Open Sky Part II

“Travel is a kind of doorway which you leave reality as though you were entering an unexplored reality that seems like a dream.”

Virilio talks about travel, but not travel in a sense that you and I know; travel provided by technology. This quote makes me think of whenever you have a movie and the maincharacter gets a head injury and is taken to a dream or essentially what seems like another place. In a sense this is what Virilio is talking about when discussing travel. He is talking about how travel has been taken by this scene, this scene through a surveillance screen.

This is not in any way conducive to how we as humans were supposed to be existing with one another. There was not supposed to be any sort of hindrance to the freedom of man, but as we “travel” with technology it seems to be changing this aspect of life.

We are accelerating much faster through everyday than and taking us away from what we were supposed to be: interactive.

What I struggle with while reading this portion of part II, is that is technology in some ways helping us get places faster? We can get from one place to the next in a much more efficient manner than we used to be able too. So what’s the issue? Is it that we aren’t actually spending enough time with each other in general even though we are getting there faster? Or maybe it’s the clear fact that once we are in one place, we can’t wait to get to the next?

Point of View

John Douglass and Glenn Harnden’s chapter on Point of View was the reading for class this week.

In this chapter, they cover three ways to shoot while thinking of perspective. These three ways are POV shots, Perspective of the Storyteller, and Character Point of View.

This picture simply portrays exactly what Douglass and Harnden’s objectives were throughout this chapter. Each of these techniques are used for shooting specific scenes or specific genres when talking about film or TV.

For example, POV shots are most commonly seen in horror or dramatic movies. One example is the famous shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, where the the camera goes back and forth from the shower to the eyes of the “mother” until the “mother” begins to commit the murder and the perspective is all from her point of view.

This particular angle in a film creates the suspense that is so often craved when watching a horror film. In this scene, there is also use of character point of view as well. Quick shots of her doing math at the table, or turning on the shower head are examples of this. Depending on the film, certain shots are more affective on the audience. Documentaries typically use Perspective of the Storyteller, well because that’s exactly what the storyteller is supposed to be doing in a documentary! With that said, it’s important to note that using this technique may be counteractive if used in the wrong setting or for too long, like most of these techniques. The key is to switch it up, but in a way that enhances the plot of the movie, show, etc.