Eyes and narrative perspectives on a story: a practice-led exploration of the use of eyes and eye lines in fiction film

Abstract

Eyes and eye lines are one of the key ways in which the perspective on a story is established in figurative narrative fiction cinema. As such, the eyes and the use of eyes by a performer need as much creative and technical attention as shot composition, sound, production design and editing. Rather than thinking of the eyes of a performer as a subservient aspect of a projected performance, often driven by the dominance of dialogue-action delivery, this paper seeks to examine how, in fictional cinematic expression, eyes can be deployed to enhance an introspective and transcendent narrative perspective on a story. This exploration takes place through practice. In particular, during the creation of my latest feature film, The Raven on the Jetty (Erik Knudsen, UK, 2014), in which I sought to explore how to enhance the relationship between eyes, eye lines and narrative perspective on story. In reflecting on these issues, I shall look at what is meant by narrative perspective and relate this not only to the performativity of a fiction film, but also to the relationship of this performativity to emotions and feelings. I shall then look at eyes: first looking at their behavioural importance, then at looking and seeing. I hope to show that we can think of eyes not merely as a part of an actor's performance, but also as a window through which we can see a world whose presence is untouchable. I aim to argue that looks and eye lines are as effective as any other cinematic tool in establishing actions, re-actions, space, time, intentions and revelations and to illustrate how I have sought to challenge certain understandings and approaches to the use of eyes to add a different perspective on a story.

Notes on contributor

Erik Knudsen is a filmmaker and Professor of Film Practice at the University of Salford, Manchester, UK. He is a former Head of the School of Media, Music and Performance and has also acted as the university's Director of Graduate Studies. Earlier roles have included programme leading for the MA in Fiction Film Production, the MA in Television Documentary Production and the MA in Wildlife Documentary Production. He is also visiting professor, and the former Head of the Editing Department, at the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Television in Cuba. He is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Media Practice and a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council's Peer Review College. He publishes widely on film practice, his most recent book being Creative Documentary: Theory and Practice (2011). His latest feature film, The Raven on the Jetty (UK, 2014), is due for release in 2014. Visit: theravenonthejetty.com.

Notes

1. See Sobchack (1992).

2. See Heath (1981).

3. See Branigan (1984).

4. See Brown (2012).

5. ‘Film Studies for Free: The Forth Wall.’ Accessed February 2, 2014. http://filmstudiesforfree.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=fourth+wall

6. It is worth noting here the extensive work around story and the archetypal, including feelings and emotions, written by people such as Joseph Campbell (1949), Patrick Hogan (2003), Christopher Booker (2005) and how these works have provided a fundamental basis for an understanding of the classical narrative from which I have explored alternative approaches to cinematic narrative in both my practice and theoretical reflections. See, for example, Knudsen (2010).

7. As Sobchack (1992, 14) points out, the idea of ‘picture frame’, ‘mirror’ and ‘window’ are metaphoric concepts that have dominated much film criticism. While she indicates that all three in a sense make us think of a relationship between a ‘viewing subject’ and a ‘static viewed object’ (1992, 14) in which the ‘exchange and reversibility of perception and expression (both in and as the film and spectator) are suppressed’ (1992, 15), I will in this paper be acknowledging the phenomenology of the subject–observer relationship and using the mirror and window metaphors as, in contradiction to Sobchack, indicators of that reversibility.

8. While Daniel Dayan's (1974) work on suture is relevant here, particularly in relation to the role of the imagination in filling gaps, his work revolved predominantly around the shot/edit and its relationship to the ideology of our imaginations, but there is no reason why the idea of suture should not also be considered on the macro narrative level.

9. Although one could look at special-effects-driven event films and argue that the performer operating in a green screen environment is increasingly being thought of as a technical aspect of the project.

10. Here we perhaps see a separation of the practitioner's perspective and the cultural theorists. While Sobchack, Heath, Branigan and so forth will be solely concerned with the spectator experience, the spectator engagement and the generation of meaning, as it may sit within a theoretico-cultural paradigm and history, the practitioner is working with the individual practical and creative components that come together to make a whole, and he or she will more often than not be less concerned with cultural theory but much more so with archetypal imagery and narratives that can emerge from the unconscious and instinctual. ‘I know that I'm forgiven, but I don't know how I know.’ (That Don't Make It Junk, Leonard Cohen, 2001).

11. Dayan's (1974) work here is very important, as the role of suture is critical in establishing the verisimilitude of interacting eyes. Values (and ideology) can be established and the opinions shaped by suture can be instrumental in our opinion of characters and, therefore, story.

12. Contrast this with, for example, theatre, where the verisimilitude of the iconic is perhaps secondary to the indexical and symbolic relationship between signifiers and signified, thereby allowing other human gestures such as movement and voice to take precedent.

13. Point of view is often a way in which one may enter the subject of achieving empathy, not just in terms of shot choice and the codes that go with associating a particular character's view of events, but also in terms of the cinematic narrative. For this discussion, I tend to use the term perspective to talk about the latter. For an extended look at point of view, Branigan (1984) provides an in-depth analysis of point of view's relationship to narrative. In relation to the specifics of point of view's relationship to empathy, van Peer and Chatman (2001) look more specifically, amongst other things, at manipulation of the viewer through the interplay of the diegetic, non-diegetic, extra-diegetic and intra-diegetic. Here, I seek to understand empathy as an experiential and intuitive phenomenon rather than a philosophical one.

14. Note here that there is a crossover with some of the concepts Sobchack (1992) discusses – reversibility of perception – but that here, in contrast to her phenomenological perspective, I am thinking more ontologically about looking and seeing.

15. Quite apart from any academic discussions of this ‘rule’, it's ubiquity is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that there is a Wikipedia entry for it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/180-degree_rule) and plenty of YouTube explanations of it (for example, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4wX_dmh8_g).

16. See, for example, The End of Summer (Yasujiro Ozu, Japan, 1960) or Late Autumn (Yasujiro Ozu, Japan, 1961)

17. Of course, Carl Th. Dreyer was a master at challenging and undermining our eye line conventions, including matching up eye lines and the 180-degree ‘rule’, such as in Gertrud (Denmark, 1964).

18. First articulated by Brecht in the essay ‘Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting’ in 1936. See Brecht (1978).

19. For example, Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1960).

20. For example, Husbands and Wives (Woody Allen, USA, 1992).

21. As Daniel Dayan has pointed out, in conventional cinema ‘the film discourse presents itself as a product without a producer, a discourse without an origin. It speaks. Who speaks? Things speak for themselves and, of course, they tell the truth’ (1976, 451).

22. It is perhaps worth reminding ourselves that prior to D. W. Griffiths, and the cementing of the idea of film as a fictional narrative, film was essentially vaudevillian in nature and involved constant interaction between characters on screen and the audience off.

23. Tom Brown (2012) suggests a complex relationship between the viewer and the character breaking the fourth wall in a narrative fiction film, identifying some devices – intimacy, agency, honesty, alienation and so on – which govern the type of relationship that might ensue. It does, nevertheless, presuppose a direct address that breaks with the notion of the voyeur. The voyeur exposed?

24. Both of the leading characters in Juliet of the Spirits (Federico Fellini, Italy, 1965) and 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut, France, 1959) have fleeting accidental glances at the fourth wall that conjure up mysteries which persist to this day, rather akin to the mysterious smile on the Mona Lisa painting.

25. Indeed, initially we may consider an accidental gaze as just that – an accident.

26. Much of it inexplicable and impalpable.

27. Most notably, Gertrud (Carl Th. Dreyer, Denmark, 1964).

28. We are back to Dayan (1974) and suture.

29. As any filmmaker knows, the difference between this screen reality and the reality involved in getting the shots, including the reality of whether the actors were actually looking at each other or not, or indeed were even in the same space, is usually quite significant.

30. Being a micro-budget production, it was important that we were able to simplify arrangements around permissions and chaperoning of a minor.

31. Of over 250 camera set-ups for the film, only five involved a focal length that was not 50 mm.

32. Even if usually this is an unconscious understanding.