Seven Maps: Sixth Map
This vlog by Daniel Liss is from Rachel’s favorite list. There were several vblogs to choose from, but I found the entry, “Seven Maps: Sixth Map,” to be the most interesting. Basically, the vlog has a man (off-screen) narrating (non-diagetic) a very dark story in French about how his grandfather’s “masterpiece” affected his whole family in both positive and negative ways. This so-called “masterpiece” sadly involved his grandfather, Guillaume, commit suicide by jumping off a high column. Like the images that follow the narration, his grandfather’s last words, “I love this column. I hate this column” are as strange and abstract. However, the editing helps the viewers to relate to such a contradicting thought—hating and loving something at the same time. Toward the beginning of the vlog, a repeated shot of the column is shown at an empowering low-angle. It even appears to be blinding because the sun is in view at that type of angle. Later on, however, editing allows it to get connected with a beautiful garden scene. Apparently, this garden is where both he and his father were conceived. Although the column represents his grandfather’s death, it also symbolizes the beginning of more generations. The “incident” was ironically about the same day that his grandmother found out that she was pregnant—so a “new life” (the narrator’s father) was growing inside of her. There are also numerous shots where it would pause and focus on certain objects in the mise-en-scene. In a way, this helps to emphasize that fact that it’s from the narrator’s point of view. His shaky hand-held camera and focusing vision leads the viewer to gaze in on a very personal perspective. For example, when the narrator explained how his father was conceived on a certain bench in the garden, the camera would quickly center and pause to linger on that bench in order to point out its significance to the plot. Overall, I enjoyed this very artistic vlog. It actually made me think, unlike the several hundred “junk” vlogs that I visited before hand.
View this vlog here: