In a previous post I said I hadn't written a blog before. That's not entirely true...the following was an essay delivered in Blog form for the Narrative Construction module of my MA. We were able to pick any subject we wanted and through the course of the module I had noticed that a couple of web based shows seemed to have elements of formalism in them and I wanted to explore this further...sometimes the mind does odd things when you're studying!
Introduction
The following blog post aims to examine the idea that whilst the introduction of the webisode is still in it’s relative infancy and by some being seen a progression of the medium and the way of communicating with a new possibly younger audience some of the techniques and ideas used in the creation show a awareness of the medium and the self that slip into being formalist in approach. At this point it should be stated that the webisode can take many formats and for this piece the emphasis is on webisodic drama as this is the area most relevant to the topic. This will be done by first examining the creation of the formalist idea and looking at one of its main exponents, Sergei Eisenstien and his most noted formalist film Battleship Potemkin. Moving on from this there is a a discussion on the creation of the webisode and discuss it in terms of formalism and how it does also show signs of the more traditional modes of television and film drama.
Formalism
The following is only a brief overview of Formalist film theory and the main points as to go into too much detail would take to much time and is simply redundant for the point of this work. Formalist film theory came into being in the 1920’s and largely found a home in Russian Montage cinema and one of it’s biggest proponents was the director and writer Sergei Eisenstien. Formalist film theory as with many film theories regards film as being an art form in itself. It does however contradict several of the other theories as it is very self-aware and sees film as a way of creating a new reality that only exists on the screen rather than any attempt to recreate the outside world. ‘…the screen as a pictorial frame within the which the filmmaker organizes his subjects into significant and signifying patterns…and new cinematic inventions…be used fir there formative rather than realistic potential’ (Dudley Andrews, J. 1976, Pg88-89). The narrative being created by bringing together of individual components of the film ie. camera, lighting, framing, lighting, music, shot selection in the creation of the narrative. Eisenstien has himself criticised other it film makers such Dziga Vertov for his claims to be representing reality in films such as Man and a Movie Camera as he claims that the director still constructs the shot and makes a choice about what is being seen by the audience. Another feature of formalist cinema is that there is often a social or political element to the film. The easiest way to highlight examples of formalist cinema would be to look at a film that is considered formalist, this film will be Eisentstien’s Battleship Potemkin. Below are two clips from the film. They have been chosen as they display several moments that typify the ideas of formalism.
First off it should be said that formalist films have a tendency towards having a social or political slant. ‘It is art’s task to make manifest the contradictions of being. To form equitable views by stirring up contradictions within the spectators minds, and to forge accurate intellectual concepts from the dynamic clash of opposing passions.’ (Leyda, J . 1977, Pg46). This is probably due to the time at which the theory was popularised and the events of the country where it became most popular this being Russia. Battleship Potemkin is no different. It is the story of the Russian revolution of 1905. The first sequence of the movies titled Men and Maggots sees several elements that could be said to be typical of formalism. The first revolves around characterisation. The characters in formalist rarely have names or given much in the way of development. In this sequence we are introduced to Valuneckuck however we never learn anything about him in terms of back story. This is due to the ‘everyman’ nature of characters, they are usually intended to be more symbolic of the wider population who were or are in a particular situation...in this case no so much the sailors as the working man. Part two sees elements of montage. All films are montage, as montage is simply the process of putting images in a continuous order, however formalism often plays about with montage to increase the audience awareness or greater reflect the emotion of the piece. For example the moment when the crew smashes the captains plate we see several shot’s that don’t actually follows as the crewman raises his arm and brings the plate down. He the next shot he has raised it again and again brings the plate down.
The shots are assembled by the editor in a pre-determined order in
such a way as to produce by the very sequence of frames a certain
intended effect, much as the fitter assembles the parts of a machine
so as to turn these disjointed parts into a power-producing, work
performing machine (Theory of the Film p.118) (Dudley Andrews, J.1976, Pg90)
In the first clip there is also a moment in which Eisenstien shows off the way in which film can capture depth, another thing common to formalism is the desire to create moments which show films capability. The spatial metaphor of foregrounding has it’s temporal counterpart in the notion of rhythm which is, predictably enough, another central concept of the Formalists (Dudley Andrew, J. 1976, Pg 82-83). This is in the crew quarters when we see men hanging, at several levels and from the front of the shot too the back. A sailor moves through them to emphasise this fact.
The third and fourth clips (changed to whole sequence in this blog) chosen shows one of the most important and most famous sequences of the film, The Odessa Steps. Again there is very little in the way of characterisation we see many characters all of whom seem somehow important as we are given close-ups of them as they welcome the sailors, however we never learn more about them. Again we have another moment where Eisenstien shows off what film is capable of, showing off the depth of the image, this time with the woman carrying her dead child up to the soldiers. They stand above her, on a higher step, their shadows stretching out. Several other moments of montage can be found in the fourth clip, the first being as the old woman in glasses is killed. There is a shot of the woman, cuts to a man swinging his sword in anger and cut back to the woman her glasses smashed and blood running down, individually they are not necessarily connected but put together have meaning. The second moment is as the guns of the warship fire on the Odessa theatre. There are three shots of the lions placed in order to make it look like the marble lion stands to protest the gunfire. All these are features common to formalism. It feels necessary to add to this a little about sound as it is something talked about later in the analysis of formalism in the webisode. Sound is not the most prominent feature of Battleship Potemkin but was also considered to be an important part of formalism. Not in the way it is with other film theory where it compliments the image and even tells the audience what emotion they should feel instead Formalist thinkers were in fact very wary of how sound was used, feeling music should not take away from the image or be used in a way as to tell the audience what they should be thinking. Having looked at several elements from a known formalist film it is now time to move on too the webisode and the discussion of how formalism is used.
The Webisode
A webisode is a short episode be it of drama or documentary that is first shown on a website rather than on television. It is difficult to find much in the way of writing on the webisode as it is a relatively new medium and as the New York Times states ‘While a small number of writers, producers and actors are making a living with webisodes, they are still a long way from establishing the form alongside television and feature films.’ (Stelter, B. 2008). It is widely regarded that the first webisode appeared in 1995 in the form of a series called The Spot (Zakarin, S. 1995).
Webisodes continued to appear several becoming very popular amongst the internet audience but very few were aimed at bridging the gap between the internet and the mainstream. One that did however was the Star Wars: Clone Wars (Lucas, G. 2003) a mini series created to bridge the gap Between Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones (Lucas, G. 2002) and Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith (Lucas, G. 2005). Which was aired on the internet on it’s own website before being aired on television.
This was not commonplace however and this did not change very much and there was certainly every intention to show it on television too be sure it reached as large an audience as possible so whether this is really a true webisode is open to debate. This site aims to examine drama’s that were made originally and specifically for the internet. The First ‘hit’ that was created solely for the internet was a webisodic drama called Lonelygirl15. ‘The Lonelygirl videos made their debut on YouTube in the summer of 2006. Initially, they reached millions of Internet surfers, introducing the concept of professionally produced webisodes to the public’ (Stelter, B. 2008).
Lonelygirl15
Whilst one of the webisodes to be examined in more depth Sophia’s Diary (Bernado, N. 2003) actually came before this the success of lonelygirls was certainly more noticed within the industry and at which the webisode is beginning to move towards the type of webisodic drama examined in the next part of this website. This appears to have occurred during the writers’ strike of 2007. ‘When the Writers Guild of America strike stopped television production last fall and winter, Hollywood writers and producers rushed to create new scripted series for the Web, often called webisodes for lack of a more artful term. The strategy seemed simple: make money by going straight to the Internet.’ (Stelter, B. 2008).
Formalism in The Webisode
Before moving on to look at how Formalist ideas/techniques appear to have found here way into webisodic drama it must be noted this is not making a judgement on the quality of the pieces being analysed or indeed comparing them critically with the like of Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin. It is merely an analysis of how a new medium has drawn upon an old ideal in an attempt to reinvent and rejuvenate very much in the manner that formalism was originally intended. The webisodes to be examined as stated previously are Sophia’s Diary (Bernado, N. 2003) Quarterlife (Herskowitz, M & Zwick, E. 2007) Clarke and Micheal (Duke, C & Cera, M. 2007)
(think this might be a video from the tv series, the web series no longer seems to exist)
From the very start there are elements of Formalism. A major feature of formalist films are that they are very self aware in there creation. The length of the piece is considerably shorter than normal, this would be due to the medium in which it finds itself, ie that of an embedded video on the internet and perhaps because it is aimed at this new and younger target audience who may not want to sit for half an hour and watch something. There are definite signs of it being self aware and aware of the medium that it is being delivered on. At the start of the webisode Sofia is talking directly to the camera, something itself that is uncommon in traditional forms of drama, the camera angle changes and it becomes apparent that she is talking to her webcam. There are moments of montage too, this is used when switching locations from Sofia’s home to the college. The use of handwriting on the image is also quite interesting, whilst not necessarily a feature of formalist film this is somewhat reminiscent of the use of inter-titles. More commonly used in films made in the silent era, but also used in Battleship Potemkin as headers between the individual sections of the film. The use of music would be quite in line with the ideas of formalist drama too. Formalists had mixed and somewhat confusing views on Music and sound, they are not against it but believed music should not be used to influence the audience’s mood or indeed tell them what they should be thinking.
‘To use sound in this way may well destroy the culture of montage,
for every adhesion of sound to visual piece increases it’s inertia as a
montage piece and increases the independence of meaning…Only a
contraptual use of sound in relation to the visual montage piece will
afford a new potentiality of montage development and perfection.’
(Dudley Andrew, J. 1976 ).
Interestingly, whilst clearly a device to sell the product to the younger and newer audience, somewhat anti-art and anti-formalism the music used in Sofia’s Diary is far from fitting the emotion of the piece and is instead one of the latest popular chart tunes. Finally another element that appears to fit with the formalist ideal is that Sofia whilst being a more rounded character than the characters in formalist film, one feels more to do with modern expectations than anything else is meant to represent the every-teen. Someone that the audience can relate too and whom they feel can understand what they are going through or indeed, through the blog element that comes along with this type of medium allow them too talk problems over. It is worth noting that Sofia’s Diary was such a success it was turned into a television series on Channel Five, interestingly many of the elements that are seen in the early episodes of the webisodic version were removed to make it a more standard television drama.
Again in Quarterlife there is the self-awareness of the medium. Again as with Sofia’s Diary the episode opens with the central character Dylan talking to the camera and again there is a cut to a shot that shows that what the audience has seen is actually her video blog. A certain amount of the self-awareness slips into the story itself, referring to the moment which sees Danny and Jed pitching there idea to improve advertising to the owner of a Car Sales Showroom. They mention attempting to target a new audience and about ‘knowing your demographic’. Certain shots used are more reminiscent of documentary than drama, this would appear to be an attempt at creating reality, as if the audience are watching Dylan’s life unfold. Several aspects of Quarterlife point to the representation of the everyman element found in formalism. The name itself refers to twenty-something’s all of whom would feel they understood the problems Dylan was going through. To take this further there are a group of central characters, Dylan’s friends, ala Friends (Crane, D & Kauffman, M. 1994) which offers the audience several characters whose point of view on the world might mean something. Another aspect of Quarterlife that is reminiscent of formalism is again the presence of montage when introducing other characters in the first episode Dylan’s friends Deborah and Lisa. Again as with Sofia’s Diary, Quarterlife was very successful in it’s webisodic format and moved over to television. Like Sofia’s Diary many of these more formalist elements were abandoned for the television version and in truth start to lessen as the webisodic version develops.
Clark and Michael contains the least elements of formalism of the three webisodic dramas examined here. It certainly shows a level of self awareness as can be seen by the opening scene in which the audience witness Clark and Michael attempting to write the first scene of a script sounding very much like the events unfolding before the audiences eyes. In the process of Clark and Michael there is a definate attempt to create reality. It is shot in documentary style with a crew ‘paid for with their own money’ following Clark and Michael around. This would fit with formalisms idea of creating reality of the screen. Whilst offering this element of documentary, there seems to be a greater presence by the camera crew than even Clark and Michael are aware of as at the point they are visited by the neighbour despite this being a surprise visit for Clark and Michael a camera is strategically placed outside the door to catch their reactions. The other interesting element of Clark and Michael that offer a nod to formalist ideas is the lack of any non-diagetic music. There is music but it is all played via radio’s and so does not necessarily tell the audience the mood of the piece. Clark and Michael also had a good level of success but was not turned into a television series but also interestingly is less formalist and in terms of style and tone more like a certain type of television comedy drama that has developed of late such as Curb Your Enthusiasm (David, L. 2000) or Arrested Development (Hurwitz. M, 2003) amongst others.
Conclusions
It would seem fair to say that there are elements of formalism in some webisodic dramas however to what extent varies greatly leading to the conclusion that it is far from a conscious decision and perhaps makes them even more like traditional film and television where elements of the different types of film theory will slip in. It is far more likely that the decisions were made in production to attempt to re-invent the drama and give it a new twist to compliment the new format and new environment in which it is situated in with the desire to make it very different to those dramas found on the established medium of television and film. It can be seen that when the webisodes become popular and as they develop or indeed find there way onto the traditional medium of television there is something of a reversion to practices and interestingly, although not necessarily a symptom of this change, they find very little success outside of the webisode format. Add to that that the sales and marketing of the drama’s often takes up the standard practices of sales and marketing more in tune with the traditional formats of displaying drama.
Reference
Bernado, N. (2003), Sofia’s Diary, http://www.bebo.com/c/video?FlashBoxId=9381406600&, Date Accessed 20/12/2009
Dudley Andrew, J. (1976), The Major Film Theories; An Introduction, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Duke, C & Cera, M. (2007), Clark and Micheal, http://www.clarkandmichael.com/, Date Accessed 20/12/2009
Eisenstien, S in Essays in Film Theory; Film Form (ed. Leyda, J. 1977) New York, Harcourt Brace & Company.
Herskowitz, M & Zwick, E. (2007), Quarterlife, http://seeika.ning.com/page/quarterlife-part-1, Date Accessed 20/12/2009
Stelter, B. (2008), For WebTV a Handful of Hits but No Formula for Success, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/01/business/media/01webisodes.html?_r=1&em=&pagewanted=all, Date Accessed 04/01/2010
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