Abstract Representation

You may have noticed I have mention abstract representation a few times through my blog, and could be wondering what I’m meaning. Well, as you may know social realist film concentrate on keeping the diegesis as close to the real world as possible, however these films are often noted for their artistic nature, but how can this be if they are supposed to represent real life?

This is done through many things including the music, camera work, lighting and editing, but also abstract representation can be used as a sidetrack from the storyline to produce great cinematography.  For example there is a scene in Billy Elliot where Billy’s brother is forcing him to dance on the table and he doesn’t want to. This is then cut to a scene of Billy in his yard being frustrated. He then locks himself in the toilet followed by kicking the door open and breaking out. There is no direct link from this scene to the rest of the storyline but it is suggested that this is ‘Billy’s struggle’ and he is breaking out from the norm to peruse if passion. Therefore this scene to used to convey the character’s feeling at that moment in time through actions.

As our film has much to do about the feelings and actions of the main character we would like to portray some sort of emotion through images in our film, much like films as Submarine. These scenes often make the audience think a lot more about the characters and narrative than just expressing their meanings as they are. So what better place to put this than in our trailer, hopefully this scene will provoke the thoughts of our audience enticing them to come and watch our film.

Examples of Symbolism we could use in our film:

Bubble - Charater feeling traped.

Sun Rise - Start to a new begining.

Sun Set - End of an old chapter.

Running Tap - Character's emotions pouring out.

Physically Being Alone - Feeling lonely, feeling emotionly alone, having to deal with self inflicted issuses by themselves.