New Wave Evaluation

https://vimeo.com/249815751

After researching the work of auteur Hal Ashby and his work in new wave cinema, I had a go at creating my own interpretation of a new wave moving image. For this I decided to take the key themes and ideas of a new wave which is to follow no set of rules, stay true to your authentic vision and execute it using techniques outside of the mainstream. I originally wanted to focus on emotion and how emotion is portrayed alternatively in Hal Ashby's films but I also did not want to focus too much on a narrative as I feared this would over complicate the final product. I could see that a lot of new waves incorporate a montage sequence to more a narrative a long and so I tried to take aspects of this and apply it to my own film. Conventions such as musical attributes and looking directly into the camera are what a lot of new wave films used to remind their audience that they were watching a film, this meant that they did not get too submersed into the story. I wanted to recreate that particular aspect of the audience being aware that they are an audience which is why I chose to follow the same character around in her evening and then edit the footage backwards, this takes the audience away from expectations and encourages them to look at the film structurally instead of getting invested in a plot.

I think what went well with my new wave was how the music matched the editing and the overall aesthetic. The black and white is just something that I thought looked more pleasing to the eye and the music went nicely with the slow pace and the idea that nothing drastic is actually happening. I feel that there would have been more references to the work of Hal Ashby like more long shots but I did try to incorporate an aspect of hidden identity by not showing the main character's face a whole lot, similar to how Ashby would capture the backs of his characters to portray a distance between character and audience or to end a storyline. I think that the editing could have been slightly cleaner and the shots I got more interesting towards the end but I liked the use of a hand held camera and the new wave effect that that gave off. Hand held cameras were often used in new wave productions as funding was low, I adhered to this aspect and spent no money on my new wave which is why it perhaps looks a little amateurish.