Lately these paintings by Brian Gormley have led me to thoughts on structure, specifically film structure. I have so many little stories and scenes that I have been trying to piece together, and it all comes down to one big look at how to create structure. It was the black lines in these paintings that caught my eye, how they hold and link all the separate colors together. The lines are all different, sometimes very thin, sometimes thicker than the color chunks themselves, sometimes obscuring and almost obscured. I'm have to find my film's own "black line" since there isn't one central story or topic that can hold it all together. I guess Chris Marker uses voiceover or text as his black line when his films don't have a central or innate story.
A film teacher recently suggested that I study architecture to study structure. I should go and wander through famous temples and buildings to consider how things are ordered and built, she said. I wonder how being inside/outside a three dimensional space and being inside/outside a film on an editing timeline is similar. I don't feel the same when I'm editing a film as I do standing in a structural space. Perhaps this is my problem. I see that both buildings and films have an entrance, a place to be in, passages from one space to another, staircases and an exit.
A good friend of mine once explained that a good entrance to a building has three parts: a beginning, a place to stop and sit or rest, and an end where you actually step through into the next space. I was fascinated by the concept at the time, but never consciously connected it to the beginning of a film.
