Timecode (movie)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Timecode |
| Original title | Timecode (also: Time Code) |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2000 |
| length | 93 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 0 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Mike Figgis |
| script | Mike Figgis |
| production | Mike Figgis Annie Stewart Dustin Bernard Gary Marcus |
| music |
Arlen Figgis Mike Figgis Anthony Marinelli |
| camera | Patrick Alexander Stewart |
| occupation | |
| |
Timecode is a film by Mike Figgis that plays with the visual representation of different, simultaneous storylines. The film image is completely divided into four split screens , each of which is the uninterrupted image of one of four cameras. The tone is also divided into four different actions or perspectives. Seeing the film initially poses a challenge to perception, but by highlighting a “sound perspective”, the viewer is guided through what initially appears chaotic.
action
The action takes place in Los Angeles , mostly in a film production company and the surrounding area. Rose is Lauren Hathaway's friend, she wants to get a role in a casting. Lauren is rich and very jealous . She accompanies Rose for a chat in her limousine. Because she suspects that Rose is having an affair, she spies on it on her cell phone. Rose denies her relationship with the alcohol-addicted, choleric film producer Alex Green, from whom she expects a role in his next film. Alex's wife Emma, in turn, will leave him on the same day and take home an unknown woman from a bookstore. While Lauren overhears in the car outside, Alex and Rose have sex in a screening room of the production company.
After Alex Rose rudely reveals that there is no role for her, another producer becomes aware of her and offers her an engagement. Health fan Quentin hands out massages and good advice. Alex, who has meanwhile been abandoned by Emma, becomes self-pity and insults Renee and other of his employees and colleagues in a production meeting. When Lauren storms into the meeting in anger and meets Alex, she shoots him out of jealousy.
The digital camera technology and its effects
The title timecode refers to the timestamp that can be found on every piece of film and enables the post-production of the films to reassemble synchronized recordings from different perspectives or at different times on the editing table, e.g. B. to a shot-counter-shot sequence. Figgis made this technique a principle in his film, almost experimentally, since it was not previously available in this form. His goal was to shoot a film from start to finish from four different perspectives and without a break, and to have told a story at the end. A story that you should not only be able to transfer, especially when you see it repeatedly, but actually look at it from different perspectives, and the whole of which would ultimately be more than the sum of the individual quadrants.
The actors, technicians and everyone else involved in the film required a completely different way of working than they were used to from other productions. Firstly, the continuous shooting of the film differs, at least it is 93 minutes long, strongly from the usual time spans of a few minutes per scene, so the ability to concentrate, especially of the film actors, was challenged in a completely different way than usual. Second, it was not possible due to the continuity To cut scenes. If even one of the four teams made a serious mistake, that version could not be used. Repeating a bad scene was just as impossible as cutting together the best elements from different perspectives. This was explicitly prevented by Figgis by asking the actors for a new outfit every day of shooting. Third, there were no fixed dialogues because the structure that the technology provided was too rigid for an equally strict script liability to work; there would inevitably have been a conflict between these two elements.
The script was reduced to a few instructions and above all to certain points in time when different protagonists met in the same place from different perspectives or came into contact with one another in different ways. These times had to be strictly adhered to, which is why all actors, for example, wore absolutely synchronous watches. Instead of a precise script, there was a kind of score for the recording team that was recorded on music paper. The story itself had to be advanced in a certain direction, but the exact way in which this happened was not specified, it was allowed to improvise.
The four perspectives of the film are not assigned to four specific characters. On the contrary, the cameras sometimes follow one protagonist, sometimes the other. Some protagonists 'wander' from one section of the screen to the other. B. in the upper left quadrant to disappear from the picture in between and then reappear in another quadrant. If several protagonists meet, the camera perspective may seem to spontaneously follow someone different than before. A single telephone conversation can be filmed from the perspective of the caller and that of the person called , similar to, for example, in the film Harry and Sally , but additionally from the perspective of another observer who watches one of the two characters telephoning during the last Perspective is dedicated to a figure who is doing something completely different elsewhere.
The film was shot 15 times in total, in different versions. Actors and technicians were always better coordinated, which can also be seen in the astonishingly low number of camera errors. There are hardly more sightings of crew or equipment in the film than in conventional single-perspective films. The version, which as a film in the cinema came, is the last to be added. The entire shooting time was only two weeks, more than one version a day was impossible. Shot on conventional analog cameras, the footage alone would have swallowed up several times the relatively small budget. The film was only possible in this form thanks to the increasingly widespread digital recording technology in recent years .
Reviews and reception
With timecode , the story and the means by which the story is told take a back seat to the technique of recording. As a result, this is a film with a strong visual impact and, in comparison, a poor narrative, valued by some for its innovative nature and freshness, and scolded by others for the relative flatness of the characters and the 'banality' of the story. Indeed, previous Figgis films go deeper into the characters, particularly Leaving Las Vegas , his most successful film to date , which has received multiple Academy Award nominations, including one for directing. Many also find watching the film exhausting and confusing, it is not necessarily easy to follow the plot. The formal design of the film deterred the majority of the moviegoers from the start, so the film was not a big box-office success.
The idea of shooting a film consistently in actual time is not new either: Alfred Hitchcock already aimed for this in his cocktail for a corpse . Back then, without the digital technology of today, the film roll had to be changed after a certain time, which was concealed in the finished film by skillful editing. The pairing of this real-time concept with four different image levels was new. The implementation of this idea has brought Figgis a lot of praise and recognition, precisely because this film is actually unique and avant-garde of its kind. The story and the actors, flat or not, take part in a kind of perfectly coordinated ballet. The possibility of choosing between the different sound levels in the DVD version and thus being able to mix the different perspectives of the film yourself is a novelty.
Awards
The film was nominated in 2001 for the DVD Exclusive Award in the category “Best Audio Commentary”.
Web links
- Timecode in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Timecode at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- Detailed criticism in the TAZ
- A review of the film on jump-cut.de