Cinema as a Door

I found todays topic really interesting, this idea of the cinema screen being a hole into which we can see things that sometimes only our imaginations can dream up. I could go into a lot of detail about title sequences of films, and content of films, but im not going to. In this post I want to focus on this fundamental concept of the screen being a door, and how it has evolved.
The term 'screen' can have many different meanings. one of these meanings is to hide or even protect something or someone. On the other side of the scale, a screen could also refer to making something visible to us. From the start we have this division, separating two sides of the 'screen'. On one side, we have our world, the world we live our everyday lives in, go to work, come home and so forth. On the other side of this division we have the world of the film, which could be anything, a surreal sci-fi world, or even just a world similar to ours. this division allows us to 'enter' this other world. This adds to the idea that the screen is a 'semi-permeable membrane' it allows the spectators to

"plunge into the film, to temporarily dissolve part of his/her bodily boundaries and give up his/her individual subject status, in favour of a communal experience and a self-alienating objectification; and, pointing inward, identification means the spectator can absorb the film, make it his or her own,"

(Elsaesser, T. (2010). Cinema as Door. In: Film Theory. New York: Routledge. p37.)

This idea about making the film your own is actually starting to become a reality. A new German horror film called 'Last Call' is pushing a new 'interactivity' gimmick that will have one member of the audience receive a phone call from an onscreen character during the film. When purchasing your ticket you provide your mobile number which is then input into software which, at some point during the film, will randomly pick a number and call it. Upon answering you will hear the onscreen character requesting help, and depending on what you say, the outcome of the movie can be very different each time.









Obviously this concept has some major flaws, such as what if the audience member thats called hangs up, or doesn't say certain things, resulting in the film not being able to progress. But the fact that this is becoming a reality just opens that metaphorical door a bit further.


The next thing i want to discuss is the rise in 3D technology and how its opening that door even further, allowing the audience to completely lose themselves in the film. When stereoscopic technology (red/blue glasses) came around, it was brilliant, although quite gimmicky, it was often used on footage of things like bugs and i vaguely remember as a kid when a Doctor Who episode used it too. But nowadays with the whole 'Real 3D' its added a whole new essence to watching films, its a lot easier to get sucked in to a film, not just because things fly at you, but the fact that it adds so much depth to the movie. Last night i saw the new Resident Evil: Aferlife, and the opening sequence of the film was astounding. it featured a busy Tokyo crossing, while it was pouring down with rain. There were people rushing about in there everyday lives, but one japanese woman was stood perfectly still. The camera, which was focused on her shoes, slowly panned up her body as the actors names were appearing on screen. The rain from the scene appeared to be everywhere in front of you, and around you. And even managed to get on your glasses, to which the natural response would be to attempt to wipe your glasses clean. I know I said I wouldn't be talking about title sequences in great detail but I seemed to have gotten sucked into this writing for a while now, thanks to the parergon. To end this post i shall leave you with a quote:

"when we look at a painting we take the frame to be part of the wall, yet when we

look at the wall the frame is taken to be part of the painting: '. . . the parergonal

frame stands out against two grounds, but with respect to each of these two

grounds, it merges into the other' (Derrida, 1987, p. 61)"

(Marriner, R. (2002). Derrida and the Parergon. In: Smith, P. and Wilde, C. A Companion to Art Theory. Cornwall: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.. p351.)