Through the Lens
Hyunji Park
Covid-19 negatively impacts on the movie industry, therefore the movie theater going experience became almost nonexistent for a while. It also limits the way to communicate with others. Since the majority of people wear masks, they have to talk with only their eyes. I want to provide people a new way to approach films from a certain perspective (rather than just seeing in the theaters, reading the reviews, or by their technical features) created after the pandemic.
I began my thesis project by documenting the ways actors use their eyes to convey emotion. Tracing these conventions throughout the history of film, I sorted clips into categories such as the "psychopathic stare," the "euphoric gaze," or the "dueling glare." As much as possible, I cropped extraneous facial features, focusing solely on the details of my subjects' eyes; after two years of Covid masking policies. These seemed to me to have a strange resonance. We are now used to everyday communication being cropped, to our lives themselves being narrowed, but eyes convey a world of meaning which is both subtle and deep.
By showing only the character's eyes, I want the audience to think once again about the conversation method that has changed throughout the last few years. They can think about what kind of emotions it causes to watch scenes where everything is blocked other than the eyes. Think how much you can read them while looking at the eyes alone. These are the qualities I want to make viewers feel.