Diary of an Artist: Tom

Tom Cowan



Entry # 1: Aug 4th 2010I am travelling in far North Western Australia called the Kimberleys. The Aboriginal people have had a living cullture here for 40,000 years. They were dispossessed of their land for pastoral use and now because of the vast mineral deposits here. Still, there remains the knowledge they can pass on to us of how to read the land and spirually align with it. Now in Australia the best visual artists, dancers, films and pop musicians are Aborigne, how mad that they are the most dispossessed.

Entry # 2: Sept 3rd 2010

Here's a thought I had recently:

I see movies as detective stories: each new shot reveals a clue (or
red-herring). Each camera move reveals a new view. The nature of the frame
is to conceal all that is outside it but as the frame moves we begin to
discover what was hidden. The story is the search to decipher the mystery
just beyond the frame, beyond the surface, to find the truth.
And how does a character react when they find out the secret.

Will Red Riding Hood discover what she wants when she travels to Grandma's house?
When Red Riding Hood is confronted by daunting obstacles to her goal, how
does she act? We detect what sort of person a character is by how they act.
And we badly want to know how she will measure up while she struggles to
discover what is hidden. The strength of the characters' reactions (the
power of the movie) depends on the demands made on the characters. An
example of a big demand is: 'Love me or I'll die.' When a character makes
that demand of another character - it grips us. Funny or tragic, we must
know the reaction of the other character. When this is set up well, the
movie grips the audience.


The other elements to a movie: the beauty of the images, the sound, editing
or form of the story or even the 'likableness' of a character also give us
pleasure when we watch a movie.


Tom

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