I'm deliberately looking at almost any film or TV show that explicitly endorses or promotes the act of watching a screen. Is it that screens are so ubiquitous that films are bound to reflect that or is it that the sort of people who are likely to make films are more likely to prioritise films and TV shows as a significant cultural influence? At first my initial influences on the practical side were youtube videos, taking footage from films and TV and recontextualising it. The practice is so widespread that I started thinking about creative works that directly use or are explicitly influenced by other films or TV. I’m also looking at works that explore narrative loops, most particularly the work of Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation and Synecdoche, New York.
Synecdoche in particular creates a loop where the real lead is recreating his own life using actor in performance art and thus because his entire life is creating this work that’s what it becomes, a repetitive loop. However the difference is that whilst in the film the mimics find ways to be different the shows I'm looking at will try to be different but still be limited by the habits of the medium. Structurally it mimics something like Inception with TV shows replacing dreams. I’m in effect trying to create a theoretical tree of influence, altering footage to make it visually practical and explicit. If in Hot Fuzz Simon Pegg and Nick Frost were originally watching Point Break it’s hard to illustrate through that film what the influences of Point Break were. If I switch it to Beavis and Butthead I can demonstrate the idea of the chain of media influences more clearly. It’s like being able to show consumption as an essential influence in creation, but also a restrictive one since replication of ideas is less creative that something that is original in and of itself.
Synecdoche's Caden oversees the actor playing himself
Synecdoche in particular creates a loop where the real lead is recreating his own life using actor in performance art and thus because his entire life is creating this work that’s what it becomes, a repetitive loop. However the difference is that whilst in the film the mimics find ways to be different the shows I'm looking at will try to be different but still be limited by the habits of the medium. Structurally it mimics something like Inception with TV shows replacing dreams. I’m in effect trying to create a theoretical tree of influence, altering footage to make it visually practical and explicit. If in Hot Fuzz Simon Pegg and Nick Frost were originally watching Point Break it’s hard to illustrate through that film what the influences of Point Break were. If I switch it to Beavis and Butthead I can demonstrate the idea of the chain of media influences more clearly. It’s like being able to show consumption as an essential influence in creation, but also a restrictive one since replication of ideas is less creative that something that is original in and of itself.
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