Used in pathways:

What are the implications of predetermined Powers and Colours motivating each character and setting? How do these attributes influence the film's aesthetic?

Throughout the film, the weather and natural surroundings constantly change. While looking through the archive, I began to pick up on the different moods based on the different weather climates. Mourning, sadness, and negative images often appear while the weather is cold, snowy, and dark. When the weather is sunny and pleasant, there is more light hearted music in the background and the story line is on a more positive note. The weather in Orlando is not only a representation of the area in which the scene is meant to be set but it seems to also be used as an aid in creating a specific mood and tone for the audience to pick up on.

The central impulse of this pathway is to provide a conduit through which one may explore how the passing of time is expressed within Sally Potter's 1992 film 'Orlando', as a prominent theme of both the original novel and film. Furthermore, in acknowledgement of the disparities between the manner in which a visual medium and a written work respectively convey meaning, one is also drawn to the cinematic techniques utilised to communicate the eponymous hero/ine's inner thoughts, feelings and frustrations. The titular quotation, lifted from another of Woolf's novels, 'The Waves' is appropriated here to reflect upon the process of adaptation, particularly the ever-mutating, palimpsestic nature of a text (Woolf 2005: 86).

This pathway aims to provide insights into the complexities of creating, constructing and shooting a single shot. As you can see from the list of items in the pathway, a plethora of materials are generated for each shot which can relate to their creative vision (directors notes), their logistical planning (schedules), the tracking and logging of materials (shots, takes and reel numbers, continuity), their previewing (video assist footage) and their documenting (photographic images). I attempt to provide a contextual dialogue for each of the items in the pathway, explaining their function and their relationship to one another. I have also attempted to order the items procedurally to demonstrate the off/on set workflow.

King James looks down through the ice to see the young woman (and her apples) frozen beneath. The view of her is being slowly covered by the falling snow. James is amused by this image. The King looks down on the world from the point of view of the absolute monarch with divine right. The young woman is of no account either as a subject or as a female. And yet her beauty is not obscured (initially) - only by his gaze which also 'freezes' her. The apples (fruit) are also frozen. The king's gaze is reiforced by those of the gaggle of (male) courtiers. The images combines beauty, life, fruitfulness and horror, coldness and death (male). This 'maleness' is at an extreme. Potter uses subjective shots: The King looks down on the frozen woman. The woman looks up at the goggling king.