and letting go.

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This short provided good examples of motivated dynamic camera movement. In the pivotal parts of Muybridge’s and the Mother’s life the camera revolves around and moves into them. For Muybridge this occurs in two scenes. First was during his realization of a method to capture motion. Second was when he was overcome with paranoia and anger stemming from the suspicion of his wife’s infidelity. For the Mother it occurs when she gave birth to her daughter. Reserving dynamic camera movement for these moments helped to further communicate their importance.

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This is a beautiful and seamless sequence documenting the early years of Muybridge’s life. It documents his move (with a really nice graphic match), meeting his wife, his wedding and the seeds of jealousy being planted. This quick sequence of life events also serves as an antithesis to the Mother’s desire to slow down time.

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Movement was a visual element used to represent the theme of time; specifically the movement of animals photographed by Muybridge. In the sequence above, each shot of the Mother and daughter are complemented with a moving animal. The first pair was that of the Mother and an elephant moving backwards, which is the first expression of her desire to reverse or pause time. In the next pair of shots, the mother is picking up the doll her daughter has outgrown. This was a sign of passage of time aptly represented by a horse moving forward. The rest of the sequence is consisted of forward movement, a series of imagery capturing the inevitability of passage of time, which the Mother would eventually struggle with.  

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Death Parade Episode 1

In the first episode of Death Parade a husband’s suspicion about his wife’s infidelity comes to light during a painful game of darts. For these types of scenarios the natural inclination for the audience is to ask the question, “Who do I believe?” However, this episode’s camera work actually leads the audience to an answer to that question by presenting one character as more believable than the other. Of course, this was done as misdirection.

When the husband finally revealed his suspicion, he was shot with a high angle and low angles. In the visual language, the common use for high angle is to portray one as weak and inferior and the low angle to portray one as strong and superior. For this scene the high angle and low angles were used to give the audience an unleveled view of the character. The audience could easily associate these unleveled shots with emotionally instability. These shots magnify his suspicion and turn it to baseless paranoia. As a result, he’s portrayed as a character the audience most likely would not believe.

The last image, a worm’s eye view shot of the spinning chandelier, creates a dizzying effect. This feel of dizziness creates a perception that the husband is emotionally unstable and not one to be believed.

As the wife tries to explain the folly of her husband’s suspicion she was shot at eye level angles. In contrast to the high and low angles, these are stable looking shots that can be associated with level-headedness. The wife was portrayed to be far more believable to the audience, which set up the big revelation later on.

We get another shot of the chandelier, but this time it’s an overhead without the spinning. It then turns to a slow downward crane shot that has a sense of calmness which further reinforces her believability.

There are a few things going on with this composition. The ground level framing is quite appropriate for man at his lowest moment. The shot manipulates relative sizes. The husband is made to look diminutive which makes him look more weak and pathetic. The wife appears larger which presents a mood of conviction and moral high ground.

The husband is framed in and out of the wife’s strides. This creates a visual rhythm of the sad image of the slouching husband. This rhythm repeatedly instills to the audience his supposedly paranoia induced breakdown. The tracking shot pulling away from the husband and the rhythm in the wife’s strides display her as composed and ready to move on from his misplaced rage and suspicion.

This little tracking shot is a nice piece of visual storytelling. It communicates the emotional state of the characters and cleverly acts as a misdirection that made the final revelation even more impactful.

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De_Riria_Subasutaimu

De_Riria_Subasutaimu is a surreal and abstract short film about grief. It shows a husband and wife dealing with it in different ways.

Just in case you haven’t watched it yet, here’s the short film:

The film is specifically about the grief of pregnancy/child loss. This grief is presented in both a surreal state and a more grounded manner through parallel storylines of a husband and wife. The surreal is portrayed through the dreamlike journey of the husband, which is a mix of escapism, depression and resilience.

Much of the husband’s visual storytelling is consisted of repetitive and rhythmic imagery. Even the though the journey is abstract, the strong use of rhythm and repetition organizes the composition. This organized composition is a visual progression that leads the audience along this dreamlike journey.

The wife’s story is more grounded but not without strong composition. Since she stays in her hospital room, much of her emotions are expressed by adding, subtracting, and changing visual information.

Intro

The film begins with a lateral tracking shot that stops at the above static shot. Immediately the film establishes a melancholic tone. Seeing the IV bags, the wife lying on the bed and the husband’s sad body language communicates sorrow quite effectively. The large negative space and the use of ray of light (from the window) as a leading line isolate the couple and further accentuate the feeling of sorrow.

The shot above also establishes the use of repetition and rhythm as evident by the diagonal shafts of light coming from the ceiling. The dynamic nature of the diagonal line and its repetition aids in the emotional expression of the shot.

The husband leaves the hospital and the audience gets to follow him with the use of a tracking shot. The low angle magnifies and emphasizes his grief as we follow along. He then looks off screen to an empty lot. The overhead of the empty lot shows just the foundation, made up of randomly sized rectangles, perhaps symbolizing his jumbled mental state. He then jumps in to begin his surreal escape from the reality of pregnancy loss.

Stage 1

The first stage of the journey was the simplest one. It’s consisted of him just walking. I believe this was done to ease the viewers into the journey without being too jarring. The repetitive images here are the light bulbs, bottom windows and the terrace steps.

Most of the stages end with a scene of the wife in the hospital which documents her own process of grief. At the end of the first stage, the wife wakes up and stares at what can be assumed as an ultrasound picture. The slow shot reverse shot suggests she’s not aware of their child loss. While she’s yet to deal with reality, the husband is running away from it.

Stage 2

The second stage is a tower with outside stairs. The wide shot communicates every necessary visual information, the ominous height, the steps connection the entrance/exit, the repetition and rhythm.

From here on out almost every stage tempts the husband to jump into the pit of despair. In this stage it’s symbolized by the dead body in the middle of the stairway. He avoids it as another step emerges above it.

As mentioned before the journey is a mix of escapism, depression and resilience. The grim temptations are the depression. The ability to avoid these temptations is the resilience.

The wife still hasn’t confronted reality yet. The time lapse shot seems to suggest that she’s just delaying dealing with reality. This notion is very relevant in the next stage.

Stage 3

The husband moves on to a subway platform. He sees a woman who seems to be in same predicament as he is. A train passes by (repeating image); he grabs a hold of it while the woman doesn’t. The scene switches to a low angle shot and the woman is now the wife but she still doesn’t grab hold. The train symbolizes different things for both. For the husband it’s a way to escape, which he takes, and for the wife it’s a way to move on. The low angle accentuates the speed of the train and the wife’s inability to grab hold of reality and move on.

In this scene, the wife caresses her stomach and finally realizes the reality of her pregnancy loss. She then collapses in despair. The scene initially maintains the low angle from the previous train scene; this angle and the canted angle add more impact to this pivotal point.

Stage 4

The fourth stage is in the woods, populated with black trees with horizontal white lines as the repetitive imagery. The stage offers him an escape from this grim environment by leading him on top of a skyscraper, almost as if tempting him to jump.

The doctor shows up to officially deliver the harrowing reality. He’s almost portrayed like a grim reaper, a scary embodiment of bad news. The use of negative space and wide shot to show the slow long walk conveys a distressing tension. Also notice the far more intense diagonal lights, which complement the sense of distress.

Stage 5

In this stage he climbs up a wall. The initial lack of visual information on the right side builds anticipation for the eventuality of him jumping to that side. What waited for him on the other side was an arm. Will it grab a hold of him? Or will it let go? Just like the dead body it’s another temptation that he avoids.

This scene demonstrates the addition of visual information. What previously was a single window room now has four. This was done to further express the strong warm-cool color contrast between the green room and the pink cherry blossoms outside. The wife is cold to the warm and beautiful scenery outside as she is consumed by grief and pain. The imagery of her despair really sets in when she turns to a shadow and the pink (warm) petals that pass her by turn to green (cold).

Stage 6

I’m skipping the husband scene since it’s a repetition of other stages just with different scenery.

While the husband continues to escape reality, the wife continues to deal with the pain of pregnancy loss. Although in her little way she attempted to escape reality by trying to hypnotize herself. The slanted window in the first shot reflects this delusion. When she finally realizes the futility, the window goes back to its normal orientation as a sign of her acceptance.

Stage 7

Skipping the husband scene again.

The wife has finally come into terms with her loss and ready to move on. She looks at the ultrasound picture for the last time. She lays it face down, which reveals a sketch of a house that symbolizes the home and family she and her husband were trying to build.

Stage 8

This stage presents to the husband his dream of building a family and home. A house continues to symbolize this dream. He runs towards that house and passes by objects (bed, cabinet, bathtub and etc.) that make up a normal home. He’s seemingly chasing a dream but when he trips off the spinning wheel he realizes that it’s all an illusion.

The last scene of the wife starts with a fadeout from black, a visual metaphor of the her emergence from the dark place that was pain and despair. She stands up, smiles, and moves on. The smile can also be interpreted as her instinctual realization that her husband is coming out of his escapist delusion.

Stage 9

Just like the last stage, this one presents objects (toilet seats) associated with home life. Unlike in other stages, the husband ignores his surrounding and just walks by them. This is a sign that he’s done with his escapist journey and ready to face the pain and despair of the reality of child loss.

Resolution

The husband emerges from the empty lot and goes back to their apartment. The wide shot of the homogeneous architecture of the apartment is quite a contrast to his dream home. This contrast is pieces of reality coming together for him. In the second image, you’ll notice a shadow of a child, which is an illusion of what could have been. The fact that it had no effect shows his resolve to face reality.

Throughout this film we never saw the husband look at the ultrasound picture and confront reality just like his wife did. In the first image above he finally looks at his unborn child and the final piece of reality has come into place. In the last shot, the spreading tea stain can be interpreted as all the pain and sorrow flooding in.

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