Contextual Study Evaluation:

For the research part of my contextual study unit, I feel as though I was able to source a good amount of information for the social, historical and political context. Although I could have used a great deal more research to include an explanation of the type of cinema and film productions of Czechoslovakia in the 1960s - 70s (when the New Wave movement was present), I believe that the amount of context and background information that I wrote - about the movement itself and the society it was produced in/for - is a sufficient amount when exploring and showcasing the point that I was researching in my essay. 

In terms of the reliability of the sources that I used for conducting research in my contextual study unit, I feel as though I used enough sources (including both books and websites) to verify each of the points and facts were correct before I wrote them into my essay. The fact that I used well acclaimed books on the wave, in addition to verifying each fact, meant that I feel as though I again a very wide and influenced understanding of the Czechoslovakian New Wave movement - and there is a very small change that the information I put into my contextual study essay is wrong/not historically accurate.

After I reviewed my first finished draft of the contextual study essay, I noticed a few flaws and, in addition, when it came to correcting them I chose to analyse a scene from each of the three texts that I had studied so that I furthered my own research into the New Wave movement and gave the points that I had made a more vivid and solid form of evidence - whilst also allowing me to explore the look and feel that the Czech New Wave film texts had.  

The part of the unit that I found the most difficult was when it came to analysing my chosen texts. This was due to the fact that I found it quite difficult to understand and interpret some aspects of the texts - particularly the meanings of each of them. 

Contextual Study Essay - altered:

A Contextual Research Essay investigating the Czechoslovakian New Wave movement

For my contextual studies essay, I will be exploring Czechoslovakian new wave cinema and the obscure ways in which the films are constructed while reflecting the society of the time. Through my research, I will also be looking at the impact that the society and political state had on the movement and Czechoslovakian cinema in general.

The three Czechoslovakian new wave texts that I have chosen to focus on particularly are: Daisies (1966), The Firemen's Ball (1967) and Valerie and her Week of Wonders (1970). I have chosen these texts because I think that they are some of the most interesting and obscure texts of the Czech new wave movement.

Czechoslovakia in the 1940s was suffering the impact and aftermath of the second world war, meaning that there was a sudden influx in films being produced - although the control of the Soviet Union over the Czech government meant that all media content had to through public censorship checks before they could be fully released. During this time the Czech approach to society and creativity was forced to disappear and was replaced by the soviet cultural policies of the SU, however, in the following years Czechoslovakia started to gain recognition and the Czech film industry was given its first Academy Award (for A Shop on Main Street (1965) directed by Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos). (HAMES, 2005)

Surrealism was a great influence to how the Czech film makers encoded, directed and produced their films. (OWENS, 2011) Due to the creative restriction laws in place (public censorship act) which lasted all the way through till the 1980s, a great deal of films that where created during this time were banned or restricted from being released before the film became readily available to the general public. Although, due to public demand, there was a slight relaxation on the law during the 1950’s to mid way through the 1960’s, there was still a great deal of film texts that were prohibited from being shown due to the openly “protesting Communist authoritarianism” (www.anothermag.com).

The 1966 new wave film Daisies, directed by Vera Chytilova, is a very obscure and controversial film in its portrayal of women who perform destructive pranks on society because they believe the world has gone rotten and so have they. This film text is known to be one of the most iconic films of the New Wave movement, presenting a very feministic view on the world accompanied with its overall negative view on society (specifically the communist society that was around in Czechoslovakia at the time. Due to the controversial nature of the text - openly slandering and speaking out against the Soviet Union and the communist/controlling reign of the state and country - it was immediately banned by the Czechoslovakian government.

The narrative of the film has been encoded with various creative and almost hypnotic or confusing types of editing, the most frequent of these being overlaying black and white clips of film with reds, blues and occasionally even a rainbow assortment of colour - giving a striking and almost childish/circus feel to the text. These outcomes were often due to the experimentation that the films editor - Miroslav Hajek - did on the reels of footage and occasionally the colours/editing effects weren't intended but they decided to keep them in the finished film as they ended up looking creative and interesting when spliced together during production. 

A particular scene in Daisies that shows how creative and obscure the editing in Czech New Wave films was, occurs towards the end of the film text when the two girls have accepted the fact that they, like the world, have become spoilt. The diegetic sound used throughout the scene - various trumpets used in an almost jazz type manner, making disjointed notes that do not flow together - is very distorted and escalates in speed as the clip progresses and the girls begin to “cut each other up”. This choice in music reflects the way Marie and Marie feel as the though the world has gone sour and is no longer beautiful or harmonious. In addition, it gives off the air of something that no longer makes sense - further tying into the idea that the two girls no longer understand their place in the world and cannot make sense of it other than to know it has become rotten/bad. The scene opens with the Marie I and Marie II in their apartment building, one laying down and the other cutting up the fabric of the mattress the first is laying on (moving on to aggravate her into a “play fight” as she cuts away part of the shirt the first Marie is wearing). After this brief entrance to the scene, the editing starts to become less natural and more striking and experimental. Accompanied with the added foley sound of the scissors snipping, the girls body parts become detached and appear in different areas of the screen to the rest of their body/the part thats intact. The cutting each other up escalates through to the end of the scene where they start chasing each other around the small apartment, the view becoming distorted and pieces of the collective camera view are shown as though they have been cut into tiny pieces with scissors and attempted to be placed back together. The key theme that can be seen throughout this scene is cutting and distortion - shown to the audience in a variety of different ways through the editing of the scene - linking to the main idea which powers the girls impulsive actions and also acting as a clear representation of the dissociation and way that the two Marie have cut away themselves from society and the rotten, corrupted and cut apart/destroyed world.

As well as the obscure, creative editing techniques used throughout the text, the actual narrative of the text speaks about two girls trying to understand the reason for their lives by destroying and upsetting the world around them in a series of societally destructive pranks. The majority of scenes throughout the film text are of the two girls (Marie and Marie) dinning out with different older male characters and then leaving them at the train station - essentially taking advantage of the mens kindness and desires to be married to a younger woman. The overall meaning of the film (“‘This film is dedicated to those who get upset only over a stomped-upon bed of lettuce,’ reminding us that rather than spend our time worrying about social transgressions we should instead be protesting Communist authoritarianism. While we might not be enduring the same oppression as 60s Czechoslovakia, Daisies' message is still relevant in modern times – we should pick our battles, focus on the things that matter and refuse to concede to arbitrary conventions; a lesson as relevant in 2015 as it ever was.“(www.anothermag.com)) and plot line, much like other New Wave film texts, is quite hard to gauge as there is essentially no exposition in the film - the New Wave movement was one in which directors treated their audience as people who understood common sense in narrative (a man walking out of his apartment door and leaves the building would have been  shown via a man going through the door and then outside the building rather than the ‘formulaic Hollywood’ way of showing which would have shown the entire journey the man had to get outside of his apartment building) and could decode the general meaning of the film - and lead to many audience members being confused by the film text but understanding that there was some kind of ‘moral message’ behind it.

Valerie and her Week of Wonders, directed by Jaromil Jires and released in 1970, is a very highly influenced surrealism text with a narrative about a young girl who escapes from reality in uncomfortably erotic dreams/fantasies. This film, unlike Daisies, is a striking and vivid example of how the surrealist movement or surrealism in general affected and influenced the Czechoslovakian New Wave. Despite Jires’s previous work, The Joke, being banned the production and release of Valerie and her Week of Wonders was fairly seamless as it fit simply into the horror genre. 

The editing types and objects/settings encoded in this film are very reflective of the sudden creative freedom that the directors and artists in Czechoslovakia had been given, along with the brief abolishment of the Public Censorship law in 1940s (HAMES, 2005). The very concept and narrative of the film - containing various uncomfortable and disturbing erotic fantasies - showcases just how extremely obscure Czechoslovakian film texts became due to their new freedom of speech and public displays. A great deal of the editing used in the scenes/colour pallets and encoding in the mise-en-scene creates a very pure angelic look when showing Valerie. The opening sequence of the film, lasting 2 minutes 26 seconds, has a large amount of artificial lens flare used after each short clip. This matches the aim of New Wave films because it breaks the conventions of mainstream texts of the day (especially Hollywood film texts) as it is a more obvious and possibly unaesthetically pleasing form of editing. The editing and overall appearance of the film creates a great deal of contrast in itself due to its very ambient and bright/aesthetic form compared to the dark and almost sexual horror that the narrative of the film conveys.

A scene which shows the colour pallets and colour connotation use in Valerie and her Week of Wonders is when Eaglet has just saved her from the Constable (dressed as the Head Missionary) and they then watch him interact with the grandmother in the courtyard. There is a large amount of colour connotation in this scene, in a way presenting to the audience how Valerie feels about each character in it - For example: when the camera shows Eaglet holding Valerie and keeping her out of sight the colours are generally very warm and it appears (as the audience knows) to be daylight, however when the camera shows the activity happening in the square/Valerie’s Grandmother and the Reverend the colours used are a great deal more dark and dreary (in tones of dark blue, black and grey) and in a way that makes the scene look like it was shot at night or the late hours of the afternoon. In addition to the interesting and contrasting use of colour, this scene also contains a great deal of cut-ins and mismatched reaction shots whereas in most other New Wave texts (Czechoslovakian or otherwise) jump cuts tend to be used along with colour overlays instead of more “Formulaic Hollywood” techniques like cut-ins or cut-aways. The mismatched/ unaligned reaction shot do, however, link to the idea that New Wave directors tended to include mistakes in their film texts due to them generally not having enough money to correct it or re-film it. 

The narrative of Valerie and her Week of Wonders is very heavily structured on surrealism and sexual horror, making clear parallels to the original book which inspired and influenced the film text. In addition to the use of lens flares and angelic music (which contrasts the overall plot line of the film text), the narrative of Valerie and her Week of Wonders is about a young girl who starts her period and begins to have dreams of a fanciful world of vampires and murder, whilst a whole new world of mystery and wonder is opened up to her. Unlike Daisies, where audience member came away with varying but somewhat similar interpretations of the text, Jaromil Jires’s film leaves many audience members with a very confused diverse range of interpretations of what the film means - the only clear reading of the it being that the story is of a girl becoming a woman.

The 1967 film The Firemen’s Ball, directed by Milos Forman, is one of the few Czechoslovakian New Wave films (if not, one of the only films ever) that was banned “’permanently and forever’ by the Communist regime” when it was released to the general public (www.rogerebert.com). In contrast the other two film texts that I have studied, The Firemen’s Ball is a comedy which contains outward and obvious slander within its narrative that the structure of society (at the time) is corrupt and run by misogynistic older males - who in this case use their power to parade the “selected women” in front of their table - and about communism and the communist authority in general.

The encoded types of editing throughout this film are more reflective and tightly fitted with the original New Wave editing techniques, being mainly reliant on jump cuts to make the audience aware that they are watching a film. Where the other film texts use more obscure and creative editing types such as multiple colour overlays at one to create a rainbow effect (Daisies) and lens flares with overly bright and angelic colour schemes (Valerie and her Week of Wonders), Forman chose to keep the overall appearance of the film relatively “normal” and more like a typical Hollywood/mainstream film.

A scene which presents the controversial nature of the text the most vividly is the scene where one of the women is asked to remove her clothes in front of the room of Firemen/Officers and 7 other women who’ve been selected for the Miss Fire-Department position. There is very little editing used in this scene - making it appear visually much more like a Hollywood film text rather than one from the New Wave movement-, however, there are a few jump cuts (in amongst shot reverse shots) encoded while the woman is undressing. Unlike in Valerie and her Week of Wonders, the shot reverse shots match up with what the eye(s) are looking at making the film seem a little less disjointed and giving it a more refined overall appearance. The fact that the films narrative is easily understandable and flows fairly seamlessly (with the exception of the jump cuts added in to make the audience aware that they are watching a film/create dissociation) makes it appear a great deal more like a Hollywood or even “formulaic Hollywood” film than any of the other New Wave texts the I have looked at or studied. There is, however, evidence in the scene of mistakes being included in the final product, namely the girls at the back trying to refrain themselves from laughing at something. This “mistake” is, however, hardly noticeable - meaning that it appears less as a mistake and more as a subtle part of the scene that could have been cut out by one of the jump cuts that appear just before it.

In terms of narrative, The Firemen’s Ball is a relatively easy text to decode - the senior Officer of the fire department has chosen to retire and to commemorate/celebrate a ball is held in his honour with lottery prizes and his choice of woman as the Miss Fire-Department’s beauty contest. The meaning behind this film was simply to outline to the audience the communist world in which they lived was not sustainable or good. “The idea of relaxing and abandoning oneself to leisure – what Forman refers to as “fun” – in communist Czechoslovakia, in 1967, is essentially a tragic-comic contradiction, the true import and meaning of which will escape many viewers today. ‘Fun in communist Czechoslovakia’ is an oxymoron that Forman needed to recognise publicly.” (ww.sensesofcinema.com).

In conclusion, my research has shown that the main impact and core value of the Czechoslovakian New Wave movement was to express the Czech directors distaste of the communist society that they lived through (under the rule of the Soviet Union) and enlighten the audience as to how bad it was and the real negative effects that it had on society and their lives/people in general.

Bibliography:

Daisies. (1966). [Film] Czechoslovakia: Vera Chytilova.

Valerie and Her Week Of Wonders. (1970). [Film] Czechoslovakia: Jaromil Jires.

The Firemen’s Ball. (1967). [Film] Czechoslovakia: Milos Forman.

HAMES, P. (2005) The Czechoslovak New Wave. Second Edition. London: Wallflower Press.

OWEN, J L. (2011) Avant-Garde to New Wave: Czechoslovak Cinema, Surrealism and the Sixties. New York: Berghahn Books.

SINGER, O. (2015) ‘Lessons we can learn from Daisies’. An Other Magazine. [Online] (July) Available From: http://www.anothermag.com/fashion-beauty/7525/lessons-to-learn-from-daisies.

EBERT, R. (2002) ‘The Firemen’s Ball movie review’. [Online] (August) Available From: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-firemens-ball-1968.

SIMMONS, A. (2010) Senses of Cinema. [Online] (July) Available From: http://sensesofcinema.com/2010/cteq/the-firemens-ball.

SAMUALS, A J. (2016) ‘New Wave and Beyond: Czech cinematic classics’. The Culture Trip. [Online] (September) Available From: https://theculturetrip.com/europe/czech-republic/articles/new-wave-and-beyond-czech-cinematic-classics.

Contextual Study Essay:

A Contextual Research Essay investigating the Czechoslovakian New Wave movement

For my contextual studies essay, I will be exploring Czechoslovakian new wave cinema and the obscure ways in which the films are constructed while reflecting the society of the time. Through my research, I will also be looking at the impact that the society and political state had on the movement and Czechoslovakian cinema in general.

The three Czechoslovakian new wave texts that I have chosen to focus on particularly are: Daisies (1966), The Firemen's Ball (1967) and Valerie and her Week of Wonders (1970). I have chosen these texts because I think that they are some of the most interesting and obscure texts of the Czech new wave movement.

Czechoslovakia in the 1940s was suffering the impact and aftermath of the second world war, meaning that there was a sudden influx in films being produced - although the control of the Soviet Union over the Czech government meant that all media content had to through public censorship checks before they could be fully released. During this time the Czech approach to society and creativity was forced to disappear and was replaced by the soviet cultural policies of the SU, however, in the following years Czechoslovak started to gain recognition and the Czech film industry was given its first Academy Award (for A Shop on Main Street (1965) directed by Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos). (HAMES, 2005)

Surrealism was a great influence to how the Czech film makers encoded, directed and produced their films. (OWENS, 2011) Due to the creative restriction laws in place (public censorship act) which lasted all the way through till the 1980s, a great deal of films that where created during this time were banned or restricted from being released before the film became readily available to the general public. Although, due to public demand, there was a slight relaxation on the law during the 1950’s to mid way through the 1960’s, there was still a great deal of film texts that were prohibited from being shown due to the openly “protesting Communist authoritarianism” (www.anothermag.com).

The 1966 new wave film Daisies, directed by Vera Chytilova, is a very obscure and controversial film in its portrayal of women who perform destructive pranks on society because they believe the world has gone rotten and so have they. This film text is known to be one of the most iconic films of the New Wave movement, presenting a very feministic view on the world accompanied with its overall negative view on society (specifically the communist society that was around in Czechoslovakia at the time. Due to the controversial nature of the text - openly slandering and speaking out against the Soviet Union and the communist/controlling reign of the state and country - it was immediately banned by the Czechoslovakian government.

The narrative of the film has been encoded with various creative and almost hypnotic or confusing types of editing, the most frequent of these being overlaying black and white clips of film with reds, blues and occasionally even a rainbow assortment of colour - giving a striking and almost childish/circus feel to the text. These outcomes were often due to the experimentation that the films editor - Miroslav Hajek - did on the reels of footage and occasionally the colours/editing effects weren't intended but they decided to keep them in the finished film as they ended up looking creative and interesting when spliced together during production. 

As well as the obscure, creative editing techniques used throughout the text, the actual narrative of the text speaks about two girls trying to understand the reason for their lives by destroying and upsetting the world around them in a series of societally destructive pranks. The majority of scenes throughout the film text are of the two girls (Marie and Marie) dinning out with different older male characters and then leaving them at the train station - essentially taking advantage of the mens kindness and desires to be married to a younger woman. The overall meaning of the film (“‘This film is dedicated to those who get upset only over a stomped-upon bed of lettuce,’ reminding us that rather than spend our time worrying about social transgressions we should instead be protesting Communist authoritarianism. While we might not be enduring the same oppression as 60s Czechoslovakia, Daisies' message is still relevant in modern times – we should pick our battles, focus on the things that matter and refuse to concede to arbitrary conventions; a lesson as relevant in 2015 as it ever was.“(www.anothermag.com)) and plot line, much like other New Wave film texts, is quite hard to gauge as there is essentially no exposition in the film - the New Wave movement was one in which directors treated their audience as people who understood common sense in narrative (a man walking out of his apartment door and leaves the building would have been  shown via a man going through the door and then outside the building rather than the ‘formulaic Hollywood’ way of showing which would have shown the entire journey the man had to get outside of his apartment building) and could decode the general meaning of the film - and lead to many audience members being confused by the film text but understanding that there was some kind of ‘moral message’ behind it.

Valerie and her Week of Wonders, directed by Jaromil Jires and released in 1970, is a very highly influenced surrealism text with a narrative about a young girl who escapes from reality in uncomfortably erotic dreams/fantasies. This film, unlike Daisies, is a striking and vivid example of how the surrealist movement or surrealism in general affected and influenced the Czechoslovakian New Wave. Despite Jires’s previous work, The Joke, being banned the production and release of Valerie and her Week of Wonders was fairly seamless as it fit simply into the horror genre. 

The editing types and objects/settings encoded in this film are very reflective of the sudden creative freedom that the directors and artists in Czechoslovakia had been given, along with the brief abolishment of the Public Censorship law in 1940s (HAMES, 2005). The very concept and narrative of the film - containing various uncomfortable and disturbing erotic fantasies - showcases just how extremely obscure Czechoslovakian film texts became due to their new freedom of speech and public displays. A great deal of the editing used in the scenes/colour pallets and encoding in the mise-en-scene creates a very pure angelic look when showing Valerie. The opening sequence of the film, lasting 2 minutes 26 seconds, has a large amount of artificial lens flare used after each short clip. This matches the aim of New Wave films because it breaks the conventions of mainstream texts of the day (especially Hollywood film texts) as it is a more obvious and possibly unaesthetically pleasing form of editing. The editing and overall appearance of the film creates a great deal of contrast in itself due to its very ambient and bright/aesthetic form compared to the dark and almost sexual horror that the narrative of the film conveys.

The narrative of Valerie and her Week of Wonders is very heavily structured on surrealism and sexual horror, making clear parallels to the original book which inspired and influenced the film text. In addition to the use of lens flares and angelic music (which contrasts the overall plot line of the film text), the narrative of Valerie and her Week of Wonders is about a young girl who starts her period and begins to have dreams of a fanciful world of vampires and murder, whilst a whole new world of mystery and wonder is opened up to her. Unlike Daisies, where audience member came away with varying but somewhat similar interpretations of the text, Jaromil Jires’s film leaves many audience members with a very confused diverse range of interpretations of what the film means - the only clear reading of the it being that the story is of a girl becoming a woman.

The 1967 film The Firemen’s Ball, directed by Milos Forman, is one of the few Czechoslovakian New Wave films (if not, on elf the only films ever) that was banned “’permanently and forever’ by the Communist regime” when it was released to the general public (www.rogerebert.com). In contrast the other two film texts that I have studied, The Firemen’s Ball is a comedy which contains outward and obvious slander within its narrative that the structure of society (at the time) is corrupt and run by misogynistic older males - who in this case use their power to parade the “selected women” in front of their table - and about communism and the communist authority in general.

The encoded types of editing throughout this film are more reflective and tightly fitted with the original New Wave editing techniques, being mainly reliant on jump cuts to make the audience aware that they are watching a film. Where the other film texts use more obscure and creative editing types such as multiple colour overlays at one to create a rainbow effect (Daisies) and lens flares with overly bright and angelic colour schemes (Valerie and her Week of Wonders), Forman chose to keep the overall appearance of the film relatively “normal” and more like a typical Hollywood/mainstream film.

In terms of narrative, The Firemen’s Ball is a relatively easy text to decode - the senior Officer of the fire department has chosen to retire and to commemorate/celebrate a ball is held in his honour with lottery prizes and his choice of woman as the Miss Fire-Department’s beauty contest. The meaning behind this film was simply to outline to the audience the communist world in which they lived was not sustainable or good. “The idea of relaxing and abandoning oneself to leisure – what Forman refers to as “fun” – in communist Czechoslovakia, in 1967, is essentially a tragic-comic contradiction, the true import and meaning of which will escape many viewers today. ‘Fun in communist Czechoslovakia’ is an oxymoron that Forman needed to recognise publicly.” (ww.sensesofcinema.com).

In conclusion, my research has shown that the main impact and core value of the Czechoslovakian New Wave movement was to express the Czech directors distaste of the communist society that they lived through (under the rule of the Soviet Union) and enlighten the audience as to how bad it was and the real negative effects that it had on society and their lives/people in general.

Contextual Essay - Progress:

For my contextual studies essay, I will be exploring Czechoslovakian new wave cinema and the obscure ways in which the texts are constructed while reflecting the society of the time. Through my research, I will also be looking at the impact that the society and political state had on the movement and Czechoslovakian cinema in general.

The three Czechoslovakian new wave texts that I have chosen to focus on particularly are: Dasies (1966), The Firemen's Ball (1967) and Valerie and her Week of Wonders (1970). I have chosen these texts because I think that they are some of the most interesting and obscure texts of the Czech new wave movement.

Czechoslovakia in the 1940s was suffering the impact and aftermath of the second world war, meaning that there was a sudden influx in films being produced - although the control of the Soviet Union over the Czech government meant that all media content had to through public censorship checks before they could be fully released. During this time the Czech approach to society and creativity was forced to disappear and was replaced by the soviet cultural policies of the SU, however, in the following years Czechoslovak started to gain recognition and the Czech film industry was given its first Academy Award (for A Shop on Main Street (1965) directed by Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos). (HAMES, 2005)

Surrealism was a great influence to how the Czech film makers encoded, directed and produced their texts. (OWENS, 2011)

The 1966 new wave film Dasies, directed by Vera Chytilova, is a very obscure and controversial text in its portrayal of women who seemingly have no purpose to their lives and export the manners and kindness/love and admiration so that they can eat or dine and continue to live their care free lives. This text is known to be a strong example of surrealist cinema and coming from a director who's won awards and respect for producing feminist works its a very strange and confusing text. 

The narrative of the text has been encoded with various creative and almost hypnotic or confusing types of editing, including overlaying black and white clips of film with reds, blues and occasionally even a rainbow assortment of colour over top. These outcomes were often due to the experimentation that the films editor did on the reels of footage, occasionally the colours and effects weren't intended but they decided to keep them in the finished text as they ended up looking creative and interesting when spliced together during production. 

New Wave Short Film:

This video is my finished New wave short film, shot in Birmingham using a range of different new wave editing and shot techniques. For this finished piece, I decided to add in non-diegetic sound so that I didn't have to worry about the natural sound picked up by the camera and, in addition, the use of music enabled me to figure out more structure of where I was going to place my jump cuts and other new wave style edits. 

Although I am happy with how the overall appearance of the video came out and the way in which it presents/uses a variety of new wave editing techniques, I feel as though it turned out to be more of a music video than a new wave short film. This is because of how the jumps cuts and colour overlays match up almost perfectly with each of the beats or changes in music - I think that the lack of narrative also makes this video look a great deal more like a music video that an a contextual exploration of the new wave and the ways in which it challenged and changed film making through its rule breaking and lack of exposition for its audience. 

In addition, I feel as though rather than using the same editing techniques throughout the video, it would have made a stronger example/had a stronger link to the new wave cinema if there had have been a wider range of techniques (both editing and narrative/content wise) used. The ways in which I used jump cuts could also have been more effective if I had made the transitions between scenes/locations more sporadic and disjointed as it would have forced the audience to be aware that they are watching a video/short film - fitting the aim for new wave texts more. 

My choice of music for this new wave short film, I feel, works quite well as it does not detract from the content or footage being shown on the screen. The lyrics of the song do not fully match up/reflect the "narrative" of the film as well, meaning that there is a further reflection of the new wave style to break normal film text conventions and create an obscure final product. 

Daisies (1966):

The 1966 new wave film Dasies, directed by Vera Chytilova, is a very obscure and controversial text in its portrayal of women who seemingly have no purpose to their lives and export the manners and kindness/love and admiration so that they can eat or dine and continue to live their care free lives. This text is known to be a strong example of surrealist cinema and coming from a director who's won awards and respect for producing feminist works its a very strange and confusing text. 

The narrative of the text has been encoded with various creative and almost hypnotic or confusing types of editing, including overlaying black and white clips of film with reds, blues and occasionally even a rainbow assortment of colour over top. These outcomes were often due to the experimentation that the films editor did on the reels of footage, occasionally the colours and effects weren't intended but they decided to keep them in the finished text as they ended up looking creative and interesting when spliced together during production. 


Bibliography:
 HAMES, P (2005) ) The Czechoslovak New Wave. Second Edition. London: Wallflower Press

 https://screenproject1400.wordpress.com/2013/11/12/vera-chytilovas-daisies-czechoslovakia-1966/ 

New Wave Draft:

This is my first draft/rough cut of my new wave short film, including no narrative or sound. I chose to make this so that I could work out the clips that I wanted to use in my film and the different types of editing techniques I will use (mainly the jump cuts). 

New Wave Design Brief:

Having researched range of new waves and beginning to analyse three Czech new wave texts, I have chosen that when creating my own short new wave film I will try to draw upon a variety of techniques from a range of new wave films and follow the new wave idea/concept of breaking the formulaic Hollywood rules for film making- mainly the most common conventions such as: jump cuts, colour overlays, lack of narrative and obscure camera movements. I am going to keep the length of my short film around 3-5 minutes long as I think that will give me ample time to exercise a range of new wave techniques without dragging on too long. 

My plan is to compile a wide variety of shots from a large number of locations that I visit in the Birmingham city area. This should make it easy for me to edit in numerous  new wave techniques such as jump cuts and colour overlays. I aim to use mainly, if not completely, non-diegetic in my short film so that I don’t have to worry about the diegetic sound picked up by the camera when filming around Birmingham.  The use of putting the film to music means that I can add some structure to the jumps cuts that I put in as I can aline them with beats/changes in the song. 

For lighting and camera settings, I will be using natural (and unpredictable) lighting and keeping the footage hand held - fitting in with the new wave aim to break typical Hollywood film making conventions and rules.  I am going to try to keep the exposure correct, however, I feel as though changing the shutter speed could mean that the overall effect of the footage and video could be more creative and obscure. In terms of shot types, I’m going to try and use a wide variety of different types of camera shots and angels, meaning that the final cut of the film will have numerous different  shots and views rather than just one single camera shot/angle. 

Czech New Wave - Historical/Social Context:

Czechoslovakia in the 1940s was suffering the impact and aftermath of the second world war, meaning that there was a sudden influx in films being produced - although the control of the Soviet Union over the Czech government meant that all media content had to through public censorship checks before they could be fully released. During this time the Czech approach to society and creativity was forced to disappear and was replaced by the soviet cultural policies of the SU, however, in the following years Czechoslovak started to gain recognition and the Czech film industry was given its first Academy Award (for A Shop on Main Street (1965) directed by Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos). (HAMES, 2005)

Surrealism was a great influence to how the Czech film makers encoded, directed and produced their texts. (OWENS, 2011)

References:
 Hames, P. (2005) The Czechoslovak New Wave. Second Edition. London: Wallflower Press

 Owens, J. (2011) Avant-Garde to New Wave: Czechoslovakian cinema, Surrealism and the Sixties. New York: Berghahn Books

 http://www.newwavefilm.com/international/czech-new-wave.shtml

Essay Texts (Czeck New Wave):

The Firemen's Ball - Milos Forman

For my contextual studies essay, I will be exploring Czechoslovakian new wave cinema and the obscure ways in which the texts are constructed while reflecting the society of the time. Through my research, I will also be looking at the impact that the society and political state had on the movement and Czechoslovakian cinema in general.

The three Czechoslovakian new wave texts that I have chosen to focus on particularly are: Dasies (1966), The Firemen's Ball (1967) and Valerie and her Week of Wonders (1970). I have chosen these texts because I think that they are some of the most interesting and obscure texts of the Czech new wave movement. 

Daisies - Vera Chytilova / Valeries and her Week of Wonders - Jaromil Jires

Czech New Wave:

As previously mentioned, the main influence for the Czech new wave was the political and creative freedom that they were given towards the end of 1960s, liberating film makers and other artist and allowing them to create works which contained controversial imagery and spoke about/mentioned taboo topics - before this liberation, all texts (from newspapers and radio to television and cultural event organisation) had to be sent through the public domain before publishing. 

Lasting from the 1960s till the early 1970s, a great deal of creative and obscure texts, including films, were produced and displayed for the public and creators enjoyment. Some of the major figures of the Czech new wave movement were: Milos Forman - who produced one of the first Czech new wave texts that helped launch the movement, Milan Kundera, Vera Chytilova and directing the director team of Jan Kadar and Elmar Clos - who ended up wining Czechoslovakia's first Oscar in 1965 for the film A Shop on the High Street. 

History of the New Wave/The French New Wave:

The French new wave is the style of film making that broke Hollywoods rules and inspired a new way of film making that has carried through to the present day. As an artistic movement that changed the way Hollywood saw film making - choosing to use natural environments rather than studio sets - it gave the directors a great deal more freedom when it came to shooting their films and has been remembered as a great influence much like cubism and surrealism. This style of film making meant that the craft was opened up to many young, aspiring film makers and other amateurs - the French new wave was a cultural revolution. 

The new wave movement showed and reflected the change in lifestyle that was happening during the 1960s and how society was evolving. It took normal peoples lives and put them into cinema, being centred around young people, youth and a something new/a new life. 

Aperture Practice:

I shot these three videos to investigate the use of aperture in filming and to experiment with the effect it has. This first video shows my experimentation at shooting with an aperture of 2.8ff. The use of shallow focus draws the viewers attention to the object/person that is in focus, meaning that it is a good device for narrative story telling in films and other moving image texts. To gain this low aperture, I chose to use the following camera settings: ISO 200, shutter speed 1/60, 25fps, and aperture 2.8ff. This video was also shot on a 50mm lens  meaning that the aperture was able to go lower than most normal/wide angle lenses. To make sure that I got the correct exposure, I decided to change the ISO so that the aperture and shutter speed could remain the same and the overall quality of the video was not affected. 

When shooting this video at aperture 2.8, I found that it was difficult to find an area/place that would allow me to explore the full use of such a shallow depth of field. I do feel as though my choice to shoot the clips using an old plant pot on the corner meant that the desired effect of a low aperture was shown clearly. 

In this video, I shot at an aperture of 8ff meaning that there was a larger field of focus than there was at 2.8. This type of aperture is usually used when there is more to focus on in a scene, but it isn't necessary to be aware of the background. To achieve this depth of field, I used the settings: ISO 400, shutter speed 1/60, 25fps, and aperture 8ff. This video was shot on a standard/wide angle lens, meaning that the aperture could go down as far. Like the previous video, to try and gain the correct exposure for this clip I chose to alter the ISO and leave the aperture and shutter speed as they were.

Although the video is clear, in post-shoot editing I realised that the exposure is incorrect/the ISO was too high and has resulted in the footage being slightly over-exposed. This means that the overall quality of the clip isn't as good as the top video and appears to be foggy and possibly focused wrong. In the future I am going to make sure I check the footage before finishing a shoot so that I don't end up with videos that are over exposed again.

This final video, I shot at aperture 16ff meaning that there was a wider depth of field and a greater amount of the footage was in focus. This aperture is often used when the director of a text has encoded a variety of subjects in the mise-en-scene that the audience should take notice of or there is no particular object that the viewer needs to focus on. To achieve this effect, I chose to use the following camera settings: ISO 400, shutter speed 1/60, 25fps, and aperture 16ff. I shot this video on a standard camera lens, meaning that the aperture couldn't go as high and I had to shoot at an aperture of 16. 

The exposure of this video, much like that of the video above, is not correct/too bright meaning that the appearance of the footage isn't clear and appears almost foggy. If I had to reshoot this video I would make sure that I reviewed the quality of the footage before finishing the shoot, this would mean that the exposure could have been corrected before it came to editing and that the visual quality and appeal of the video would have been better.

Investigating Different Types of New Wave:

Vera Chytilova - Daisies

Although each new wave style has the same goals and concept, there are slight differences between them - this was due to them all being strongly influenced by the society of the country in that time period. In Czechoslovakian New wave, the main influence was the political liberation that was introduced in the 1960s giving film makers and other artist the freedom to create work with a more controversial twist and about taboo topics. This new freedom lead to the Czech new wave film makers being a great deal more creative and making very obscure, and often indecipherable texts. The Czech new wave movement lasted from 1962 through to the early 1970s meaning that a large amount of film texts were created and produced during this time. 

As Tears Go By - Wong Car-Wai

The Hong Kong new wave movement happened a little later than the new waves from places like France and America, taking place in the late 1970s to well into the 80s. The greatest influence for this new wave style was the western influence that the Chinese directors had and the western-style education given to them through their lives. This lead to Hong Kong new wave film makers creating texts that chose to be stylistically incoherent - meaning that there was a clear distinction between the new filmmakers of the era and the older ones. 

French new wave was the spark that egnited an explosion of new, creative styles of film making. Taking place from the late 1950s through to the early 70s, the french new wave movement produced a very large number of films which were influenced by the directors and their personal lives/experiences. Due to the french new wave being the first of its kind and sparking such a massive and memorable change, films like Breathless (1960) and The 400 Blows (1959) have been remembered for all their new, creative and interesting was of film making. 

Breathless - Jean-Luc Godard

New Wave Cinema:

The new wave style of film making was created in the 1960s as an answer to the repetitive and formulaic structure to Hollywood films. New wave cinema, pioneered by directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, was designed and created to break the rules and create something completely different and a new experience, which audiences loved. New wave film making is recognised as freeing the way that films were made - it is profound for the use of natural footage out on the streets as opposed to using studios or fixed sets and is enduring, much like cubism and surrealism. 

There are various different types of new wave cinema, due to it being a wide spread film making style across various countries. Some of these include: French New Wave, American New Wave, Hong Kong New Wave and Czech New Wave. Some of the notable conventions for new wave cinema are the following:
 - They included mistakes in the final film
 - Handheld camera
 - Hidden cameras in natural environments (e.g. streets and buildings - meaning that the reactions of people are genuine)
 - Breaking the forth wall and director having cameos in their own films
 - Syncopated editing
 - Jump cuts (often moving from one scene to another with no explanation)
 - Long takes with static/mobile or lateral tracking
 - Interior monologues and random comments
 - Sound doesn't always match the video, due to the sound being added post filming

Easy Rider (1969):

Easy Rider (1969) is a film where “Two counterculture bikers travel from Los Angeles to New Orleans in search of America” or, in other words, about two men who travel through the Southwest of America after selling a large about of cocaine. As a text, it was seen as a great turning point in the way New Hollywood created and shot films – exploring controversial issues and topics of the 1960s society it was made during (discussing things such as the hippie movement, drug use and ‘communal’ way of life).

The meaning behind this clip - reflecting the way that the people in the clip feel during their acid trip - has been constructed via varying camera shot types, angles, lighting techniques and sound. One of these creative devises included in the clip is the use of camera panning up the building, and continuing until the camera faces into the sun creating a giant lens flare, from 0:56 - 1:27. This constructs the representation of the characters slowly losing their senses as the hallucinogenic drug takes effect. This has been encoded so that audience members can gain the preferred reading that the characters have taken LSD (or at the least some drug to that effect). The combining of this panning shot with a low angle shot means that the audience is able to gain this preferred reading through the camera (as it presents them with the point of view of the people within the scene) conveys this view to be their point of view, more specifically the point of view of the two persons on the floor. This panning shot has various other shots cut into it, these cut-away shots show the main four characters in this scene and a woman reciting a biblical passage of some description. The use of encoding these cut-away shots into the narrative of the scene allows the viewer to decode the text with the reading that the LSD the people have taken is slowly taking affect and the thoughts of each member are becoming distorted and broken up.

The use of sound in this clip is used to show the delusional/drug induced mind-set of the characters. Combining and overlaying multiple different soundtracks in post-production means that the audience is unclear as to what sound is actually taking place in the scene and what is fake, allowing them to gain the preferred reading that the characters have taken LSD. At the start of the clip, along with small amount of dialogue there is a clunking/almost train track or factory machine sound. This creates the idea that they are near some kind of railway or possibly industrial area. The noise continues and, when the characters within the scene have taken the drug, snippets of a woman reading a bible verse/prayer are cut in and mixed/interchanged with the factory machine clanking. This gives the audience a reading that there is possibly a funeral going on in the cemetery whilst they are there – giving sense to the man in a business suit who is shown very briefly at 1:37. The preferred reading of the text, being that they have taken LSD a hallucinogenic drug, would mean that the audience decodes some aspects of the scene (the man in the suit, the non-diegetic sound of machinery that is present throughout the scene) are things that have been created by the characters drug induced minds and are in fact not real. The fact that Dennis Hopper’s character says “shut up” when the accompaniment of church preaching and factory machine sound merge together indicated to the viewer that he is struggling to block out the sounds and possibly an inner turmoil – possibly the fact that he sold drugs, linking to the overall narrative of the text. 

Post labels // part 1