I saw There Is Still Time...Brother in September as part of the TBA festival. This first film gives you an idea of what it is, narratively speaking. What it can't give you is an idea of what it's like when someone in the audience is actually manipulating the frame. The second film kind of gets at that.
There is still time .. brother from UNSW iCinema Centre on Vimeo
EMPAC Opening - There Is Still Time.. Brother (The Wooster Group) - Troy, NY - 08, Oct from Sébastien B. on Vimeo.
I'm usually frustrated by projects that bill themselves as immersive experiences. I go in excited and quickly discover how limited the experience is. The makers underestimate the audience's intelligence and creativity. My default is to expose and focus on the particular way such a project fails to anticipate and cater to my singular experience, which is kind of childish and petulant and a wee bit self-righteous and entitled, admittedly.
That didn't happen with There Is Still Time Brother because the film lays out the rules at the beginning and defines the limits of the experience. Scott Shepherd explains how the technology works, what it allows them to create, and how it's an opportunity to give up control (which he admits is hard) to an outside director. But then he qualifies: the film offers the illusion of choice. Obviously the choices have already been made because "we all know there's nothing outside the frame," nothing relevant to what's happening in the film. That upfront acknowledgment allowed me to accept the film on its own terms as opposed to pushing against (because There is Still Time...Brother is an anti-war film, so where better to start than by disarming the audience) or faulting it for failing to deliver the experience I felt I should have.
One person sits in the chair that controls the window. They're the director or since it is an anti-war film, let's call them "the Decider." They decide what's in the frame, but they don't control what is heard or how the narrative unfolds.
It's a rich experience and it takes more than one viewing to really take it in. After two viewings, I was picking up more, seeing more, or seeing things I hadn't seen at all the first time. But I would still have liked to watch it again. The second time we saw it, there were fewer people. My friend, Susan, sat in the chair and took control. The obvious temptation here is to spin the chair and she did and I would have probably done it for a lot longer, a lot longer, because, well, that's me.
But I made the choice to stay out of the chair, to not take control or direct. Mainly, because that's a more comfortable, familiar thing for me. I wanted to observe the audience and having made that choice, I didn't really think about it - or feel a need to be in the chair. I was not alone in this. No one wanted to sit in the chair this time. When people took the seat, it looked like they only did it because they felt obligated (or maybe I'm just reading that into it). But there was a reluctance and a sort of "okay I'll do this, but I really don't want to" look that people gave when I'd look at them as they walked up. But maybe this was their opportunity? They really did want control, but they wanted to assume it passively, didn't want to appear so nakedly ambitious.
And there was a period of about five minutes or maybe more where the frame rested on this film of Scott Shepherd's eye surgery, until the guy sitting next to me adjusted the chair. I looked at him and whispered "thank you," amazed at how disturbed I'd been and how I hadn't realized it until he moved the frame.
Okay. Once I moved the chair from the stool where I sat. My favorite position was splitting the frame by putting it on the entrance into the 360 - which meant that when people came in, they were part of the film.
There Is Still Time...Brother references On The Beach, which I've never seen. This clip plays on a computer screen and Kate Valk and Scott Shepherd act out the scene towards the end of the film.
What's surprising to me is how affecting the content was, especially the content that wasn't as easily heard - the snippets of conversation or speech that filtered through when I was looking at something else or when an image appeared on the one of the computer screens and it would kind of get taken for granted or lost in the mix of everything else. Eventually what's being said filtered through and would I find myself thinking how relevant it was to the War on Terror and then that thought would distract me long enough to miss what was said next before the entire image disappeared. Those moments were not repeated, while the more inconsequential action was repeated several times. It started to make me doubt what I had heard and then I'd get distracted again by something else or I'd just enjoy watching Scott Shepherd or Kate Valk or that guy with the smooth, quiet voice talking about the French and Indian War.
I've been thinking about the film ever since and it's been especially inspiring as I work on this new play. I'm conscious of layering images and bringing small details into focus. It's very different from how I've written before and feels more like painting or processing film than writing. I've also been consuming an insane amount of images - what I've shared on the blog is only the tip of the iceberg (some might say, thankfully).
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