words don't mean nutin', korean cinema
June 9th 2007 17:58
having just completed one of my korean cinema projects, of which was to create a 20 minute short film, the best part of the semester happened last night. as much fun as it was to create these films with groups of truly creative people, it is more fun to spend four hours watching the fruits of our collective labour. it was a truly great night and a really great chance to see who the next big names in the korean cinema world are going to be.
my korean language skills have improved notably since my arrival here, however i still have major problems when it comes to listening to it. what korean i do know is spoken at record speeds by the koreans, and still leaves me spinning for at least five minutes - even when they do simply ask me what i would like to order! so needless to say watching korean films without subtitles is a more than hard chore.
whilst watching all of these films last night, i realised that i could understand what was going on really easily without actually being able to understand the dialogue (apart from one which was heavily dependent on the words). it starting me thinking as to why i was understanding them so well.
as with general conversation, cinema relies on so much more than just dialogue. let's just think about the aural stuff on its own first. we can have a blend of ambience - to set the location, time, and a small amount of emotion; music - to definitely set the mood and maybe heighten location; fx - allow the viewer to be absorbed into another world completely if done well; and lastly the dialogue - even if the words don't make sense to the viewer can still understand what is trying to be communicated by the tone or level at which the actor speaks. and that's just the audio!
then comes the imagery. without talking for days about this, you can imagine that framing, lighting, and movement are only some of the components that make up this component of film making. acting also plays a major part (obviously) but not so much in only the dialogue. looks and movements tend to enhance the script far more than the words do. there are so many more attributes also that make up movie making - far too many to attempt to discuss in this blog entry.
after watching 10 films, non of which were in english, but being able to understand all but one, i have really come to the decision that words hold so little impact in communication. communication is an all encompassing process that stems from the background knowledge that we bring to the table, and only holds the meaning that we give it. how we portray that to the listener is the real trick.
thanks to u.t.a.s. for the image
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