Class 3: Styles and cut-up
22 April 2024
Introduction
This week’s class looks at copying and switching between styles/genres, and the idea of creating work via ‘cut-up’ methods.
Schedule
10.30 - 12.45
Review and peer feedback of current work
13.50 - 17.10
Exercises
Exercises
Genres and tropes
Make a list of genres you would see in TV and film.
Students’ lists included:
- Documentary
- Docu-fiction
- Mockumentary
- Biopic
- Horror
- Slasher
- Psychological horror
- Cult movie
- Sci-fi
- Hard sci-fi
- Kitchen sink sci-fi
- Thriller
- Animated
- Computer animation
- Disney
- Anime
- Spy
- Comedy
- Romantic comedy
- Slapstick
- TV shows
- News bulletin
- Anchor
- Segment
- Magazine show
- Cooking show
- Debate show
- Gardening show
- News bulletin
…and more
(3 mins)
We then discussed tropes from these genres - what distinguishes a romcom from a slapstick film? Which elements of one genre can be taken into another? Which films successfully merge or play with genre?
Mundane story, retold
Students took 3 minutes to write a dialogue from a recent mundane interaction they had with someone else. Examples included a conversation in the lift, the start of a phone call with a parent, and bumping into a colleague in the corridor seconds before class.
We then discussed Raynond Quineau’s Exercises in Style. Students rewrote their dialogue in several styles using this genre generator:
Your film genre is...
this
Me vs the Spar
We briefly discussed the following podcast episode by the brilliant Ross Sutherland, which takes a story about his life, and re-tells it in seven different ways:
Link to Imaginary Advice #47: Me Versus the Spar
Film editing
Finally, we used the following instructions to cut two films found in the Prelinger Archives to the pace of a famous scene from a film. The instructions to do this are here.
Supplementary materials
In class, we discussed:
- The films Tetsuo the Iron Man, Dogville, Climax
- The film essay series Every Frame a Painting - great for film-making inspiration
- The Editing Podcast - great for film editing inspiration
- Daniels’ presentation at SXSW: Why We Tell the Stories We Tell - a masterclass in defining purpose in creative work, recommended for all students
If you liked these exercises, consider listening to weeks 5-8 of the course podcast. There are a few supplementary exercises you might enjoy!