Plot vs Emplotment - Testing the narrative concepts of aesthetics and authenticity in the documentary short Far Away Land.

Deirdre O’Toole

doi:10.37390/ac.v0i0.48

Abstract

This paper recounts the research and production of Far Away Land, a short documentary that uses recreations to illustrate a woman’s memory of drowning. The images used to illustrate the narrator’s experience will be interrogated to establish how they might enhance or take from the original story. The idea of plot vs emplotment will be explored in this paper to explore how the aesthetics and visualisations of recreations reflect, compliment and contrast with voice-over narrative. This paper also investigates the relationship between linking visual imagery to the narrator in the absence of an on-camera interview. Placing this short film in the lineage of documentaries that use recreation the efficacy of this style will be discussed in terms of delivering an authentic and aesthetic documentary film.

Highlights

Far Away Land is a documentary about a woman who recounts how she was swimming off Nantucket Island at a beach unfamiliar to her, when she became caught by the tides and felt unable to get back to the shore
There is a tension in all documentary film production between the competing forces of aesthetics and authenticity which were manifest here as a struggle between the desire to make a visually beautiful film that was true to the narrator’s story and the physiological process of drowning
Using the concept of plot vs emplotment from narrative theory which delineates between the plot, which is the story being told, and emplotment which is how it is visualised, I have used the word ‘plot’ to delineate Catherine Redmond’s story and ‘emplotment’ to describe the visual storytelling that accompanies her narration

Summary

Introduction

Far Away Land is a documentary about a woman who recounts how she was swimming off Nantucket Island at a beach unfamiliar to her, when she became caught by the tides and felt unable to get back to the shore. The translation of a factual story to the screen is inherently conflicted as the camera cannot perfectly capture what is in front of the lens without manipulation of some sort by the filmmaker; either by their choice of composition, in the editing process or, more intricately, in the choice of visual representation, reenactments and the visual metaphors used in order to have a desired impact for the viewer (Nichols, 1991, Hill and Church Gibson, 1998) This conflict can be seen as a clash between authenticity and aesthetics or of plot vs emplotment. When exploring the links between authenticity and aesthetics in a postmodern context, the idea of absolute authenticity is negligible

The Sublime

Film Screening

Conclusion