My premise here is that female gaze barely exists in media, and where it does, in exists in opposition to (in a space empty of) male gaze.
I will start with some background reading. I refer back to these a lot and have learned tons from them.
Bonehandled Knife at Tumblr has a series of amazing posts, focusing on the film Mad Max: Fury Road, and its cinematography.
Mad Max: Center Frame
Eyes Up Here: Composition and Gaze
Mad Max and the Male Gaze (Mad Max eschews the male gaze while other popular fandom films do not).
it’s a choice each time to frame women in one way and men in another.
Composition Choices
Another Tumblr post from Superhuman Disasters:
Filmmaking Intent vs. Theory
This gets at the training and tradition of film making. Some "male gaze" techniques may be so ingrained as to be unintentional.
The 2 hour making-of video with cinematographer John Seale beyond confirms this. Seale is obviously a true artist, but he repeatedly mentioned his frustration with the “on the nose” rule, because it undercut his instinct for rule-of-third framing and more focus on the beautiful women in the back of the cab. Not because he was intentionally trying to be sexist, but because that’s how he’d been trained, both as a filmmaker and a man.
100% of art is manipulation (of the funnest kind) of what the audience receives. We choose where to draw your eye in visual art, where to draw your ear in musical art, where to draw your curiosity in written art, where to draw your emotional response in all of them. It is ALL part of a plan - every bit of it. The better the clarity of purpose, the better the impact of the art.
So... that is quite a bit of reading. BUT I HAVE MORE.
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thingswithwings is brilliant and makes brilliant vids and has things to say about what she notices when makings vids.
Many thoughts On Manpain
Gunn and Sayid's manpains are explained to the audience via the camera saying "some white men are sad." Because I guess if there wasn't a white man there, we wouldn't have anyone to identify with.
Briefly, in this post:
The Making of the Yuletide Vid
1) We learned that people of colour are actually filmed differently, in terms of framing, than white people, or at least this was our anecdotal experience; it was often easy to get two white characters, especially two white male characters, in the same frame, but people of colour are by comparison much more isolated, cinematographically - often appearing in one-shots.
And in these tweets which I have storfied, in whichthingswithwings and others talk about the challenge of trying to vid for women and minority characters:
I will start with some background reading. I refer back to these a lot and have learned tons from them.
Bonehandled Knife at Tumblr has a series of amazing posts, focusing on the film Mad Max: Fury Road, and its cinematography.
Mad Max: Center Frame
Eyes Up Here: Composition and Gaze
Mad Max and the Male Gaze (Mad Max eschews the male gaze while other popular fandom films do not).
it’s a choice each time to frame women in one way and men in another.
Composition Choices
Another Tumblr post from Superhuman Disasters:
Filmmaking Intent vs. Theory
This gets at the training and tradition of film making. Some "male gaze" techniques may be so ingrained as to be unintentional.
The 2 hour making-of video with cinematographer John Seale beyond confirms this. Seale is obviously a true artist, but he repeatedly mentioned his frustration with the “on the nose” rule, because it undercut his instinct for rule-of-third framing and more focus on the beautiful women in the back of the cab. Not because he was intentionally trying to be sexist, but because that’s how he’d been trained, both as a filmmaker and a man.
100% of art is manipulation (of the funnest kind) of what the audience receives. We choose where to draw your eye in visual art, where to draw your ear in musical art, where to draw your curiosity in written art, where to draw your emotional response in all of them. It is ALL part of a plan - every bit of it. The better the clarity of purpose, the better the impact of the art.
So... that is quite a bit of reading. BUT I HAVE MORE.
thingswithwings is brilliant and makes brilliant vids and has things to say about what she notices when makings vids.Many thoughts On Manpain
Gunn and Sayid's manpains are explained to the audience via the camera saying "some white men are sad." Because I guess if there wasn't a white man there, we wouldn't have anyone to identify with.
Briefly, in this post:
The Making of the Yuletide Vid
1) We learned that people of colour are actually filmed differently, in terms of framing, than white people, or at least this was our anecdotal experience; it was often easy to get two white characters, especially two white male characters, in the same frame, but people of colour are by comparison much more isolated, cinematographically - often appearing in one-shots.
And in these tweets which I have storfied, in which
thingswithwings and others talk about the challenge of trying to vid for women and minority characters:
