Throughout the entire first half of this chapter, I found myself thinking of movies I’d seen that had the different “views” in them. It brought up thoughts of the TV show The Office, the movie Cloverfield, and others that Galloway had mentioned throughout the chapter such as the Terminator and the Matrix.
I found the idea of using the “fourth look” as an extremely rare case pretty ironic as it is used quite often in television today. Jim Halpert, of The Office, is famous for looking into the camera when something ridiculous happens or is said and giving his “well what are you gonna do about it” face with his shoulder shrug. Maybe because I’m such a huge fan of The Office, do I even notice this – but after reading Galloway’s article, there really are very few other shows or movies that incorporate a forth look consistently, other than Galloway’s example of the Terminator.
I know there were mixed reviews about Cloverfeild, but I personally thought it was amazing. As soon as Galloway brought up the differences between subjective and POV camera shots, I began to think about my experience with movies done in this style. Cloverfield was one I had trouble with, simply because Galloway didn’t give any insight as to where “documentaries” or documentary-like films would fall into place within this breakdown of looks. (Paranormal activity would be another movie done in documentary format.) After thinking about it I decided it has to be POV, because it’s not claiming to be through their eyes, just having the same sight lines as the main characters. Also they do film themselves and give themselves face time on the camera which indicates that it isn’t through their eyes as they don’t use mirrors to film themselves.
I just found the breakdown of shot-types to be very interesting as I’ve never taken any film classes before. Unfortunately I hadn’t seen any of the Hitchcock movies referenced or the Lady in the Lake, so I had to draw my own examples from experience, but think that in doing so and critically thinking about placement of pseudo documentary-type films within the “look” spectrum allowed me a better understanding of the Galloway chapter.
There do seem to be an increasing number of television shows using a fake documentary (“mockumentary”) style. In the case of The Office, there is a in-world diegetic rationale for Jim or Pam to address the camera directly: there is supposedly a camera crew following every one around in the show (while there are a few cases where we even see evidence of the camera crew, it is a pretty flimsy excuse). Still, The Office and its ilk are doing interesting things with subjectivity and point of view.
Picking up one of the threads from Galloway’s essay, I wonder if this mockumentary aesthetic will ever find its way into videogames, as has so many other elements of the grammar of cinema?