Creators’ Reflections

“For this collaborative video essay project, I wanted to start self-consciously with a movie sequence that I had previously considered in the traditional academic way: by writing about it in a single-authored monograph (‘The Pop Song in Film’ (2006), adapted from my PhD (an artefact of the 20th century)). The sequence is the opening of ‘Saturday Night Fever’, soundtracked by The Bee Gees’ ‘Stayin’ Alive’, featuring John Travolta’s iconic solo strut through Brooklyn. So, instead of one man writing about one man walking, we now have multiple authors and a plethora of onscreen moving bodies. For my opening section, I wanted to establish the introduction very much as a setting-off point, with all my examples showing pairs of feet striding off in early stages of their movies. I then got another go towards the end, after Sammy Holden’s section (Sammy’s reflection below). I started off by picking up on the theme of ‘doomed characters’ Sammy had initiated and then cut between two scenes where the walkers are represented through their technologically-mediated point of view: a type of facelessness that had only been represented once up until this point in the video, through Dan O’Brien’s use of a scene from Black Mirror.” (Ian Garwood)

“To me, the idea of “faceless” made me think of crowds, masses, undifferentiated people. Through some free associating, this made me think of films in which powerful people within powerful institutions make decisions that affect the “masses.” To play with this idea, I decided to find clips of crowds walking or main characters disappearing into crowds or into the background of films about these types of institutions: Network (broadcast television/mass media), The Devil Wears Prada (publishing/fashion), The Big Short (Wall Street), and The Social Network (social media/big tech). “Stayin’ Alive” is a song about surviving in modern society, and I think the song matches this idea of the faceless/voiceless struggling to exist in a world created by the powerful.” (Stephanie Brown)

“The first clip I added was the clip of Jack Torrance near the end of The Shining, a scene that heavily involves walking and facelessness. With a sting of strings following this moment, I could only include a clip from Psycho. I then decided to work on a theme of ‘doomed characters’, which I felt worked very well with the oppositional I’m going nowhere/somebody help me/I’m stayin’ alive lyrics of my small section. I had to include the clip at the start of my section from Brokeback Mountain, as Ennis’ line ‘I’m nothin’, I’m nowhere’ really sticks in my mind and again corresponds well to the lyrics. The patterning I’ve noticed with the visuals of my cuts overall here is, from the previous clip: road to road, car to car, raised arm to raised arm, horror to horror, stairs to stairs, green to green, centre to centre, yellow to yellow.” (Sammy Holden)

“My initial idea was to incorporate images of animals walking to provide a kind of left-turn amidst the other footage of people, partly inspired by a brief moment in NOPE where we see a horse’s hooves stepping backwards. However, finding a sufficient number of clips that didn’t also reveal faces – and that included walking, not running – proved harder than I anticipated. So, instead, I followed the trope that has gained increased popularity over the past decade or two of following the back of an actor’s head in a tracking shot. I was therefore able to explore walking as more implied rather than explicit and to include a number of different kinds of locations, genres, and costuming.” (Jen Proctor)