HNRS 353

The one really intriguing thing about Galloway’s essay to me was about the subjective shot in movies. I never really thought about the different points of views that can be seen in movies because to me it just seemed normal for the movie. The two points of view that stood out to me the most from the essay were the mental affect and the criminals and monsters. The mental affect view shows “the optical perspective of a drugged, drowsy, drunk or otherwise intoxicated character” (46). This point of view is really cool to me because it shows a person’s mental state in a way that you may not normally see. I tried to think of a recent movie where this technique could have been used but I could not come up with one. The other point of view mentioned is the view from criminals and monsters, otherwise known as predatory view. This view is obviously the scariest because it gives you the view from the monster or criminal and usually it’s the monster or criminal hunting its prey. To me this is the most suspenseful view because as you see the monster or criminals view you are wondering what their next move is. Another thing that I noticed about this article is that most of the movies he referenced are old movies. I only heard of a few of them but what I’m wondering is if the first person point of view is a technique of the past or can it be seen in movies today?

We all know what a first-person story sounds like, but what does it look like?  A regularly-shot film with a voice over?  A single, continuous shot from one perspective?  Does it change when you are the story?  When you make the story?  When you play a game?

Galloway begins to answer these questions with his lengthy exploration of “subjective” (first-person) perspectives in film as a way to understand first-person-shooter (FPS) games.  First, subjective shots are not point-of-view (POV) shots.  POVs reveal what the character would see, but they remain stationary (or pan smoothly).  Subjective shots move (often with jerky, shaky motion) as the character, revealing what the character sees and feels.  Subjective shots are rarely used in film, but when they are, they almost always have a “negative vision.”  Generally, they are used in four ways:

1)        to demonstrate vertigo/intoxication/passing out (love interest’s face and voice blurs as hero faints),

2)        to communicate emotional isolation from a group (pan through a hostile classroom on the first day of school)

3)        to make the view feel hunted (monster or criminal stalks protagonist)

4)       to represent machine vision (numbers, grids, and text overlay the image.) In response to their unfamiliarity and negativity viewers find subjective shots unpleasant.  But not so with FPS games.

Sadly, Galloway’s analysis of viewer psychology ends here, but I would like to suggest that viewers and players react so differently to the technique due to the ownership of perspective.  As Galloway emphasizes, “subjective shots mean to show the exact physiological or emotional qualities of what a character would see” (emphasis mine.) Thus a subjective film shot is meant to take the viewer as far into the character’s experience as possible.  In contrast, FPSs attempt to take the player as far into the game experience as possible.  No character with psychological burdens disturbs the intimate perspective.  The perspective is not a characters; it is your own.  Could our reactions differ because we are uncomfortable with such a close relationship to a character?

Perhaps, but something deeper is also going on.  As Branigan observes, “In the case of character sight, what is important is not so much that the character sees something, but that he experiences difficulty in seeing. What is revealed is not the external object of a glance nor an internal state of the character, but a condition of sight itself.” Audiences dislike subjective perspective because they become subjected to the anxiety of incomplete vision.  In films, a subjective perspective means that the audience has no control over the situation; they cannot see anything outside of the frame and they cannot obtain an “objective” view.  Thus they become vulnerable, forfeiting the safety and omniscience of conventional viewing.  By giving up their unique, multifaceted perspective and taking another’s, they are, in some way, giving up their humanity and right to have their own view.  But in video games the player has complete control over his sight.  He is not restrained by a director.  He owns his actions controls his destiny.

Thus filmic and gamic subjective perspectives are both about movement; the first about experiencing the character’s physical and emotional movement, and the second about the player’s movement through constructed space.  The two differ in the type of movement.  FPSs offer the play an active role in deciding movement while subjective films force the viewer to passively experience someone else’s movement.  While FPSs may have inherited subjective perspective, they succeed where film failed since they offered the player control.

I had some trouble understanding Galloway’s description on pages 65-67 of how video games and cinema differ in the definition of time.

He says that video games can be paused, sped up, slowed down, and restarted. But movies can do all of this if you are watching them at home also. He states that a movie must “transpire through time in order to be played, to be experienced”. If you pause a movie, i agree that you do loose the flow of it and the experience is different. But if you pause a game, don’t you also loose that flow? Although, video games were made to be paused and picked up again at a later time, so is this the point he is trying to get across?

He then goes on to talk about how in The Matrix, the “bullet time” is actually a gamic cinema, where the aesthetic of games takes over that of cinema. Is he saying that anytime there is slow motion or something is sped up in a movie, it is a game moment? For example, in a romantic comedy where they guy and girl run in slow motion towards each other, is this another example of gamic cinema, because traditional cinema did not do this?

I agree with his hypothesis that games and cinema have played off each other and learned from each other for years. The two mediums are definitely linked.

But if anyone can offer a better explanation of his point here, I would appreciate it.