Eva Yojimbo wrote:(In a totally straight and manly way, of course)
Now you hurt me even more, you told me it was deeper than that!
Eva Yojimbo wrote:Xard wrote:anyway, it touched upon the strange ultraexperimental formalism: you've wondered a lot about how it and content could possibly mesh together, remember?
Do tell.
It wasn't very elaborate as it was only small part of interview, but basically it "acknowledged" the Godardian "Third Aesthetic" (Godard wasn't mentioned and of course that word wasn't used). It also mentioned the very Annolike experimentation for experimentation's sake too. Anno often took the "how could this utterly mundane scene be made interesting via form" route: the one he has used ever since Gunbuster actually.
b2"Godard":
Movie's form is build like that precisely to make the contents even more disgusting. It was pretty blatantly obvious when Anno elaborated on his camera schemes and wacky angles when he put the camera on his scrotch area and then we had clips from L&P utilizing such angles mixed in.
If you think about it the "leery" camerawork is in fact far more prominent in first half, before shit starts to hit the fan: this leery camerawork & often nauseating swirl of it is there precisely to provide contrast to contents featuring "everyday life of normal schoolgirls".
Combinations of this disturbing and nauseating (let's admit it: everyone who sees first 30 minutes or so for the first time gets a bit dizzy in the head
) form with build-in contrast to actual contents articulates L&P's themes and is also case of foreshadowing of movie's latter happenings. The wild, dizzy cameraruns physically nauseate the viewer to heighten L&P's impact.
Rest of camerawork that's wacky goes under categories
a) to make film more interesting (for example the micro owen shot is certainly memorable and many feet shots are just part of Anno's style to rhyme scenes etc.)
b) it mimics the so called "girls shooting" - way teenage girls took pics of themselves during the day (I guess we actually see this happening in scene with Debussy playing). For example I suspect some of the really intrusive camera *thrusts* close to their faces when they are e.g eating are supposed to mimic this style of "extreme photography".
c) the camera "stalks" girls in their every day life, giving the film cinema verite & documentary feel - note how when girls are walking in the street camera often keeps going on for a moment after girls have left the frame. This forces focus on camera itself which is overall very lively and draws lots of attention to itself.
I guess this "drawing attention" is also part of Anno's metafictional/self-referential cinema style: NGE of course is in very own class but for example in KK Anno
delibarately brings in storyboards sometimes and in ep 16 the "repeated action" is cleverly given far more nyances by with each repeat act of animation process is deconstructed further. And then of course there's live action footage during end credits & preview section consists of seyuus or va's reading their characters lines, showing the "behind the scenes" workings instead of animation for next ep.
In Love&Pop there's also that "dreamworld"/Warehouse which is all metafiction through and through.
In Shiki Jitsu camera's space is often invaded violently (& it gets stared at in Ozulike manner to shoot scenes for example) and couple of times Anno fools us into thinking footage we see is The Director shooting the girl - which is revealed to be false as Director enters the screen with his own video camera then.
And then of course there's the whole movie within movie, mixing up HD camera footage & usual film footage etc. in SJ...
lol rambling
I'm going to watch L&P again tomorrow to "investigate further". But indeed it looks like we underestimated Anno with that film by declaring him "wacky"
It's quite interesting. The disorienting (I think that was the word you were looking for) camerawork is certainly one of the most outstanding features and it definitely makes sense that it provides such a contrast with the "normality" of these girls' lives. I might have more substance to add later.