10 November 2020. Competition judges often say that a photograph should "tell a story". This has never made much sense to me. A photograph may record an image lasting a thousandth of a second, which would be a brief tale indeed. Any story the judge makes up about it is apt to be his alone. Stories are what we have books for. Or videos.
The "Photo-roman" is half-way between the instant world of a single photo and the full blown story of a movie. When Melanie walked away with the A/V competition last year with her "Unsent letter", the format came as a surprise to pretty well everyone in the club. Here was an actual story, spoken to camera and brought to life with illustrative imagery. Now we know just how much work went into creating the appearance of simplicity.
Video differs from photography because the dimension of time is added. What Melanie and Amanda explained this evening (see the members only page for a link to the recording) was how that added duration both enables and complicates the ability to tell a story through photography. Each image must contribute and must relate correctly to every other image. Editing is crucial and apt to take far longer than shooting. There must be a plan. There must be a point. There should be a twist or a reveal. There should be... it turns out there should be a great number of things , each requiring a lot of attention and thought. I begin to see why the credits at the end of movies are so long.
Like the aerial photos we saw two weeks ago, this was a perspective shift- a peek through a window into a very different way of seeing things. I said that after Amanda's comments about "Jaws", I will look at movies differently. I find myself wondering how she looks at them! Is it still possible to sit back and enjoy the plot, once you have learned to deconstruct the mechanics of movie making?
An interesting evening. Will we see some three-reelers in this year's A/V comp?