Apr 25, 2009

Birds-Eye View


Lately I've been coincidentally seeing reoccurring images in birds-eye view. A few weeks ago me and a friend of mine were sharing tales of our different encounters with various animals. She went on to explain that in her childhood her father had left a can of birdseed in the garage, which resulted in mice camping out in the can. Day after day the mice would continue to eat the birdseed becoming what she called 'morbidly obese.' The seed began to disappear and the mice were left at the bottom with no way to escape and a lack of physical energy from being overweight.

While my friend continued to tell this story(sketching on a notebook paper) she said that the only thing that springs to mind about all her witness to this is--- she faces the sketch towards me to what I think is a circle around two tear drop shapes with tails.
Of course I say, " interesting choice of birds-eye view."
Although I thought the story was intriguing, I was more intrigued by the fact that of every which way you could sketch a memory of mice, she chose to sketch it in birds-eye view.

So to continue my end of the story...
Sitting in philosophy and film class, which I despised more than anything last semester, a student mentions the sheer horrific subject matter in Dogville, without being a spoiler of course.

I think 5 or so movies have been spoiled due to taking this subject.

After hearing this I decided it was time for me to force all my friends and I to view Dogville.
10 seconds into the film the screen produces a large birds eye view of the town, Dogville. Smirking I turn to my friend from earlier, who has also realized this coincidence.

After viewing the film it gave me an immense amount of guilt for being American. Well I guess that's why I ran away to Australia. We then all decided to dive into the special features, as film students often do. Now I have heard that the director, Lars Von tier is an interesting and over demanding character to work with and the special features gave me no doubt that he is. Von Tier forces his actors to live in an isolated studio located in Sweden only given a confessional box for a sanctuary. Who would have guessed that Von Tier was big brother? With no where to go and the amount of stress put on the actors and crew, you are sure to get some quality entertainment.

All I'm saying is that they should've known what they were in for from the birds-eye view.

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