Starting out

The first lecture highlighted the importance of being specific when talking about the editing of film. To articulate your points on a film or analyse it properly you must be able to have the right language and or terms with regard to editing and to be specific when discussing them. In the book ‘A Short Guide To Writing About Film’, Timothy J. Corrigan describes editing as “the linking of two different pieces of film” and that “the break between… two images is a cut”.

Is the editing fast or slow? An average take is between 3 and 5 seconds, be specific in the speed. How long is each cut? How many cuts are used in one sequence. You should practice counting cuts within a sequence to give yourself a good base for estimating further down the line.

What types of cuts are used? There are many different types of cut and most are used conventionally to represent certain things like the passing of time or change in location. Is it a straight cut? – literally one frame placed after the other. Is it a fade in/out? – where the two frames blend into one another which is also a kind of dissolve. Cuts can be used to show a movement in space and time and often the conventions surrounding each cut can be reinvented to create certain feels. For example in John Ford’s ‘The Searchers’ (1956) we have a series of dissolves (conventionally used to show a change of scene) that last over 30 seconds creating an overlap/montage of images depicting John Wayne riding through different scenery as the seasons seem to change. this sequence shows us a long passing of time.

It is also important to consider the audio and how the cut of a visual very rarely means the audio is cut at the same time in the same way. More often than not we hear the sound of a visual before we see the visual. Audio plays a big part in films and so should be considered as importantly as the visual cut.

We were shown three sequences, Man Ray’s ‘Emak-Bakia’ (1926), Matthias Müller’s ‘Home Stories’ (1990) and Ang Lee’s ‘Hulk’ (2003). All had very different styles of editing and the point was to try and articulate what we saw with regard to how the sequences were edited. The problem we found when relaying our discussions )which we did in smaller groups) to the class as a whole, was that when trying to describe a film we lean towards the theme and move away form the specific editing tools and processes. The Hollywood film is meant to do this. The first films used certain cuts that became convention. (An early experiment in editing involved a long shot of a man siting on the opposite side of a room on a chair looking at his hand. The camera in this case becomes us and us the camera, we are viewing this scene as if we were the camera. What happened next was a straight cut to a close up of the mans hand. All of a sudden we are the man looking down at his hand, people had great trouble getting used to this kind of editing because it was so different to reality. The cut threw us through time and space and body.) So these conventions became the norm we have today and cinema began to try and adopt a invisible style of editing where the audience is unaware of the cuts and the film flows in a way that lets the audience focus on the story. Of course, like any other media, people began questioning the done thing and trying new ways of attacking or engaging the senses. All of sudden cuts are meant to be notable seen and to create a specific felling as a result.

We also watched an example of a film that had an absence of cuts, Claude Lelouche’s ‘Renevous’ (1976) a continuous shot from a camera attached to the front of a sports car racing through the streets of Paris. What does this lack of cuts do/mean when we think about editing and its effects? I have enbeded the clips below.

I could not find the specific clip from ‘Hulk’ but for those that have seen the film it is an early scene where an experiment is being done on a toad. The editing is reminiscent of comic books as frames are split and composite together breaking the ‘frames’ in different ways. (Part of the conclusion to the whole lecture is that are analytical skills within editing will improve so please forgive this brief description of the hulk sequence.)

 

 

Hello Sun

Well it seems my expectations of the Swedish winter have not been reached, not so far anyway. The past two years have seen temperatures of -25 here in Karlstad and for a town situated by a huge lake an epic amount of snow. This year however, decided to be a bit warmer. There has been a severe lack of snow and low temperatures and I have had to venture further north to get my cold fix. One of the things I was most looking forward to in Sweden was an extreme winter. Not just so I could regress and play in the snow but also for the experience of a proper winter. It turned out that this winter Karlstad recorded it’s highest temperature for December at a reasonable +11 degrees. I’m hoping my occasional verbal disappointment with the weather will tempt fate and send the wrath of whichever nordic God handles it upon me.

One of the things I was told about was the lack of sunlight in the winter months and how it affects the locals. I was ready for this long, hard, cold period where the people basically hibernated and I would crave the warmth of the sun. I heard somewhere it could get as bad as only 3 hours of sunlight per day. Now it seems like a lot of talk, unless like the temperature this year has been an anomaly. At the back end of January the hours have already started creeping back and it is getting lighter and lighter with each passing day. The worst it got was that by 3pm it would be dark but it didn’t seem to last long nor had a psychological effect on myself or anyone I knew. Definitely not the winter I had imagined.

My travels north were adventurous enough to give me my fix however and up in Abisko we only had a few hours of daylight for the four days we were there. There was also a lot of snow and the chance to go dog sledging.

Theory Assignment – Q2

A comparative analysis between ‘Ser Mot’ (2011) and Norman McLaren’s ‘Begone Dull Care’ (1949)

‘Ser Mot’ is a three minute long stop motion animation produced with stills cameras, tripods and a lot of patience. The visuals in the film, enhanced by experimental music and sounds, deal with the growth of nature. You see plants and other organic forms seemingly grow. The production of course was the opposite in that the plants were chopped millimeter-by-millimeter and photographed repetitively and reversed in the final post-production to give the illusion of growth. ‘Begone Dull Care’ is a eight minute long animation paired with music by the ‘Oscar Peterson Trio’ in which simple forms and vibrant colours dance and move to the tune of the music. The animation was made by drawing directly onto 35mm film. Colour is added later through various dupe prints assembled in parallel.

Both movies, as with most animations, had a very large production time – drawing out each frame individually requires this as does making a stop motion where one image is one frame. Differences in the process however can be seen in the structure and editing of the films. McLaren’s film had a very linear process in that he started drawing at the start of a reel and went through to the end. A regular occurrence in the production of animation is the use of key frames whereas McLaren’s “natural sequence” of production “seldom happens in film making” but, as he describes, this natural linear way of working “had a direct bearing on both the detailed and total continuity.” Similarly in ‘Ser Mot’ no key frames could be used to aid production as a ‘scene’ had to be shot from beginning to end because each was a one time deal due to the nature of the work. They differ in linearity, even though both follow this ‘start to finish’ mode, in a few various ways. Firstly the nature of producing ‘Ser Mot’ meant that the captured frames were reversed to create the effect of growth – this turns upside down the nature of start to finish. Secondly, the ‘footage’ collected for ‘Ser Mot’ was not done in a natural sequence and as each ‘scene’ was a stand alone they could be edited (post-production) in any manner or order. It is true that in production each scene had a beginning and end but there was the ability afterwards to chop up, make cuts to different angles or shots, breaking down the linear production nature. With ‘Begone’ the music was driving the narrative and so the frames had to stay in order to keep in time with the music.

A similarity between the films is the freedom that the filmmaker(s) had, in a more spontaneous creative way, because the films were made in real time. Without the aid of scripts or storyboards the maker was able to change decisions or make new ones as he went along.  This is not to say that no pre-production occurred, as a lot of work went into the mapping of music for ‘Begone’ and with ‘Ser Mot’ there was pre-planning of how to attain the best effect and a scouting of locations before production. Both, however, were able to act on the fly during actual production and had no pre determined specifics when dealing with composition. With ‘Ser Mot’ and ‘Begone’ the composition of the  ‘shots’ was an intuitive changing thing, even if a pre planned thought existed it could change dynamically. At one minute forty into ‘Ser Mot’ the is a scene where a small plant grows out and up from the bottom of the frame, the sky is visible and the background is framed by trees, the whole scene looks monotone. Towards the end colourful leaves appear on the plant adding a contrast to the monotone of before. This particular ‘shot’ was stumbled upon randomly and the composition set up on the fly.

Each of the films relies heavily upon music but in extremely different ways. ‘Begone’ is the music, it is driven by it and the visuals were tailored for it and born from it. Although highly important in ‘Ser Mot’ the music had no bearing on the actual production but instead was added later to enhance the film. Around two and a half minutes in to ‘Begone’ we see a yellow background with a blue strip filling the left side of the frame (about one third of the frame) and two potato like objects which start top left stationary but expanding slightly with four beats of the piano and then sliding down to the bottom right of the frame, in time with the piano as the notes slide from high to low, and afterwards repeating the four beats as previously heard. At around twenty seconds into ‘Ser Mot’ you see the branches of a bush come into focus and red and black large berries appearing in pops along the branches whilst over the music you can hear a rustling popping sound which was recorded and placed in that particular scene for effect. So you can see from the examples that one film is driven by the music/sound and the other uses it as a tool.

A huge difference in the films was the techniques used to create them. On one hand with ‘Ser Mot’ you have camera equipment, tripods and real things to be photographed again and again, not to mention computers and editing software to put the images together post-production. In comparison you have the more analog technique used in ‘Begone’ where a real piece of film was drawn upon by hand frame by frame with ink and a pen. The images in ‘Begone’ are man made, not taken from real life, and as a result quite inviting and mesmerizing. It is always intriguing to see the inanimate made animate even with simple lines and shapes. The interesting thing about ‘Ser Mot’ is that the images are made from real life but placed into the realm of the unreal in that they show something, or propose to show something, which we do not usually see. We cannot say that we regularly see change occurring in fact it is very rare. When we see footage of something in super slow motion or a time lapse of a flower blooming we are instantly intrigued because these are things we do not see every day.

A massive help to McLaren’s piece was the ability to correct mistakes by wiping clean the film – “one swipe of the damp cloth affected all the traditional processes from script through to negative cutting”. With ‘Ser Mot’ this was not possible, if a mistake was made like too big a cut of a plant then the shot was abandoned or would have to be re worked post-production. Often at times people were caught in one or two of the photographs, which could be amended by cutting out said photographs, as long as the effect was not too jumpy or unrealistic. McLaren says that “with hand drawn technique, one slows down, to observable speed, the world of frantic mobility” as with ‘Ser Mot’ the desired effect was to slow down but actually the post-production was about speeding up the process we had gone through. “When beginners draw footage by hand and the result is projected at normal speed, the image-flow is so fast that it gives the impression of looking at thought, if thought were visible” – we also had a problem in that when first playing back the images the sequences went very quickly at 15 fps and so we ended up slowing most down by fifty percent. This is something we were able to do as a fix whereas McLaren would have had to plan this from the beginning. That, however, was part of his pre-production set up with the music – “Measurements are put against the notes on a dope sheet, which is usually a simplified musical score, and, by subtraction, the length of each note in terms of frames is written in.”

+ Quotations taken from dossier on Norman McLaren from the reading list

Theory Assignment – Q1

 Summary of the texts.

The Cinema of Attractions – Sean Cubitt

Cubitt in his review essay ‘The Cinema of Attractions’ uses a wide range of theorists within the field of cinema to discuss distinctions between narrative film and the earlier film characterised by “their interest in spectacle and astonishment” (pg 276), the idea of ‘attraction’. He talks about not having cinema continuing just as a story-telling medium but to have it “astonish, surprise and amaze its audiences with actions, gestures, movements and effects” (pg 276). With this, story telling becomes optional rather than a necessary part of film and the ‘cinema of attractions’ theory is showing possibilities for the development of contemporary animation. He goes on to describe stop-motion films as fascinating in this respect as they give “inanimate objects… the gift of moving themselves” (pg 277), and these objects do not need to rely on a story to be engaging. Shock, however, is not the only non-narrative resource to come from early cinema as Cubitt describes with the help of Diderot – “viewers are invited… to wander into the scene portrayed, and to lose themselves in it and in reverie” (pg 278).

Cubitt continues this thought with examples including Zhang Yimou’s Ying Xiong (Hero) (2002) in which slow motion is used during fight sequences offering a contemplative, visually beautiful, deeper look at the world. Moving on to 3D animation he discusses the need for technological advancement and whether there is need for the fur on an animated mammoth to be so perfect because of our desire to excel. Moving to the opposite side he talks about the YouTube culture and how success is not necessarily dependent upon image quality.

Concrete Animation – George Griffin

Griffin describes the importance of the process of animation, born from his desire to put on a show, to control his audience (he describes frustration as people would spend too long looking at one of his drawings and miss another entirely), and conjugates his ideas into ‘Concrete Animation’ – “It suggests the tactile, the tangible, the real, the stuff which is often forgotten in the river of illusion. Just as concrete, used in building construction, is formed by the coalescence of discrete particles into a solid mass, so too is animation more than the sum of its parts, be they frames on a strip of film, pages in a book, or a sequence of objects” (pg 261). He believes something has been lost with the technological advancement of animation and looks to understand the attraction of “real stuff.” – “Concrete animation is experiential and pervasive; it may take many forms and exist in a wide range of sites” (pg 262).

Griffin goes on to describe some of his work, which uses physical objects that remain as evidence afterwards. ‘Block Print’, allowed a city block to be bound into a “round book” giving it an endless cycle and ‘Step Print’, as an installation, allowed viewers to interact and discover the piece rather than just watch it. He describes the process of his work and that the outcome should also be a description of the process. Another thing Griffin talks about is no matter how amazed we are at developments in CGI we still stand mesmerized by “whirling objects in real space” (pg 269). Using the example of Barsamian’s and his own work he describes the importance of sculptures as animations and flipbooks as sculptures. Hw gives credit to Breer, commenting that his “penchant for randomness, particularly in his insouciant shuffling of sequence cards and stuttering mutoscopes of differing shaped pages, has helped a generation of animators to free themselves from the obligations of methodically smooth motion” (pg 272).

Invisible Culture – Nicolas Dulac and André Gaudreault

Like Cubitt, Dulac and Gaudreault focus on the idea of attraction or ‘cinematographie-attraction’ as they put it – “Full of interruptions and sudden starts, this experience was a chain of shocks, a series of thresholds”. They start by looking at early animation techniques and why they held attraction. The phenakisticope for example took away any sense of beginning and end. The images mounted on a circle meant that linearity gave way to attraction. The zoetrope on the other hand with its longitudinal nature gave more of a linear feel – “the zoetrope infused them with a hint of self-realisation” – but in the end could not offer more than to “start up again attractionally”.

Their discussion is based around the technological advancement of techniques and the birth of narrative within the animation world coming around with Reynaud’s machines – “The narrativity… was possible because Reynaud was able to give his series of images the development required for any narrative to occur.” With the developments made with pictures using first the kinetoscope and then the Lumiere’s cinematograph, which originally kept in the realm of attraction eventually moving into more detailed narratives. The main focus of the article is in the differing thresholds with regard to attraction animation and narrative. The first animations lacking the basic thresholds of start and end were defined with different thresholds as they developed not just in a linear sense but by framing also. Of course with the advent of celluloid, of shots and of editing thresholds and narration grew a great deal. Even so, with the new technologies we have in the internet using flash and quick time we saw new technologies repeating a similar timeline in the creation first of short animated (digitally) loops and moving on to short and feature length films made with computers.

The Sharpest Point

The book, edited by Chris Gehman and Steve Reinke is a collection of essays from a wide range of practitioners within the scope of animation (including some who would not consider themselves primarily as animators) to look at it in different ways and to ask and answer surrounding questions. Not all the essays talk about animation directly but as Gehman and Reinke put it, “all relate to question’s about animation’s position in contemporary theory, criticism, and industrial and artistic practice” (pg 7). The essay’s range from looking at the role of animation within special effects and 3d modeling to Zoe Beloff discussing her desire to ‘open up’ the moving image using new technologies. As well as philosophically toned writings, we also get insights into different practitioners including Daniel Barrow’s ‘Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry’, which reads like a diary entry with no explanation, adding a strange diversity to the collection of essays. Also included are examples of works whether to make a point about the psychological effect of ‘not seeing’ as Reinke describes in the first essay using the death of Bambi’s mother as an example of how not showing something can be stronger than showing it, or to describe different computer generated, code-based works like ‘Long Division’ (2005). Another ‘chapter’ is nothing more than the script of Jude Norris’ ‘Red Buffalo Skydive’ (2001) a juxtaposed installation/animation where you see a loop of a buffalo running and listen to a man and a woman (Norris herself) regaling an account of an encounter with a paraplegic skydiver. The book is an interesting mismatch of philosophical thoughts, contemporary ideas and descriptive informative writings on styles and devices of animation.

In the opening essay, ‘Stray Notes on Animation’, Steve Reinke delves interestingly as mentioned previously into the psychological effects of death within animation and film. He uses two examples that although deal with the same thing use different visual applications which offer differing results. The first is Jean Renoir’s live action feature ‘The Rules of the Game’ (1939) and particularly a scene in which a rabbit hit by a bullet, falls, twitches and lies dead. He compares this ‘in your face death’ with the more subtle technique of Walt Disney, in particular ‘Bambi’ (1942). Both films deal with death but unlike ‘Rules of the Game’ it is only visual seen once in ‘Bambi’, when the nervous pheasant flies into the air and is shot down, at a distant from us, and falls to the ground. The most traumatic death in the film is arguably the that of Bambi’s mother, a strange effect as nothing is seen, no narrator confirms what has happened, we just hear the gunshot and see the startled face of the young deer as he fears what has happened. Why is it much more powerful to keep the actual killing hidden from the viewer, does the absence make us want to believe it did not happen and make the trauma worse?

Like many I remember the scene from ‘Bambi’ vividly, but another animated film stuck with me more and that was Martin Rosen’s production of ‘Watership Down’ (1978), a novel written by Richard Adams. Like Bambi it involves talking animals and follows a group of rabbits as they try to find a new home to escape an impending danger. Death is a major theme throughout the animation and even a grim reaper like character called the ‘black rabbit’ features numerous times, to take the dead. Within the hour and a half you see rabbits fighting each other, caught by snares, killed by dogs, run over by trains, and eventually at the end an old rabbit just lying down and dying form old age. What is interesting is when I recently watched the film again it wasn’t the blood or the ravaging dog tearing holes in the rabbits, not even the flat hedgehog on the road that I remembered but the one rabbit that is taken away by a hawk at 21:00 minutes into the film. The rabbit in question runs out of the cover of some crops to eat a weed, we see a shadow pass over then a squeal and the close up of talons before returning to where the rabbit used to be where now is just a bit of fur. Strange that this had more effect on me as a child than some of the more graphic scenes in the film (which is still talked about amongst friends as a nightmare inducer), and growing up in the countryside I am certain I saw my fair share of road kill and dead animals, yet what stuck with me was what I did not see. Reinke describes it so with regard to the two films he talked about – “The off-screen deaths of cartoon characters can pack an incredible wallop as they raise the spectre of symbolic (and actual) maternal death, while the on-screen death of an actual rabbit is likely to cause a much slighter psychic disturbance, even as it directly raises a complex of moral issues” (pg 17).

Assignment 2

A comparative analysis between ‘Darwin’s Nightmare’ (Sauper, 2004) and ‘Värmland Stories’ (Collaborative, 2011).

To introduce ‘Värmland Stories’ it is a good idea to first talk about (and compare with Darwin’s Nightmare) a short film I made over the duration of the course. The film entitled ‘Turning Points’ was a one-minute documentary about a Swedish Girl who rode BMX. Although ‘Turning Points’ is only one minute long and ‘Darwin’s Nightmare’ runs for one hundred and seven, similarities can be found between the two seemingly different films.

Both films use the personal lives of people to deliver a story, with ‘Darwin’s Nightmare’ numerous people are interviewed and their stories are told to get a wide view of the effect of one particular problem (the introduction of Nile Perch to Lake Victoria). ‘Turning Points’, however, only focuses on one specific person and the point of the film is not to highlight a major economic problem but just to tell a small part of a seemingly normal persons story. Although the aims and ends of the two films seem different both use similar devices or techniques to get there. Interviews are integral to both films. For the first forty seconds of ‘Turning Points’ we have a continuous interview shot of ‘Emmy’ the character, talking about a situation involving her brother. It is a head and shoulder shot of ‘Emmy’ sitting on a couch in a dimly lit room, she takes up a third of the frame positioned slightly right of the centre, and there is the bottom of a painting visible by the left of her head. She talks about her mother, revealing subtlety some feelings about her – “and she’s just always right” – the point is not about her mother but about finding out that her brother had been injured. The fact that she is hugging a red pillow in this shot also shows vulnerability, possibly due to the nature of the talk or her nervousness in front of the camera. The fact that the pillow is in shot seems to suggest that we are looking at ‘Emmy’ in her own environment which is also true of the interviews conducted in ‘Darwin’s Nightmare – twelve minutes in we have a scene in which Sauper is filming ‘Dimond’ who owns a fish filleting factory, the interview is conducted in his office.  Another similarity between these two specific scenes is that you hear the filmmaker from behind the camera in both cases. This seems to add a personal feel to each movie, showing that each filmmaker has an interest in what they are doing. At thirteen minutes into ‘Darwin’s Nightmare’ just after we have a black screen with text telling us of the Nile Perch ‘experiment’ it cuts back to Dimond saying how the Nile Perch have helped and from behind the camera Sauper speaks. At nineteen seconds into ‘Turning Points’ when Emmy says that her mother has never said sorry about anything we here the filmmaker from behind the camera as he adjusts the height of the shot.

In the second part of ‘Turning Points’ we move away from the interview shot to a section of cuts of the character riding BMX in a skate park. The multiple shots of jumps and falls into a foam pit seem to show a need in the character for a cushioned environment even though she talks about how she needs a sport where she “only has herself to blame”. This revealing conversation is a part of the interviews conducted in ‘Darwin’s Nightmare’ as is the shots where the interview continues over the top of footage of the characters doing their jobs or on the streets. At minute twenty-seven of ‘Darwin’s Nightmare’ we meet a character called ‘Jonathan’ who is the only painter in town. He describes his paintings and how he used to sleep on the streets as we see shots of kids on the streets. This acts as a visual confirmation of what Jonathan is saying, whereas in ‘Turning Points’ it is used as a contradiction to highlight insecurities.

‘Turning Points’ was one of a number of short documentaries that were edited together into a longer film called ‘Värmland Stories’. The similarities between this bigger project and ‘Darwin’s Nightmare’ are much more observable than with ‘Turning Points’ on its own. For a start both ‘Värmland Stories’ and ‘Darwin’s Nightmare’ seem to have the same structure. ‘Värmland Stories’ is made up of twenty plus short documentaries placed together to form a wide look at one place. Not all the documentaries have direct links to each other but all offer a bigger insight into Värmland as a place and what it is to make documentaries. Similarly ‘Darwin’s Nightmare’ is a collection of stories from people and places surrounding Lake Victoria giving us an better view at the effect the Nile Perch has had on many different communities and people, as well as asking questions about the illegal arms trade and the connection this has to the fish.

Throughout the two films there are changes in stories and both use two different tools to make the distinction between ‘chapters’. Although these ‘chapters’ are different to one another every part of each film flows as one story. In ‘Darwin’s Nightmare’, Sauper used black screens with text often to introduce the characters we were watching but also to set a mood or give information about what we will be watching next. A few examples are at forty minutes in, “Two million white people eat Victoria fish every day”, sixty-three minutes in, “A few million Africans eat… what the big planes would not carry”, and at ninety minutes in when talking about the Congo, Angola etc, “…the bloodiest conflicts in history since WWII”. All of these screens are used to augment what is being seen on screen or what is about to be seen. In ‘Värmland Stories’ a very different approach is used. Instead of having screens with information, throughout the film were hear a narrator who is never seen. The quality of the sound mixed with the fact that when we hear the voice we are often watching footage from a moving vehicle be it a plane, bus or view from a car window. The voice, much like the text in ‘Darwin’s Nightmare’ is a reoccurring theme throughout the film and acts to break up and inform the audience of specific traits the documentary films and filmmakers have. A few examples are at three minutes and twenty seconds, “…one of these principles is curiosity…”, at eighteen minutes, “…turning the unfamiliar into the familiar…” and just before the thirty minute mark, “…not that concerned with technical perfection…”.

The films start and end in a very similar way. With ‘Värmland Stories’ we hear the buzz of a plane as a shot looking out the window of a plane fades onto screen. The wing is seen extending into a dusk sky as it slowly turns into night all the while the flashing light on the end of the wing lights up the screen in controlled beats. Around twenty seconds into this sequence a melancholic tune is heard played by a guitar, which takes us through the credits and the title and into the first short documentary. With ‘Darwin’s Nightmare’ the credits come in first, red and white on a black screen and then a sad tune played by a string instrument partnered with the noise from an air traffic control office. As a shot of the sea comes on screen we see the shadow of a plane and singing joins in with the strings as the shot pans up until the shadow moves out of frame and the plane casting it moves in. The shot is taken from another plane, we then cut to a shot taken from underneath a plane, looking down onto the passing landscape where the huge shadow of the plane sweeps over the ground like the grim reaper. The plane is low in the sky as if coming in to land and so in both films we start with the feeling of arriving by plane with a musical accompaniment. The shadows of the planes in ‘Darwin’s Nightmare’ also mirror the end of ‘Värmland Stories’. At minute forty-seven from a black screen we hear – like at the beginning of the documentary – the buzz of plane engines. After a few seconds the image appears taking up the left hand side of the screen and leaving the right side black. We see the shadow of the wing as the plane moves down the runway before the narration kicks in and the plane starts climbing, leaving the ground behind. As it pulls up the full shadow of the plane comes into view along with the landscape spreading to the horizon, which is when the title appears on the right of the screen before all goes black. In the same way we have a plane taking off at the end of ‘Darwin’s Nightmare’. Instead of being shot from within the plane it is tracked down the runway from atop a hill a few kilometers away from the plane. There is a woman watching and smiling as the plane takes off, looking from the plane to the camera. The camera pans, following the plane down the runway and then stops letting the plane take off and exit the frame. Both films start and end with this device of arriving and although use the departure of a plane as an end sequence they have different feels. Because in ‘Värmland Stories’ the shot is from within the plane we are leaving with it and so an end is more definitive but with ‘Darwin’s Nightmare’ we watch the plane leave from a distance leaving us behind with the sense that the story we just travelled through is not yet over.

 

 

 

Reinvention of Photography

I find myself in an odd mood today. I have been looking through the work of some of my fellow students back in Coventry and suddenly had a feeling of guilt. The guilt stems from my lack of progress with a professional attitude and or presence with regard to my photographic practise. To name a couple, my friend and 3rd year undergrad Dorrell Merritt who recently was published in ‘Dazed and Confused’ magazine (visit his website here.) and a first year Alex Mason who has been increasing his professional portfolio with musicians like Ben Howard and Kasabian. I know Dorrell works very hard and has done for the two years I spent with him at university, and I’m sure Alex has the same drive in the pursuit of his professional career as a photographer.

The question I find myself asking today is, ‘when did my drive leave?’ I love photography and from the start I was proactive in making contacts initially around the university and then further afield, partly for work, partly to spread my name around, and it worked. I secured numerous jobs in and out of the university through word of mouth. Recently though my aspirations have dwindled somewhat with regard to my photographic career. I was always interested in travel, seeing new cultures and places is how I envision the next years of my life, and the plan was to incorporate photography into this as a ticket or money maker. I don’t know what has happened over the past few months but I just don’t see myself in that way. Photography is something that I will always have and will always do, but, for the present time anyway, not necessarily a career choice.

Maybe it’s the fear of narrowing myself into one line of work, maybe I just got lazy. I have always worked hard at what I do and possibly this feeling has come about because of my distance from the course and my involvement with different work here in Sweden (which was never the intention). The work I am doing here was meant to augment my story telling abilities learnt at Coventry and it is, I just need to get back into the swing as it were.

My cameras have been collecting dust a little since being here, mostly because of the intensity of the courses I am taking and because (maybe this is a bad thing for a photographer… I don’t think so) I needed a break from looking through my view finder. I always find myself in the predicament of photograph or take part. Often is the case when a photographing opportunity arises that I have to choose to take part (for an example jumping off a waterfall) or photograph the event. Another thing I have learnt to love from being involved with photography is to just enjoy a moment. A good example is my recent trip to Estonia across the Baltic. We were on the deck of the ferry having some drinks and the northern lights were lighting the sky off the stern of the boat. It was an amazing experience and a rare time that I did not have a camera around my neck. Instead of rushing back to my cabin and grabbing my camera i opted instead to stay and just enjoy the moment. It is an experience that will stay with me always, regardless of my lack of photographs.

I think it is important as photographers to let go sometimes and just enjoy the world with your own eyes and not through a lens. I met an american guy here in Karlstad, a student from Georgia, who was big into photography. He didn’t study it academically but always had a camera with him, constantly taking photo’s of everything. One thing he could not understand was the fact that even though I was a photography student he would take more photographs than me. Maybe my teachers back home would scorn me for it but I feel I have reached a point that unless I have a specific idea/project/aim, whatever you want to call it, I don’t feel the need to take photo’s. I often do, just for the sake of taking photo’s as I enjoy it, but I have learnt to enjoy things without it.

I was going to write that it feels as though I have lost my drive or desire but I do not think this to be true. Even as I write this I am becoming more excited by my photographic existence. I think I am at a point where I am reinventing what photography means to me and what it means for me professionally speaking. I consider myself a story teller first and foremost, photography is one of my tools and my time here in Sweden is giving me even more tools. I don’t know where this is all going, but that’s the exciting part.

Ser Mot

This is the completed animation.

Assignment 1 – Q2

A comparative analysis of two films, Sauper’s ‘Darwin’s Nightmare’ (2004) and Herzog’s ‘Grizzly man’ (2005).

The subject matter within each of these films is extremely different (although as I will point out at the end they may have something in common). Sauper’s film is primarily about the gun smuggling form Europe into Africa but indirectly, through the lives of the people in Mwanza and they way they are affected by it. Paralleling this and the jeopardy of the African people is the story of the Nile perch, which are causing extinction in and of lake Victoria. The metaphorical approach being that the west introduced the perch, causing the problem, and the west smuggle the guns, causing the problem. The two things are intertwined not only in this aspect but also as the fish act as both a reason for the gun smuggling planes to come in and as extra profit for the greed of the west.

‘Grizzly Man’ has a more specific interest in the life of one man, Timothy Treadwell. Analyzing his behavior and reasons for who he was and why he spent so much time with wild bears and also a look into the events of his death seems to be the main intent. His eccentric life is attested to by an amalgamation of eccentric characters and the odd appearance of more straight minded individuals (it is usually these that offer a negative view of Treadwell’s actions). The feel of the films are different thanks to the sobering nature of ‘Darwin’s Nightmare’ and the annoyance inducing nature of ‘Timmy’ Treadwell (not just because of his disregard of reason but his often performative over the top eccentricities).

One of the technical differences between the two movies is the way they frame shots. A lot of Treadwell’s footage (due to the fact he had to be in front of the camera as his diaristic approach dictates) was shot with a tripod as well as being handheld in places. It is clear that every piece of Film in Darwin’s Nightmare was shot handheld – this gives a rugged nature and aids in the investigative feel of the movie. At around the forty five minute mark there is a shot of some men sitting on grounded boats, the camera suddenly pans quickly left to capture an incoming plane.

The interviews conducted throughout both films also differ in their filming approach. Whereas Herzog tends to start at a wider angle usually zooming in very slowly whilst people give testimony (at around the twenty minute mark we see a wide shot of Marnie, a friend of Treadwell’s, reading out one of his letters. As the scene continues the camera very slowly zooms in closer and closer until a shoulder shot is reached – this seems to add emphasis to what Marnie is reading), Sauper starts and usually remains with a very tight close up where just the face is visible, this is often straight cut with footage from outside the interview situation that attests to the dialogue. An example is at ninety six minutes, close to the end of the film, there is a shoulder shot of Mgumba (an investigative journalist) talking to the camera. As he talks about planes bringing in weapons there is a straight cut to a plane moving down the runway from a distance (seemingly from behind where the camera was standing in relation to Mgumba) and then back to the shot of Mgumba whilst the audio plays over both. Herzog rarely cuts to shots within the interview that are not of the surrounding environment. At around sixty two minutes Herzog has an interview with Treadwell’s parents and at one point when the father is talking about his sons failed acting career and general breakdown, we see cuts to the mothers face and to her hand holding that of a teddy bears which is in her embrace (the bear belonged to Treadwell). With both examples the footage cut into the interviews encourage a feeling by making points visual as well as audible. With Sauper it added actual visualization of the topic and with Herzog it is a visual representation of emotion that clarifies the subject of conversation as well as bringing out the emotion of the character.

Both filmmakers utilize the interview as an integral part of uncovering the story. Sauper relies on this more as it makes up the majority of the film but Herzog also uses them a lot to give a different perspective on Treadwell. Within these interview situations, in both films, it seemed now and again that we hear the voice of the filmmaker from behind the camera often prompting or asking questions. Seventy two minutes into Darwin’s Nightmare when we see footage from Dimond (fish factory owner) in his office talking about the upcoming famine in Tanzania, Sauper is heard to ask, “so what will the people eat?” – his tone is calm and unrevealing. Around sixty four minutes into Grizzly Man when Herzog is filming Jewel (an ex girlfriend of Treadwell’s) in what must be her home, she is talking about Treadwell’s prior drug addictions and how he would get in to trouble, Herzog is heard to ask “how dangerous”. This evidence of participation adds to the conviction of both filmmakers to find out what they are after. This feeling seems more prominent in Sauper because of the lack of narration otherwise in his film. Unlike with Herzog’s voice over which often tells us things in a ‘this is fact’ tone (although evidenced with footage offers a feeling that Herzog knew what Treadwell was thinking and feeling) – around minute seventy seven we are narrated into a scene where Treadwell tells us its approaching on the time of year for poachers, Herzog narrates, “Treadwell became increasingly paranoid about his enemy, the poacher”. Sauper never intervenes, with his own voice, when we are watching and his voice, always off camera, seems probing more than trying to get a point across.

What Sauper does offer us is text that pops up on a black background, to introduce characters, extend the topic of discussion with facts and also as a juxtaposition to contradict what some of the people have stated. Around forty minutes into the film Sauper is having a conversation with Dimond, he asks “how many people can you feed with 500 tons” this being what Dimond was telling us previous to the question, about the amount of fish they produce in Mwanza as a minimum per day. In response Dimond offers “I have no figures” in a stumped and uneasy manner – this is followed by a black screen with text that reads; “Two million white people eat Victoria-fish every day”. In a way this is more affective as we are not bombarded with a sultry tone telling us what is, but a sharp cut to text that is always matter of fact and to the point. It never breaks up the flow of the film but adds substance and purpose to the conversations we hear.

Use of juxtaposition which is not clearly used in Grizzly man, enters a lot into Sauper’s edit most commonly used ironically to contest the statements of certain officials. This happens numerous times during the duration of the film and acts as Sauper’s unvoiced despair that they (the officials) cannot see what is in front of them. A prime example is around seventy minutes into the film where we find ourselves at a press conference with members of the European Commission – there is a straight cut to some kids down below (seemingly homeless) one of which using crutches due to a lost limb and then the camera pan’s to the right pulling the table of commission members back into frame as one says that the “infrastructure is in good shape”. This is then continued by a series of shots from homeless kids fighting over a small pot of cooked food on the shore of the lake.

Music plays a big part in both films right from the beginning. It acts to set the mood with the start of both films and is also used in an intriguing way at the end of Herzog’s film. The opening credits in Darwin’s Nightmare are supported by the background noise of an air traffic radio and then a woman singing in (what sounds like) French, at the end of this four or five second tune, sorrowful string instruments sound with an old vinyl feel – as the first scene dissolves in, a sad voice starts singing also in French. It is a mournful tune setting up the coming flood of sometimes hard to imagine imaging. The second to last scene in Grizzly man at around minute one hundred and one is shot from the cockpit of Willy Fultan’s plane (the Pilot who took Treadwell in and out of the wild every year). There is a song playing over the footage, which is of Fultan singing the same song, although they are edited so that Fultan repeats the lyrics of the song after the singer, “and the lion is gone”. This effect makes the fact that he changes the last lyric to “ and Treadwell is gone”, instead of “and the red wolf is gone”, which plays before, much more meaningful.

Herzog’s film is primarily made up of found footage (that of Treadwell’s), which is integral to the films subject. He also uses a mix of other ‘found footage’ in TV interviews (with Letterman at around eight minutes into the film) with Treadwell, old home movies and stills from his work at schools and childhood. About sixty two minutes in when we see the section where Herzog meets Treadwell’s parents they talk about his childhood whilst images from home movies play on the screen; “nothing extra ordinary” [about his childhood]. Sauper on the other hand only uses what he captures never cutting his footage with (what seems anyway – the opening shots show one of a camera view form the underside of an aircraft that may or may not be his) any other content on his subject. This adds a sense of truth to the film, that we are seeing only what he saw and are not being manipulated into a stance over the issues by a clever edit of outsourced material. Often within documentary films, using found footage can also add credibility to a story but in this case the credibility seems to come naturally through the shaky hand held presence of Sauper in the world in which he finds himself.

A commonality between what Herzog and Sauper are looking at and trying to investigate, you could say, boils down to human nature. It is after all, our greed that fuels the problems we discover in Mwanza through Sauper’s lens, whilst the whole of Grizzly Man seems to be an analysis of Timothy Treadwell; Herzog concludes that it was a look at human nature through the story of this man. Around the one hundred minute mark the narration speaks “it is not so much a look at wild nature, as it is an insight into ourselves, our nature”.

Films

‘Darwin’s Nightmare’ (2004) by Hubert Sauper

‘Grizzly Man’ (2005) by Werner Herzog

Assignment 1 – Q1

A summary of the two books, Michael Renov’s ‘The Subject of Documentary’ and Bill Nichols’ ‘Introduction to Documentary’ with a comparison of both.

Michael Renov’s book ‘The Subject of Documentary’ is an engaging culmination of essayistic writings on and about certain aspects of documentary film making with specific interest in the ethical, autobiographical and the notion of ‘self’ within the medium. The book is separated into three parts each looking in different ways at the idea of subjectivity and the subject, which are the main themes throughout the book.

The first couple of chapters set the scene with regard to advances in documentary films thanks to politically charged movements from feminists, gay pride and the emergence of Leftist underground papers and film collaborations such as ‘Newsreel’ (amongst other things).  Also it seemed the borderline between fiction and nonfiction (fiction being about ‘a world’ and nonfiction about ‘the world’, as Renov describes on page 22) was reinvestigated, as ‘truth’ seemed to be becoming more profitable in the eyes of major television networks. This also caused the need for an alternative unmediated source of news, which was born in guerilla film groups such as ‘Newsreel’.

Very quickly into the first part of the book, entitled ‘Social Subjectivity’, we encounter Renov’s reoccurring tool for discussing documentary film: psychoanalytical discourse.  A prime example is the idea of projected ‘otherness’ that Renov uses to describe the racism and stereotypes born during the Pacific War. ‘Otherness’ Renov explains, is the “racially motivated separation between self and outsider” (pg44). These stereotypes and characteristics we attribute to ‘others’ (which commonly would be mirrored by the ones to whom we project) were put into propaganda films to be used as mass projection persuasion. The same sense of ‘otherness’ was criticized and analyzed in films like Days of Waiting (1989) by Okazaki and other filmmakers that sought to revisit the internment of Japanese-Americans during the war.

Renov moves us through ideas of essayistic film that shows not only an interest in the outside world but also reflective of the inside (in the same way that writing a diary can be reflective).  This duality of epistemology and subjectivity – especially with regards to the self – brings us to Renov’s thoughts on a ‘New Autobiography’ were he argues that filmmakers are attached to both documentary and a “complex representation of their own subjectivity” (pg 109). Using the example of Jonas Meka’s Lost, Lost, Lost, part of his diary project Diaries, Notes and Sketches (1975), Renov describes the ability documentary has to show something of history and yet also find something out about the maker – the visuals in lost shot over a quarter century include documentation of the immigrant Lithuanian population that arrived in New York and the narration by Meka as a self-reflecting attempt at remembrance that reveals a lot about his character – he quotes Meka speaking on his diary, who obliges it “to register the reality to which I react and also…to register my state of feeling (and all the memories) as I react” (pg 112).

This subjectivity and self-reflection form the characteristics of Renov’s autobiographical argument and take us into the last part of the book to look at different forms within subjectivity including the ‘confession’, ‘domestic ethnography’ and lastly the web page as a new frontier in autobiography. Starting with he traditional confession, which brings out a sense of moral cleansing in the confessor, changing in form by the replacement of a priest or analyst with the video camera – for this Renov evaluates the examples of Wendy Clark’s Love Tapes (1978-1994) and One on One (1990-1991) which both use the ability of the camera to attain confessions – moving on to the relationship between the filmmaker when they use familial figures as the subject, which entices a different level of confession, often revealing as much about the maker as it does the subject. Renov ends with a discussion about whether the traditional autobiography is dying out in a world where the video camera and the Internet dominate. Using the example of a blog site, Renov says that the web page has “reintroduced the writerly into the sphere of self-representation”(pg237) that autobiography has not died but “has been reborn” (pg243).

‘Introduction to Documentary’ aptly named and written by Bill Nichols does just as it says. Nichols provides us with a thorough walkthrough of documentary film including everything from definition to its beginning and continuing advancement in history, through to it’s various models, modes, ethics and multitude of characteristics. Not forgetting the role of filmmaker, subject and audience with regard to everything else, their responsibilities, relationships and expectations.

Nichols begins with documentary tradition and specifically the ‘golden age’, which he concludes continues today but began in the 1980’s, stating the difference between the pre golden age and its arrival, that the films (of the golden age) “challenge assumptions and alter perceptions” (pg1). Documentaries started to develop serious thought about definition and three main points come to light: Documentaries are about reality, are about real people and tell stories taken from the real world. Needless to say Nichols goes into detail with each, modifying and building on what they mean and offers a resulting definition: “Documentary film speaks about situations and events involving real people (social actors) who present themselves to us as themselves in stories that convey a plausible proposal about, or perspective on, the lives, situations, and events portrayed. The distinct point of view of the filmmaker shapes this story into a way of seeing the historical world directly rather than into a fictional allegory” (pg14).

However, seeing as this definition does not elaborate on the different types of documentary, Nichols see’s it only as a beginning and moves on to a multitude of definitions – including discussions about documentary community and content as the product of institutional goals, “Documentaries are what the organizations and institutions that produce them make”(pg16). It becomes apparent that with an ever-changing medium, definitions are also changing and so there can be no pure definition. As curious beings, documentaries draw upon our desire to know and we gain “a sense of pleasure, satisfaction, and knowledge” (p40) from documentary.

In a turn to ethics, Nichols argues a deep bond between documentary and history, – “Documentary adds a new dimension to popular memory and social history” (pg42) – which brings him to the subject of believability. How can we tell what is real and what is not when an image cannot answer all of the questions we may have about what happened. By conventional and digital means images can be altered, we can see this in early cinema with the collage compositions of Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929). Another point questions “truth” with regard to context – we may be shown an image and be told that it represents a certain viewpoint – and that context could be misconstrued. Nichols talks of perspective and also the ethical responsibilities of the author but as the viewers we must be diligent. Using two films as example Buñuel’s Land Without Bread (1932) and Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935), the former delivering a somewhat judgmental voice over commentary of the Hurdanos – sounding a “cautionary note” (pg50) towards our belief in the visual – and the later providing a more flattering portrait of Adolf Hitler, Nichols warns that “we accept either film as a “truthful” representation at our own peril” (pg50).

With regards to the idea of ‘voice’ in documentary film, that not being just speech within the film but the ability to say something deeper, Nichols states that this ‘voice’ “speaks through its composition of shots, its editing together of images, and its use of music, among other things” (pg67). The main point here is that it is more than what a film literally tells us but more about the form in which it does so that can effect our feelings towards its purpose. Nichols describes the five departments of classical rhetorical thinking as important in this matter: Invention, Arrangement, Style, Memory and Delivery. Delving deeper into the characteristics of documentary film making Nichols describes categories, models and importantly the six modes of documentary, these being: Poetic, Expository, Observational, Participatory, Reflexive and Performative. Needless to say he goes into detail with each, augmenting his descriptions with an abundance of examples from a variety of documentary films. Nichols stresses that the modes are in no way definite descriptors of any one film but can be used in a mix and match fashion; “The qualities of each mode…provide a rich toolbox of resources from which to fashion distinctive new documentaries” (pg209).

Nichols finishes off (pre his enlightening chapter on writing effectively about documentary film) with a look at the documentary form with regard to political and social issues. Again using films as example he provides a sense of what documentary film has done to raise issues of revolution, racial discrimination and identity, and homosexual movements as well as other issues within society, including the more personal accounts within these topics. On this, and documentary in general, Nichols ends with an apt description that documentary film “moves forward in relation to all the work that has gone before, addressing issues, exploring situations, engaging viewers in ways that will continue to instruct and please, move and compel” (pg252).

Both books offer concise accounts of documentary theory and representation but do so in different ways. Nichols offers us a more thorough look at the history and definition of the documentary practice, looking back at very early examples in his chapter ‘How Did Documentary Filmmaking Get Started?’ In this sense Nichols has a more rounded feel while Renov offers a more focused or specific argument. Both books consider the ethics, social and political ramifications, history and changing form of documentary but Renov always seems to return to a specific theme, that of the autobiography and subjectivity within the medium of documentary, especially with regards to the ‘self’. In the introduction to ‘The Subject of Documentary’ Renov himself describes his attempts to describe his book; “it’s all about autobiography in film and video” (pg xi), and on the reverse we find the synopsis describing his discussions on documentary as “important means for both examining and constructing selfhood”. This seems to be the most pertinent observation of how the books differ, although both offer their own ideas and opinions Nichols seems to want to discuss documentary as a whole while Renov has a more specific end.

Renov’s style of writing seems to parallel his specificity in keeping to the idea of the self. The book made up of essayistic writings that span over a decade and are reformed in the style of a book, seems a lot more personal than Nichols’ educative feel. Use of psychoanalytical theories within his discussions also add something different to Renov’s essays, a reoccurring theme, he dissects the examples of documentaries with a philosophical, sociological and psychological knife (Freud, Lacan, Augustine and Levinas to name a few examples). Whereas both Renov and Nichols have a questioning nature, which proves for an interesting read for both accounts, Renov ideas are more engaging – a fact augmented by the overtly flowery and descriptive writing style which although of a higher complicity flows with ease and aids in accentuating his points. Nichols style, also a flowing and pleasurable read, seems more directed at a general audience whereas Renov’s essays were clearly meant (and were when first published) to great a more specific audience.

While Renov has his psychology in describing films and their characteristics with regard to subject, Nichols, in his educative rather than theoretical way, uses the modes and models of documentary to discuss and analyze specific works and pieces. In this manner he reinforces the ‘teachings’ of previous chapters with the application of definition also adding substance to what he talks about at specific points. He describes issues within documentary film with reference to the documentary modes – as an example, in his chapter on social and political issues within documentary film, when looking at identity within the medium he writes (paraphrasing gay film critic Tom Waugh) “it is within a performative mode of representation that gay and lesbian documentary has primarily flourished” (pg 235). This gives a less ‘preachy’ feel than that which Renov creates – Nichols is introducing us to main points and arguments along with discourse on each while Renov, possibly due to the specificity of his general theme, holds more of a personal enthusiasm to the work.

Nichols teaches us about documentary while Renov delves more into explaining our psychological need and effect by and upon it. This is not to say that Nichols is overly objective, (he is not) his opinions abound and he always has a question to further any conclusion he seems to create. In this was they both offer a dialogue about documentary film – Nichols more scholarly and involving its entirety and Renov with specificity to certain aspects – that suggest the openness of the subject for debate and reinvention. The difference between them is that ‘Introduction to Documentary’ gives us structural grounds – not in the form of rules but in trying to define different aspects of the documentary practice so as to better analyze it – and ‘The Subject of Documentary’ produces a more theoretical and psychoanalytical look at self-analysis and reflection within the scope of documentary.

Bibliography

Renov, Michael ‘The Subject of Documentary’ (2004), University of Minnesota Press

Nichols Bill, ‘Introduction to Documentary’ Second Edition, (2010), Indiana University Press

Cultural Differences

Sweden has definitely got some things very right. As a nature lover and novice outdoorsman it is great to be in a country where you have a lot of freedom to be outside and do outdoor activities. They have a free roaming law which allows you to go pretty much wherever you want, barring private property that is clearly sign posted and walking into someones house uninvited, and you can set up a tent anywhere. Brilliant! Fires are also allowed, the only rule is you are not allowed to destroy any living thing (dead wood is fine to burn) and you should always clear up before you leave. This free roaming also extends to rivers and you are allowed to canoe or boat your way almost anywhere. As well as being able to go anywhere you are also allowed to pick anything you find in the wild, usually berries and mushrooms, there are some people that sell their wild goodies on the local market. People from thailand arrive in the thousands and are paid to go into the woods and pick berries and mushrooms which are then sent out to countries and sold. It seems like the swedish government are missing a trick there. You are also allowed to fish wherever you like, there are certain places like the city centre where you can’t but not many.

As a people the Swedes are quite unobtrusive and like personal space. It is normal to be alone for a chill out period after working or studying and in the communal kitchens on campus it is regular for the Swedish students to cook their food and then retire to their rooms without speaking to anyone. It is not considered rude at all and something international students find a little strange. Another big difference is the way they respect the personal space of others to a huge level. If you are wandering round the town looking a bit lost or in need of help it is usual that no one will approach you and offer assistance. It is not that they do not want to help but will not enter your personal space without invitation. Most are more than helpful but only if you ask, it is a strange way of being but makes sense. Another trait stems from a unwritten code which they call ‘lagom’. Lagom means neither big nor small, rich nor poor, fast nor slow, it is basically the average, the middle ground and it applies to every aspect of life. As a Swede you house should not be to big, your car to expensive and an overly modest vale is worn by all. Celebrities don’t seem that celebrated nor blow their own trumpet. Lagom is having just enough and not being arrogant about what you have. It is almost a self defeatist attitude in that you should not strive for something better but maybe I do not understand it fully. They are also big on equality and chivalry is, well not dead but not as present. Women and men are equal and it is not rare for a girl to ask a boy out on a date.

One thing that I’m sure I will find out for myself is the effect of winter on the local community. I have been told that everything tends to shut down in the winter and the people go into hibernation. Because of the cold people do not venture outside to often and the winter months become very quite and dull. A lot of the supermarkets here sell things in very large portions which I presume is so you do not have to frequent the shop too often in winter. I have also been told that a lot of Swedes put on a great deal of weight during the winter, extra insulation.