Narrative inspiration: Slacker
While most films and other media follow one person as the protagonist, or follow a group of connected people, this does not feel like a universal enough way of telling this story. As such, I have been looking at other narrative modes and found that the way Richard Linklater's Slacker (1991) constructs its narrative might fit well with my theme of universality.
In Slacker the camera follows people around the city of Austin, Texas. While some of the stories and conversations we hear are strange and unusual, most characters within the film are just going about their everyday life. We hop from one character to another when people cross each others paths, even if it is just passing each other by on the sidewalk. The skipping between characters is always done smoothly wiht the camera simply redirecting to the new character, instead of continuing to follow the older one. While there are many changes of shot and cuts to shift our views of the characters, this transition remains.
The movie itself is made to give us a snapshot of what life was like at the time in a particular city, and concentrates mostly on college aged characters. However, as I am creating my narrative in a similar fashion, I am looking at using this narrative structure to create a universal narrative, as opposed to a super localized one as it is in Slacker.
The biggest difference I want to add to this narrative is that I would like my film to be a continuous shot, this shifting and following one character to another without ever cutting. This however, means an excessive amount of planning and preparation. Thus I will be looking at other ways of telling this story as well, considering different ways to shift characters or to create long lasting shots.
In Slacker the camera follows people around the city of Austin, Texas. While some of the stories and conversations we hear are strange and unusual, most characters within the film are just going about their everyday life. We hop from one character to another when people cross each others paths, even if it is just passing each other by on the sidewalk. The skipping between characters is always done smoothly wiht the camera simply redirecting to the new character, instead of continuing to follow the older one. While there are many changes of shot and cuts to shift our views of the characters, this transition remains.
The movie itself is made to give us a snapshot of what life was like at the time in a particular city, and concentrates mostly on college aged characters. However, as I am creating my narrative in a similar fashion, I am looking at using this narrative structure to create a universal narrative, as opposed to a super localized one as it is in Slacker.
The biggest difference I want to add to this narrative is that I would like my film to be a continuous shot, this shifting and following one character to another without ever cutting. This however, means an excessive amount of planning and preparation. Thus I will be looking at other ways of telling this story as well, considering different ways to shift characters or to create long lasting shots.
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