School of Film and TV - Theses
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Item“Kill Bigfoot”: constructing a cinematic relationship between character, the city and nature( 2012)The purpose of my research is to explore the relationship between representations of cinematic space and character in dramatic fiction film. Specifically, my focus is on representations of city dystopias and natural landscapes in dramas that investigate human nature. This dissertation is an examination of the issues encountered in drawing from this research during the writing of Kill Bigfoot, a scenario whose narrative takes place across these two worlds: the urban dystopia of a future New York, and the natural word of the Australian wilderness. It includes the motivation, influences, interests and methodology that guided my writing process, and a discussion of the core ideas that underpin my work. The qualitative, practice-led research undertaken during my masters consisted of analysing films that have used representations of the natural world and cities to explore the human condition, as well as the study of texts on film, philosophy, religion and myth. Picnic at Hanging Rock, Blade Runner, Brazil, Children of Men and Taxi Driver were focal points for my research, as were the films of Terrence Malick and Werner Herzog. My research regarding representations of dystopias on screen inevitably included work on cities and urbanity on screen, from both internal (the experience of the inhabitants of these spaces) and external (the design of these spaces) perspectives. Thomas Hobbes on human nature, and then George Simmel, Henri Lefebvre and Marc Augé on cities, urbanity, modernity and post-modernity, were critical to my research and to the development of Part One of Kill Bigfoot. Turning to the natural world of Part Two, the ideas of Martin Lefebvre were most influential. Friedrich Nietzsche and the various Vienna Schools of psychoanalysis shaped my understanding of my protagonist Bill’s driving need, which was the substantive link between the two parts of Kill Bigfoot, his inner world that is at the heart of the drama, and our own world. My study ultimately considers the interrelationship between the dramatisation of character, cinematic space and ideas of human nature in film dystopias. The research indicates that not all filmmakers explore this relationship in the development of their scripts or the use of settings in their films. However, for those filmmakers who do so through the use of dystopic cities, it often expresses a point of view on the competing forces within us that shape the world, and how the same world shapes us. Understanding our urban point of view (or “gaze”) required Bill to enter the counterpoint of his dystopic city – the natural landscape of Australia. My study therefore also involves observations about the representation of the natural world in cinema and its relationship to our inner nature.