Eldon Booth

Eldon's lecture was kind of funny. I know nothing of film, even though, I thought his ideas and the films he made were very alternative. Not that this is a bad thing. I suppose this is only because I am readily subject to feature length, mainstream films.

In filming Five Good Reasons, 06 Booth witnessed a burning car, which he filmed. He said he was more interested in filming the people that were running to watch the burning wreck then filming the wreck itself. He also said rubbernecking was deeply grained in human nature, this reminded me of the film we watched in our Gaze lecture Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock. We talked about how the girl was being watched, and then she views the painting that watches us. The whole thing gets turned around on itself, and it becomes clear that voyeurism is a main theme. This can also be related to Booth's first film Withdrawal. In the short piece we watched, the camera did a lot of following as apposed to normal film shots. Booth said this was because he didn't want the viewers to gain insight into the characters, this definitely happened in Hitchcock's Vertigo.

Booth talked about how he did Withdrawal with a hadycam because he wanted it to have a reality effect. This was due to the epic amount of amateur film footage shows on TV. There are two films that I have seen that use the same technique. Cloverfield was made in 2008 and was directed by Matt Reeves. The whole film is shot on handycam and someone even told me it was as long as a handycam can film for. The second movie is Open Water, filmed in 2003 and was directed by Chris Kentis. Open Water is about divers that go missing, and the footage becomes them bobbing around in the water for a day or two. Eventually they get eaten by sharks I think. The two movies both have suspense filled moments, and try to capture a lot of emotion from the characters. As apposed to Booth's movie, I would say these two are more Action type films, where as his Withdrawal, I think was more of a drama.

Booth's exploration of reality and illusion is quite apparent in both films. He said he wanted to blur the lines between fact and fiction. I'm not sure if he meant this in terms of, the story line is fiction, but he wants to make it seem like fact? If in that case then most directors blur the lines between fact and fiction. I think both films use an illusion of some sort to gain the characteristics of reality. I think most films do this actually, gaining a sense of reality is a general goal in any film.