Psychoanalytical Film

Evaluation

For my film i incorporated Lacan and Frued theory. I decided to choose these two theorists in particular as i felt they both linked and worked well with the issue i was portraying within my film. The issue of alcohol abuse gives the sufferer a constant feeling of lack which is why my two chosen theorists worked well within the film.

Throughout the film we included edited scenes of distortion to show how the alcohol is having its affect on the protagonist within the text.

We did this by adding effects on Premier Pro whilst editing the film also adding slow motion shots to emphasise the affect of the alcohol. When shooting for our film we tried to add a range of location types to make it as realistic as possible for the audience to relate to. I feel as though by shooting in a supermarket it would make the audience realise the problem can be anywhere around us in society and we may not know about it. Also at the end of the film we chose to shoot at the local hospital in a busy public place to add a sense of realism and conclude the story to show there is places where you can get help.

Also in the film we wanted to try an use different shot types to make our film look more asthetically pleasing to the audience. we used some close up shots, foe example; in the toilet the female protagonist washing her hands, we wanted to get close up on this to emphasise her washing the addiction away.

In the car scenes we also used different shot types to show a realistic driving effect. We thought that by doing this and shooting driving scenes for a few seconds the short snappy videos editied together would show the effect the issue is having on the protagonist in a more dramatic way. We made sure that all the scenes were shot on the same day so everything would look the same to make a whole video. We shot all the scenes in order from first to last so when it came to editing the footage it was simple and made the overall editing process quick.

I felt that the theorists we chose were very fitting to our idea, especially Lacan and the idea of lack and never being satisfied but i do feel with the Frued theory, ID, ego and superego we could have shown this more clearly maybe doing a voice over to show the different personalities.

Planning

Our theory that we chose to use for our film was, Freud's theory. He proposed the ID, ego and superego. This is a theory which is stated to be apparent in the brain. Our second theorist which we wanted to incorporate was Lacan, he created the mirror stage, and within that came the theory of desire. This is where people become obsessed with a certain thing and are never satisfied until they get more. We chose to use these two theory's as our alcohol related narrative linked with them best.


Our narrative involves the issue of alcohol and how it takes over one girls life. She's battling with herself to try and overcome her addiction. This is where the ID, ego and superego take their place within the narrative as she's seen trying to fight her alcohol dependency. Due to the constant desire to want more alcohol this is where Lacan's theory is evident because we want to show how she's never satisfied and always wants more.


We want to shoot in real life locations to show a true perspective on the story line, which is why we want to shoot some scenes in a car. In contrast to this at the end of our film we want to conclude it by the protagonist walking into a rehabilitation centre.

  this is where we plan to film the ending of our film to give a realistic representation to our narrative.

Health & safety

For the health and safety requirements for our psychoanalytical film, we considered a range of things, such as making sure the camera equipment was safely put away when we were not recording aspects of our film because all of our video was filmed out on location, so we had to be careful it didn’t get stolen. Due to a lot of our film being hand held, we ensured that the camera was fastened around the director’s neck at all times, to prevent it being dropped. We made sure that when we used the tripod, it was put together properly so that it stabilised the camera at all times. Subsequently, we also made sure that the tripod wasn’t obstructing pedestrians.

lacan film challenge

Applying Laura Mulvey

In this scene from the transformers the female protagonist is shown in an objectifying way. The camera lingers on the females body in close up shots to clearly focus upon her appearance and body shape. This automatically creates the male gaze as the camera moves down the females body like a male is looking at her.

Laura Mulvey

Laura Mulvey coined the term 'male gaze'  in 1975. She believes that in film audiences have to view characters from the perspective of a heterosexual male. For example, the camera lingers on the curves of a female body, and events which occur to women are presented largely in a context of the mans reaction to these events. This regulates women to the status of objects. The female viewer must experience the narrative secondarily, by identification with the male. 

The theory suggests that the male gaze denies some human identity and are only to be admired for physical appearance. However, the presence of a female in a mainstream film text is somewhat vital. Often a female character is not there to have any real importance herself it is how she makes the male protagonist within the text feel or act that is the importance. 

Mulvey states that the role of a female character in the narrative has two functions:

- As an erotic object for the characters within the narrative to view

- As an erotic object for the spectators within the cinema to view