Deformations

I made the deformation that focused on the eyes first. In Killing of a Sacred Deer, director Yorgos Lanthimos has his characters speaking in mostly flat, unexpressive tones, many of the conversations being simply transactional. The viewer then gravitates towards the eyes in order to notice any emotion in the characters. I wanted to create a deformation that compiled some of the characters’ eyes in different key scenes in the film. I slowed down the Kim Murphy character’s singing to add to the attempted eeriness in the video. In the 2nd deformation, I wanted to highlight the cancerous personality of Steven Murphy. His irresponsible actions lead to the death of his son, and this deformation showed a disorienting montage of moments where Stephen was acting reckless.

Scopophilia

In this multiscreen video essay, the goal was to cover the idea of scopophilia, or the term used to describe the predominantly male gaze of Hollywood cinema. I made sure to add a mask to every frame seen in the video in order to provide a literal scoped view of these actors. Finding objectifying clips of female actors was surprisingly easy, so I created a busy and maybe overcrowded montage of such clips. The result is not only a statement on scopophilia but also an eerie encapsulation of my peers’ source material.

Final Response Essay

In my response essay, I argue that Every Frame a Painting’s video essay “Edgar Wright – How To Do Visual Comedy” forgets to appreciate the sketch comedy series Portlandia when discussing the wide range of visual comedy tricks a director can use to get a reaction from the audience. I do not find any issue with the celebration of director Edgar Wright as a visually innovative director, I simply wanted to make a video that says, “Yes, and…” While Portlandia may be too quirky for many, one cannot deny its anomalous position in the genre of sketch comedy and comedy television. EFaP believes visual comedy is on worsening, so I just wanted to remind everyone where they can look to find examples of great comedy derived from creative camera techniques. Portlandia does not use all of the visual tricks seen in Edgar Wright’s films, but there is a significant overlap.