Spectatorship: A Plan

• Intro
  • Spectatorship is the relationship between the film and the viewer. How the viewer makes sense of the film they are watching.
  • The The Hypodermic Syringe Model: A passive audience, where the idea and meaning of the film is injected into the minds of the viewer, which is accepted uncritically.
  • The Uses and Gratifications Model: An audience of individuals that will react to the film differently, interpret its message and meaning independently. The audience will actively use the film for things like self-identification or entertainment etc…
  • Stuart Hall’s Reception Theory: Stuart Hall theorises that “a film only has meaning when it is decoded by an audience and not all members of the audience will decode the meaning in the same way, especially when the text they are decoding is something as complex as a 2-hour feature film.” Another factor includes their own pre-existing views on certain social issues etc… Each viewer will interpret the film uniquely due to their independence and own personal experience.

• Beasts Of The Southern Wild
  • This film was shot on 16mm filmstock to visually evoke the gritty aesthetic of the Bathtub. Nature documentaries also inspired Zeitlin, as he said that he is “really obsessed with nature documentaries.” and that he “wanted to explore that child-like fascination with nature by showing it up close and in detail.” The visual style of the film was also influenced by the documentary Dry Wood (Blank, 1973), which shows a group of people preparing food together, which is quite similar to a scene in the film. The short film Jerrycan (Julius Avery, 2008) also influenced the film, because of its use of handheld, improvisational feeling camera work, focusing on just presenting the images rather than glorifying and beautifying them.
  • The audience is encouraged to align themselves with the character Hushpuppy, as the camera is often positioned from her perspective. Mostly having the height of the camera at her eye level rather than the adult’s in the scenes.
  • The handheld camera adds a layer of realism to it, make it seem more real to the viewer; as if there were no time to stabilise the camera, they just had to quickly capture the events as they were happening.
  • This handheld look they went for also helped to ground the magical elements of the story more solidly in reality. The shots of the aurochs are handheld like the rest of the film, not locked off creating a falsity around it, it makes it feel real for the spectator. The authentic locations and non-actors also help to ground the film in reality and helps sell the realism of it all to the spectator.

• La La Land
  • They primarily used the Panavision Anamorphic C Series lenses for this film, mainly using the 40mm and the 75mm lenses. In the cases that they wanted to go wider than 40mm, there would be a lot of distortion in the lens; which is both characteristic of anamorphic lenses and the time period of Hollywood they were influenced by. These lenses are absolutely beautiful, the focus roles of in such an exquisite way that the in-focus areas are not absolutely sharp they have a soft glow to them and then they role off into the beautiful blur of the background. This is quite characteristic of vintage lenses, they tend not to be really sharp in the focused areas which I think is really beautiful and suits this film well. When they do use the wider lenses, along with the distortion, quite heavy vignetting can be seen in the corners of the frame. All of this really does create a nostalgic feeling for classical Hollywood for the audience.
  • They primarily used the Panavision Anamorphic C Series lenses for this film, mainly using the 40mm and the 75mm lenses. In the cases that they wanted to go wider than 40mm, there would be a lot of distortion in the lens; which is both characteristic of anamorphic lenses and the time period of Hollywood they were influenced by. These lenses are absolutely beautiful, the focus roles of in such an exquisite way that the in-focus areas are not absolutely sharp they have a soft glow to them and then they role off into the beautiful blur of the background. This is quite characteristic of vintage lenses, they tend not to be really sharp in the focused areas which I think is really beautiful and suits this film well. When they do use the wider lenses, along with the distortion, quite heavy vignetting can be seen in the corners of the frame.