Remember Project
Official short trailer for the film project ‘Remember’
Clone Trails created in Premiere Proc CC using masking.
Using the poem “Remember” as creative influence I decided to film a short dance sequence for the visuals with a voice over. The concept is to represent the loss of memory and integrate this into the much larger practice on the conceptualisation of memory in cinema.
This is the instrumental only version still using the poem “Remember” by Christina Rossetti as creative influence, represented in a dance sequence, and the visuals could be described as having been influenced by the work of Etienne-Jules Marey.
Remember (1849)
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
By Christina Rossetti
Studio session (Monday 17th August 2020)
Two camera setup Canon C300 and Canon 5D MK3.
Concept One. The studio is dark, very dimly lit. Using the 2 light panels. The aim is for the dancer to move in and out of the light and the lens. Visually a silhouette, backlighted dancing in front of a static camera. Rim Lighting setup.
Concept Two. The studio is brightly lighted using the house lights. The dancer interacts with the moving camera. No lighting rig available so used 4 led lightpanels, setup to cover the performance area. Canon C300 used handheld.
Additional Visuals: Capture close and extreme close movements for both concepts. Hand and foot movements. Face and head movement.
Music
For the performance (performer to supply) Post production: anything with a regular beat to use as a background to cut to.
In classical Hollywood Cinema, Casablanca has a single extended use of the flashback, the purpose is to provide background character information, in revealing to the spectator the previous relationship of the main protagonists, Rick and Ilsa. When considering the decision to use only a single extended flashback sequence in Casablanca (1942) when compared with the multiple use of flashbacks in Kitty Foyle (1940), which are just a few years apart. I am reminded of the Bordwell quote that flashbacks do not tend to confuse the spectator as we mentally put them in order, but this may not be true of the spectator in 1940s cinema. The spectators of the time may possibly have found flashbacks a new and confusing concept and this may have influenced the decision-making processes for the creators of Casablanca (1942) to limit the use to just one flashback a self-contained film within a film. As Turim quotes from the Film Encyclopaedia (New York: Perigee, 1982), “Although generally a useful device in advancing a complicated plot, the multiple flashback can be absurdly confusing.” (Turim, 2014: 247). The extended flashback sequence is set in Paris, the flashback is used to both reveal and develop the main protagonists previous relationship and simultaneously resolve some of the gaps in the film’s narrative, the unanswered questions in the opening scenes of the film for example, where does Ilsa know Rick from and what was their previous relationship, just friends or more?. Dana Polan the film theorist states that to many cinephiles Casablanca (1942) is an example of Hollywood filmmaking at its best and as Polan, a professor of cinema studies states in his Casablanca essay, “One of the great films of cult veneration, Casablanca (1942) is the perfect example of Hollywood perfection.” (Geiger and Rutsky, 2005: 363). Flashbacks in classic Hollywood cinema typically make use of a series of conventions to initiate the flashback, for example Casablanca’s flashback sequence includes several of these. Bordwell states that “[f]lashbacks can be initiated by any number and indeed types of cues. For instance, there are several cues for a flashback in a classical Hollywood film: pensive character attitude, close-up of face, slow dissolve, voice-over narration, sonic ‘flashback,’ music. In any given case, several of these will be used together” (Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson, 2002: 5) . The flashback sequence in Casablanca uses several of what have become the classical, that is established and recognisable conventions for a flashback. For example the flashback sequence is preceded by Rick’s pensive attitude, Rick is centred in the frame with his face in close-up showing his anguish. The shot then begins to become misty/blurring with a slow dissolve into what becomes the flashback sequence. At the end of the flashback sequence similar conventions are used but using the steam emissions from the locomotive to blur the image and initiate another slow dissolve back to the current chronological order that is linear timeline. However, Casablanca is preceded by both literary and film examples of the flashback technique. The Encyclopaedia Britannica states that “The flashback technique is as old as Western literature. In the Odyssey, most of the adventures that befell Odysseus on his journey home from Troy are told in flashback by Odysseus when he is at the court of the Phaeacians”. (Rodriguez, 2016). The early use of the flashback in literature, the narrator telling the story, Musgrove, professor of humanities states …” at the beginning of his “Iliad,” Ovid uses conventions of traditional epic, especially the extended flashback, to call into question the reliability of epic narration and epic narrators and to suggest alternative perspectives on the canonical story of the Trojan War. “ (Musgrove, 2013: 2). As I stated previously flashbacks have increased in prevalence in films from the 1930s’ to varying degrees of commonplace in films over the decades. Turim states that “After cinema makes the flashback a common and distinctive narrative trait, audiences and critics were more likely to recognize flashbacks as crucial elements of narrative structure in other narrative forms.” (Turim, 2014: 20). From this example you could infer that the use of flashback conventions is well established and used to prepare the spectator for the start of the flashback and similarly out of the flashback sequence, returning to the chronological order and linear timeline.
This statement by Bordwell is also clearly represented in the opening sequence of the film Oldboy (2003) an example most importantly of a film proliferated with flashback sequences and the use several examples of the flashback conventions and elements of cinematography, involving stylised shots and flashbacks triggered by sounds. As previously mentioned, one of the key reasons for choosing Oldboy (2003) a non-Hollywood film, is for an example of the use of a variety of flashbacks and for its use of cinematography. The flashback sequences use a variety zooms, tracking shots and matching shots to enter and exit flashbacks. The opening sequence is set in the future in the form of a flashforward, a significant moment in the film as the main protagonist has just been released from 15 years of incarceration. However, the spectator is not aware that they are viewing events set in the future, this is only revealed later in the film. Bordwell argues the use of the flashforward and states that “[t]he flashforward is unthinkable in the classical narrative cinema, which seeks to retard the ending and efface the mode of narration. But in the art cinema, the flashforward functions perfectly to stress authorial presence: we must notice how the narrator teases us with knowledge that no character can have (Bordwell, 1979: 2). The meaning behind this incarceration and minutia of the imprisonment are central to the films narrative and is revealed in parts through the film’s progression in a series of memory and narrated flashbacks. One of the flashback functions is to inform the spectator of past events, but these flashbacks may not uniquely come from the memory of the protagonist, as Bordwell states “[h]aving a character remember or recount the past might seem to make the flashback more “realistic,” but flashbacks usually violate plausibility. Even “subjective” flashbacks usually present objective (and reliable) information. More oddly, both memory-flashbacks and telling-flashbacks usually show things that the character didn’t, and couldn’t witness. (Bordwell, 2009). By subjective flashback, Bordwell almost certainly means the flashback is derived from the characters personal memory of events which is revealed in the flashback as opposed to the external telling flashback which is usually a narrated or telling flashback and therefore not taken directly from a character’s memory. For example, Oldboy (2003) the main protagonist appears in some flashbacks as his adult self, participating in the flashback and pursuing his younger self through the memory of these historical events represented in the flashback.
The Limey (1999), The film’s Director, Soderbergh is reported to have stated “[w]e created or tried to create, meaning and emotion through repetition and juxtaposition, which again, is something that’s unique to movies. The ability to mould something and then change the meaning or alter the meaning just by reordering and repeating things, that’s unique in film.” (Boucher, 2019). The Flashback, a definition of the flashback by Maureen Turim the film theorist defines flashback as “[t]he flashback is a privileged moment in unfolding that juxtaposes different moments of temporal reference. A juncture is wrought between present and past and two concepts are implied in this juncture: memory and history.” A privileged moment that Turim refers to is where the filmmaker shares with the spectator a revelation and typically important character information in the flashback, as in photography the photograph is a shared experience between the viewer and the photographer, a privileged moment. Turim then goes on to state “Studying the flashback is not only a way of studying the development of filmic form, it is a way of seeing how filmic forms engage concepts and represent ideas. (Turim, 2013: 1-20). While Bordwell, a film theorist defines the flashback simply as “Flashback …”any shot or scene that breaks into present-time action to show us something that happened in the past” (Bordwell, 2009) and then goes on to define the historical use of the flashback “Although the term flashback can be found as early as 1916, for some years it had multiple meanings. Some 1920s writers used it to refer to any interruption of one strand of action by another. At a horse race, after a shot of the horses, the film might “flash back” to the crowd watching. (See “Jargon of the Studio,” New York Times for 21 October 1923, X5.) In this sense, the term took on the same meaning as then-current terms like “cut-back” and “switch-back.” There was also the connotation of speed, as “flash” was commonly used to denote any short shot.” (Bordwell, 2009). To put the use of the flashback into greater historical context, Bordwell states that “Flashbacks are rarer in the classical Hollywood film than we normally think. Throughout the period 1917 – 60, screenwriters’ manuals usually recommended not using them; as one manual put it, ‘Protracted or frequent flashbacks tend to slow the dramatic progression”. (Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson, 2002: 42). 
Flashbacks were used sparingly in classical cinema when compared with its current use in contemporary cinema and the ready acceptance by the spectator and filmmaker of the flashback as a tool in the filmmakers toolkit, as I previously quoted, until the 1960s screenwriters were dissuaded from using flashbacks. Barry Salt, film historian, argues that there are two types of flashback “[t]here are two principal classes of flashbacks: those that show scenes in the past that someone is remembering in their own mind, and those that show past scenes that are being narrated by someone to an audience within the framing scene.”(Salt, 1992: 109) he also states that “[t]he earliest known example of a narrated flashback occurs in the Italian Cines film company’s (Società Italiana Cines) film La fiabe della nonne, made in the middle of 1908”. (Salt, 1992: 109). Later examples of films that use flashbacks date from 1910, states Bordwell, quoting from Turim’s research into flashbacks, Flashbacks in Film: Memory and History (Routledge, 1989). Bordwell goes on to state that Turim’s research indicates that “[f]lashbacks have been a mainstay of filmic storytelling since the 1910s”. (Bordwell, 2009). Early examples of classical Hollywood films utilising flashbacks include; Behind the Door (1919), 
An Old Sweetheart of Mine (1923), His Master’s Voice (1925)’ Silence (1926), Forever After (1926), The Woman on Trial (1927), The Last Command (1928), Last Moment (1928), Mammy (1930), Such is Life (1931), The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931), Two Seconds (1932). While not an exhaustive list the prevalence of the flashbacks in the early films of the 20th century was relatively uncommon, however flashbacks in films become more common from 1930. The use of flashbacks became more widespread and popular as Turim argues “[a]fter cinema makes the flashback a common and distinctive narrative trait, audiences and critics were more likely to recognize flashbacks as crucial elements of narrative structure in other narrative forms. (Turim, 2014: 20). While Bordwell appears to agree and states “that there is a veritable cascade of titles using the flashback in the 1930s, with conventions already widely in circulation”. (Bordwell, 2009). As the use of the flashback gained greater acceptance, the flashbacks become more common and begin to make appearances across all genres in classical Hollywood films, including such iconic films as Casablanca (1942). 
As Bordwell states “[d]uring the 1940s, however, flashback plotting was more than a fashion. Its proliferation in all genres encouraged filmmakers to probe a range of creative possibilities. A flashback, it became evident, could yield a complex experience for the viewer”. (Bordwell, 2017: 72).
John Wick (2014) Flashforward. The opening scene of John Wick crashing his SUV into a loading dock, he’s injured, his hands are bloody, he crawls to the edge of the loading dock and pulls his phone from his jacket pocket and starts to watch a video of his wife on the beach. He appears to be dying, the shot then fade to black, the main title sequence overlays the scene, JOHN WICK with the sound of an alarm clock. The film is now being revealed in flashback.
The flatmates come into the kitchen loaded down with bags full of food which they are excited about as they unpack the bags onto the table. “there’s no toilet roll, did no one order any”? But there is Spam says Spam Guy.
The table is piled high with toilet roll the camera lifts up to reveal David is tied and gagged (with toilet roll). Sophie and Ja sit at the table opposite each other, as Sophie hands a toilet roll to Ja “one for you” and takes one for herself “and one for me”. David makes a growling sound and Ja leans over and stuffs more toilet roll into David’s mouth, “shut up you” says Ja.
Flashback Filming and script decisions.
