From: Jaeowens-AT-aol.com
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 18:25:10 EDT
Subject: Re: RE: Film trends in the 90s


I would hesitate to call a $6 million dollar shot a charm, but...

Douglas stated that:

>Of course the term hyper could be considered accurate if one takes the
stance that >such imagery creates a spatio-optical experience that in the
"real" world would >fall bellow our threshold of perception. These images
give us a kind of hyper
>vision that allows us to see bullets moving as if this was part of our
>"norman" perception.

I have to wonder at this point how large a role viewer reception would play
in such a distinction.  In other words, "hyper-realism," as it has been
defined elsewhere, seems to imply precisely what it was defined as
initially...an acute attention to detail.  The Balazs quote ("The fact that
[the Rotterdam] bridge can be seen in a multiplicity of ways renders it, as
it were, unreal.  It does not appear to us as the creation of engineers
aiming at a determinate end, but like a curious series of optical effects=85")
calls to mind the poem about the six blind men trying to describe an
elephant.  Each and every image (or object) for that matter consists of a
series of frequently disparate and individual perceptions, synthesized in the
mind and allowed ot become a cohesive whole.  These details, however, are
never outside of our possible perception, but rather an addendum to our
existing mode.  This is "hyper-realism": the extreme-close-up that pulls back
to reveal the completed object, the singular drop of rain as it "falls from
leaf to leaf."  They are details that escape our fairly superficial attention
to the world around us...not details that we are incapable of grasping.

The "flow-mo" or bullet time (as the filmmakers have called it) seems to me
to be something different, an alternate perception rather than a missed one,
a way of seeing that is only possible through the artificial eye of the
camera.  It is not real, nor can it ever be, for we are not capable of
perceiving it directly.  The movie itself makes that very point in singling
out Neo as being "different" (or "The One") from the others.  When finally he
sees the world as code, it is not the world which has changed, but rather his
perception.

I think "hyper-realism" would allude to something the viewer could therefore
assimilate, something that "falls below" without actually completely leaving
our "normal" perception.  Even in the course of watching the bullet time, we
do not experience it as "normal," nor will we.

Somewhere along the way there I fear I began to babble, so I will leave you
with the following:

"Dozens of people spontaneously combust every year...it's just not widely
reported."
--from This is Spinal Tap

Ed


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