Week Five Homework

Here is the homework from Week Five, pretty much* verbatim: 

Ideas for Non-Linear Narratives [NLNs]: 

Think of how you would approach these:

1. Presenting two narrator version of the same events. (One an ‘objective 3^rd person narrator, and the other,  a 1^st person unreliable narrator). What camera techniques would you use to differentiate the two ‘voices’? Would you use other visuals  such as tone, lighting, colour …to help distinguish the two from each other)
2. The unfolding of a story and memories of a similar or previous event that may have impacted the ‘present’ one
3. A surreal, esher-esque place, outside of the realms of physics…a dreamscape… or an endless continuity/ micro/macro space. 

*"Pretty much" meaning: it is verbatim in the sense that it is lifted directly from a course slide, but not in the sense that I don't think we are meant to just think about these approaches, but are meant to actually try them out. Or at least, that is what I am doing. 

So, in response to number one what I've done is to give characters from Shakespeare's Tempest, Caliban (and, later, Ariel - watch this space) a camera, in Caliban's case an Instax Mini (what harm can he do with that??), and imagine he'd taken photographs representative of his world, the world in which Shakespeare's play is set. I've dressed it up a bit of course, thus: 

WORKMENS' BUNGLE 

CHANGES HISTORY

It isn’t often we can say there has been a discovery that, overnight, changes everything we know about the history of humanity’s development. However, in a small Elizabethan cottage on a warm spring morning somewhere in rural England earlier this year just such an event occurred. Because of the monumental historical significance of this occurrence, because it changes so much of our understanding of ourselves and mankind’s development, it is only now being acknowledged publicly for the first time. 

Exact details are being kept secret, but sometime in March or April a misjudged swing of a workman’s sledgehammer left a group of builders red-faced as they worked in the living room of the cottage, bringing down a supporting wall by mistake. Rushing out of the tiny two-bed for fear that it was collapsing, when the dust had settled they nervously tiptoed back inside to survey the damage, only to discover a collection of objects that hadn’t been seen in 400 years, a collection of objects that were going to change our understanding of what it means to be human. These objects have turned out to be as significant to our understanding of our history as the excavation of Sutton Hoo, the opening of the Tomb of Tutankhamen, or Galileo’s proof that the earth revolved around the sun. Indeed, their discovery is perhaps even more significant than any of these.  

Whilst the location of the cottage is being kept secret until historians and archeologists have finished excavating the site, some of the objects have been verified as belonging to the early years of the 17th Century and are now being shown to you, the Public, for the very first time. Most incredibly of all, they include objects conclusively proving that not only did Shakespeare have first-hand knowledge of the island in his late play The Tempest, not only did he meet some or all of the characters involved, but even more incredibly they turn our understanding of the history of manufacturing on it’s head. For, hidden behind that wattle and daub wall were, amongst other amazing treasures, a series of photographs, some taken with what appears to have been a primitive polaroid-type instant camera, on the back of which are inscriptions which, in Shakespeare’s own hand, indicate who took them and when, and they provide insight into not only The Tempest but into the real-life characters themselves. They are all dated between 1600 and 1609, which of course is about the time Shakespeare started his famous play, and short excerpts from the finished work are to be found on the back of some of the pictures. 

It isn’t known how these treasures came to be behind the living room wall of this anonymous cottage deep in the heart of England, nor has it yet been fully considered or explained just how fundamentally this discovery is going to change our understanding of human intellectual and manufacturing history. However, we have been lucky enough to be loaned these priceless treasures and are able to share them with you here. The inscriptions on the back are reproduced in full. We hope you enjoy them and share our excitement in imagining the impact they are going to have on the history of photography and on our understanding of Shakespeare and his world.  

The Staff Team

Little Throxton-under-Marsh Museum

November 2022. 

TL:DR? I'm pretending that both Caliban and Ariel had access to cameras in the 16naughties. The first set I'm exhibiting at the Museum are by Caliban; some by Ariel are to follow. I had thought that Caliban was going to be the unreliable narrator but in the unfolding of the exercise I think I've come to trust him more than Ariel, and certainly more than Prospero. Here are a selection of Caliban's pictures: 

No photographer he, but they do provide some insight into the workings of Caliban's mind. I'd draw your attention to number 7 which is thought to show a romantic, delicate, though of course quite kitsch picture of a five or six year old Miranda playing with a stick for a staff, perhaps in imitation of her father: for Caliban to have taken a picture such as this means that perhaps he wasn't as unreliable as Prospero would have liked us to believe? And in the picture maybe Miranda is wishing she could conjure up her mother or a little human playmate - relying on the absent-minded Prospero or the frankly frightening Caliban, or perhaps the strange, unknowable Ariel, must have been a difficult experience for the traumatised girl and it is no wonder that she latched on to the seemingly miraculous Ferdinand the moment he came along, himself half out of his wits owing to the storm Ariel brewed up at Prospero's behest: "Hell is empty and all the devils are here." Getting over this fright, he is then lied to by Ariel who tells him that "full fathom five thy father lies", his eyes now made of coral etc etc... Poor lad.