How High School (1968) by Frederick Wiseman, creates an evocation of ‘place’, ‘space’ and ‘people’. ...
High School (1968) by Frederick Wiseman
“High School is so familiar and so extraordinary evocative that the feeling of empathy with the students floods over us. ... ”
The film I have chosen is ‘High School’ 1968 by Frederick Wiseman. In order to explore how the film creates an evocation of ‘place’, ‘space’ and ‘time’ I will begin by looking at how Wiseman was able to produce ‘High School’. Wiseman at this time made a lot of films focusing of social institutions. ... From ‘Direct Cinema’ came different types of documentary filmmaking including filmmakers such as Robert Drew whose films where focused more upon situations of high drama or high-stake. ... ‘High School’ was one of the institutions that can effectively evoke memories or feelings of anybody who went to school and is very familiar to the American audience who have been to any American high school institute. ...
Wiseman doesn’t attempt to bring reality to the screen with his films. He spent a lot of time in the ‘High School’ and with 40 hours of footage, he created an eighty-minute film, so the film is going to be far from objective, as Wiseman had to make choices not only in the production but also mainly in the postproduction, in the edit. ... ” Wiseman has said in the past that his “films, though based on real events, are constructed fictions presenting a theory about the material being used” . So Wiseman is creating this reality with a certain theory and attitude towards the subject. ... Wiseman is creating a reality the audience can create meaning from, so he has structured the film in a way that its language and form can evoke certain memories and emotions.
The experience of the audience is down to Wiseman and his choices. The structure of the film creates certain evocations. When watching the film the audience is given what Wiseman has chosen to show, Wiseman is creating overall evocations for the audience who watch ‘High School’. ... In the film the characters are believable, and the audience can immediately read and relate to those characters but only in how Wiseman has chosen to show those characters. ... ” The film is showing the school churning out American youths through hard militant methods of education. Wiseman, through his structure was trying to represent the high school system at this time in the late 60’s. When Wiseman is confronted about the way he constructs his films, he simply states that it “is both a theory of and a report on what I have learned”
The basic structure and one of the overall themes of the film is how it’s made to look like a ‘day in the life’ of this average high school. At the beginning of the film the audience is drawn into a journey to the high school. This could be the point of view of either a student or a teacher on his or her way to the high school.
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