Is it an excuse to make a short movie with no apparent plot because you want to test the water of filmmaking???

I call them "Art-sy Fartsy" movies.

I think it just means unconventional. It's "experimental" in the sense that the filmmaker is unsure how the audience will perceive it.

quote:

Originally posted by FutureOfFilm:
Is it an excuse to make a short movie with no apparent plot because you want to test the water of filmmaking???

Umm...yeah thats one way to look at it.

Key word: "experiment"al. For me, experimenting with film is just practice. Which is what any aspiring filmmaker needs...practice. And lots of it!

I think you are attaching connotations to "Experimental Film" that don't necessarily belong there.

Its not that the director ran out of story ideas and is resorting to throwing random nonsensical elements together and slapping a "experimental" label on it. A lot of experimental films are actually very cleverly and meticulously crafted.
They just usually rely heavily on intuition and experience, rather than a spoon-fed narrative.

When I was in second grade we had an area in the room that was called "beautiful junk" it was just a load of arts and crafts crap but you were allowed to play without any rules or structure. Everything we made in there was truly ugly bullshizz but it was our ugly bullshizz, un-influenced and 100% original even if it was just three Popsicle sticks glued to a felt duck stabled to a cardboard frog, covered in glitter while dangling from a hanger.

Experimental films often have a few great moments that are obscured by nonsense but those few moments are often groundbreaking and can then be used as new techniques in regular narratives. For example Requiem For A dream borrows heavily from experimental films.

So for me experimental film is anything that pushes the medium outside of it's comfort zone.

i think it is important to keep in mind that "film" or "motion image" or whatever you want to call it is simply a medium, and you can do whatever you want with a medium. I think that people are just so used to seeing narrative film through tv and the cinema, etc. that they don't understand why somebody would make a film without a narrative. Experimental film (at least good ones) almost never involves randomly throwing suff together, but rather carefully choosing what images to show when, how and why. Non-narrative film is highly subjective, and it is mostly about what the audience gets out of it. I kind of think that experimental film is more of an artist's medium, where there are literally no restrictions beyond what can be done with the medium.

Experimental films are often not made with narrative in mind, rather they are reaching to offer insights about life that is often deeply personal to the artist making the work.
Look at the work of Stan Brakhage, Joseph Cornell, Andy Warhol, Micheal Snow (I highly recommend seeing "Wavelength") Nathaniel Dorsky (I also recommend seeing any of his work) Maya Deren, Luis Bunuel/Salvador Dali, Kenneth Anger etc. etc.
Got to :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_film or look it up in wikipedia to get a brief understanding of these filmmakers and experimental films.
Unfortunately, these filmmakers are not given the credit they deserve though we borrow from they experimentation and creativity when we create our own films.

David Lynch's experimental film series Rabbits is better than 98% of all other films (traditional and experimental). Actually, in my opinion anything David Lynch has crafted is better than 98% of all other films :P

Question: Where do you guys go to get your hands on more obscure films like, for example, Rabbits, or whatever else that probably isn't carried in your typical Blockbuster?

From what I understand of it just because a film is "experimental" it doesn't mean that it has to completely lack plot or a storyline, it's just that the film is being done in some way that really hasn't been done before...Many of Tim Burton's films could be considered experimental, and they definately aren't lacking story...

Even Toy Story could be considered experimental because it was truly the first of it's kind.

sorry i missed this topic...hooha, if you havnt seen Inland Empire yet there's bits of Rabbits in that, and INland Empire is a much more complete work where Rabbits seems to just be a romp of confusion and pointlessness. But, Rabbits should be available at david lynch's personal website, I am pretty sure thats where he released it (When you pay to join his site, this all may be changed now tho I dono)

there is this great site I cant recall the name of, but theyd have "exploitation genres" like NAzi movies, Italian horror movies, biker, Detective movies, aswell my favorite "best lesbian whip fight scene movies"

in my opinion I would consider Cassavete's films to be very experimental, they would have a script and do rehearsals and constantly be re writing. Finding truer rythmms and patterns to the character's speech and actions.

quote:

Question: Where do you guys go to get your hands on more obscure films like, for example, Rabbits, or whatever else that probably isn't carried in your typical Blockbuster?

Join Netflix.

yes except Rabbits isnt available on Netflix!

I didn't read any other posts, but I'm going to answer the question anyway.

I feel that "experimental" is anything that has never been done before.

"Toy Story" is a great example.
"2001: A Space Odyssey" is a great example.

My view:

Experimental films are cinematic masturbation.

A crude assessment? Yes, but I think it fits. Experimental films are generally made without the driving force (or burden?) of a cohesive narrative. They are intrinsically "style over substance". Many (but certainly not all) are done by "filmmakers" who are either incapable or too pretentious to commit to a story, and they are usually utterly irrelevant to anyone except the "filmmakers" who made them. Yet they do serve a purpose - that of personal stylistic experimentation and exploration. The value of any experimental work comes only from it's ability to expose new methods of conveying a story. It's necessary, and most of the time inherently worthless - but every once and a while you can learn something new.

quote:

and they are usually utterly irrelevant to anyone except the "filmmakers" who made them

hmm, thats how I feel about MOST films that come out because of the lack of anything real. for somereason I hated Peter JAckson's King Kong yet it was hugely popular and yet there's absolutely nothing in it that is relevant to the audience or the filmmaker!

and what is even weirder is I am LOOKING for films that have a relevance to the filmmaker. I dont want something that is gonna be all perfect and telling me adsactly what is going on, I want the mystery...I want to wonder "who made this? why did they make this?" I want to have to sit through something and constantly be questioning something about it, even if it may only ever be understood by the filmmaker.

Gus van Sant and David Lynch are both considered to be experimental filmmakers.

so, according to you, Cinematical, the story is the most important thing in any film?

That's like saying the lyrics are the most important thing in a song. To me, anyway. We have plenty of great storytellers budding out there. We need more people like Lynch, I think. Don't get me wrong, just because someone slops together a video doesn't mean it's good. A lot of it is pretentious ****. A lot of good stuff is also pretentious. But I think anyone can make a film and become a great filmmaker. Look at Lynch and Agnes Varda. They weren't cinephiles. I think the artform is open to everyone and I encourage anyone with something honest to say to at least give it a shot.

A film is one way to tell a story. Otherwise, why bother? It's irritating to watch a movie that has no point to it. A lot of music videos can be like that. I would call them experimental.