My point about the "grain" of the voice and the squeak of guitar strings was simply that "failure" to achieve an ideal standard of perfection may not be an error or shortcoming but can produce a more satisfying outcome than intended or anticipated. Lennon's singing on the released "Twist and Shout" followed numerous re-takes trying to get it "right", leaving his voice in shreds, but became the definitive and unrepeatable version.
As for "the idea that the boom in the shot could be the result of incorrect masking during the projection" being "ridiculous" -- films shot in one format (e.g. 35mm or widescreen) and released on another (e.g. 16mm) were often framed using guidelines etched onto the viewfinder, enabling the director/cinematographer to see how the shots would look in the different versions. The black frame divisions on the celluloid did not necessarily match what was intended to be seen on screen. You can't say "either it's in frame or it isn't," because if it is it certainly wasn't meant to be; and this is the responsibility of the projectionist (or distributor failing to provide correct instructions, or some other extratextual explanation) not "the result of technically poor film-making" or the editor hoping to get away with a cheat.
Nigel
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2006 10:30:38 +0100
From: Michael Chanan <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: FILM-PHILOSOPHY Digest - 18 Apr 2006 to 19 Apr 2006 (#2006-125)
Sorry, Nigel, neither of these points is cogent. The jouissance of the voice
according to Barthes refers to the erotic relation to the voice which cannot
be explained away by any means of analysis. This is very different from the
swish of the guitar strings. (Besides, Julian Bream, no less, once explained
to me that this was very difficult to eliminate - unless you used strings
made of gold, apparently...) Secondly, the idea that the boom in the shot
could be the result of incorrect masking during the projection is ridiculous
- either it's in frame or it isn't. It's the result of technically poor
film-making, with someone not noticing at the moment the shot is taken, and
therefore not re-taking it, and the editor having no other choice, if they
want to use the shot, than including it in the hope that indeed no-one
notices. This is the equivalent of, for example, one of the battle shots in
Tony Richardson's Charge of the Light Brigade, where one corner of the frame
is masked by the flap on the lens-hood (since this was a battle scene it
would probably have been impossible to re-take it anyway); or a continuity
error in Orson Welles' The Immortal Story where two of the characters are
sitting at a table talking, and there's no table cloth in the reverse shot.
However, these instances would not seem very relevant to Adrian Martin's
very interesting post on the 'faux raccord' or '(deliberate) mismatch',
since they are not examples of technique, but rather its momentary lack. And
although I quite like Alan Fair's idea, in another posting, of a 'formal
unconscious', I doubt that these cases count as examples of that either,
since what they indicate is rather an 'economic unconscious', that is,
errors which could not be corrected within the economy of the film-making
process.
Michael Chanan
blog at http://humaninbristol.blogspot.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Nigel Morris [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 19 April 2006 20:50
Subject: Re: FILM-PHILOSOPHY Digest - 18 Apr 2006 to 19 Apr 2006 (#2006-125)
I don't know about a theory of flaws, but I'm reminded of Barthes' example
of jouissance being what he calls the "grain" of a singer's voice, and also
of the fact that acoustic guitarists relish the squeak of fingers on the
strings. As for the example of boom microphones appearing in shot, I often
used to notice this as an avid Film Society member in the 1970s. Rather than
being a strictly textual phenomenon it was the result of incorrect masking
of the image during projection. For the same reason it often occurred on
television screenings of feature films.
Nigel
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End of FILM-PHILOSOPHY Digest - 20 Apr 2006 to 21 Apr 2006 (#2006-127)
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