Drama is not so easy. Despite having the best intentions to deliver a dramatic sense of foreboding with this moonlit tree, I don’t seem to be able to deliver the idea. I have two images with slightly different emphasis on shadow, but I think ultimately neither work. This is disappointing but a good lesson to learn also. When coming to a scene one is full of many thoughts and ideas and one has a vision of how these ideas might possibly develop into a story. In this case I was feeling; moonlit perimeter of a wooded area, that almost overnight, had signs placed upon trees to indicate the area was now in private hands and people should keep out. This would lead to a story asking why and who these owners might be. What would anyone want with an overgrown old wood that had been desolate for years. It couldn’t be built upon and it had no obvious value. The tree was supposed to be a symbol of decay but despite going for a dramatic low angle to make it loom out into the foreground as a bigger obstacle, I just haven’t succeeded in creating the menace and sense of questioning fear that I want my character to feel and thus the reader to feel.
It is one thing to develop some visual techniques that may deliver a graphic novel sensibility but it is quiet another to create the drama and tension one seeks to portray via the images. As this is the first shot and it stands in isolation it may be more difficult to deliver as it floats in a sea of non context currently. Would it be more powerful as part of a mid edit along with perhaps a setting shot of the entire wood first? I am thinking about this all the time when I sit down to write, where do I begin the edit. Do I start with a tight close up, almost a cut into a characters eyeball and then pull back and deliver the wider scene or do I need to set the scene first and the zoom into the specifics. There are thousands of ways to tell a story but it seems that expectations of what the graphic novel is for me and its close allegiance with a cinematic feel, makes certain rules hard to break.
I am a fan of Samuel Beckett, indeed I think he has come the closest to explaining the human condition along with Francis Bacon (painter) . I have read everything he has written and thus I am familiar with his uniquely non narrative style. I have become used to being tossed into somewhere and following instinctively the way he wants to lead me into his world. I cannot come to his stories with known paths. I must allow myself to go with the feel of his words. This has always appealed to me as I feel literature is one of the only arts that has few great exponents of what one might call abstract style. Readers tend to need an overarching narrative, which isn’t necessary in other art forms. Finnegan’s Wake by Joyce is a fine examples of the difficulty of non narrative works in literature. People simply would not tackle such a book unless they were involved in some form of literary scholarship. I have read it and I have also listened closely to John Cage’s musical interpretation (sound works well in the abstract) and I love them, but they are hard work. My influences in cinema are also non narrative and primarily European. I am currently watching Jane Arden’s films (one of Britain’s finest experimental women film makers who sadly took her own life at 52) and her work also shows how she has used her chosen medium to speak in her own unique way.
So still images for graphic novels present their own real set of problems in telling stories, this is especially true if you are personally interested in non narrative art forms. I am not sure if I am hitting the wall of my own censorship. I see other graphic novels that inspire me but at the same time they also intimidate me and they act on my subconscious so that I am filtering my own ideas through these high expectations. I have said in a previous post this is very damaging as it is the barrier that can prevent one from doing. It makes it hard to develop story telling and a graphic style of your own when one sees graphic novels whose style and sense you love. I come from a love of abstract art literature and music as I said and it is difficult to lose these influences that make me as a person and at then try to tell a story in another medium with a coherent narrative structure. I have an awful lot to learn. I still believe in doing things swiftly and trying and moving forward rather than giving in and simply replicating what I see.
I am at heart a photographer these are experiments in something other than complex studio lighting and working with models and so forth. I want to explore the graphic novel medium and also encourage others to come to it as a way of telling stories and not necessarily be frightened of doing it differently or inventing their own methods of creating. One also has to be aware that to translate one’s love of things like Bergman and Beckett into a graphic novel sensibility may of course lead ultimately to disappointment but surely trying is better than not. I devote about 40 minutes a day to the image and blog posts and so I feel this aids my writing too as I get used to putting together about 1000 words quickly and I get into the discipline of writing about 12,000 words a week here and elsewhere and I am now starting to find that much easier and equally losing my fear of the blank page.
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