How can a narrative film be different from a video art work? A narrative film includes a story or an event in which the needed character system substantially helps to convince the audience. Video art is to create an artwork focusing on moving visual pictures and audio data. It is not a film production.
For example, Reflecting Pool by Bill Viola in 1977 is a well-known narrative film, and the recent Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives (Uncle Boonmee) by Apichatpong Weerasethakul in 2010 is a video art. Both of them have unique narrative structure, cinematography, length, symbols, visual language, camera placement and actors.
The first comparison is about the length and narrative structure in the mentioned film and video above. The Reflecting Pool is a short film within six minutes. On the contrary, the video art Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives is approximately two hours. The Reflecting Pool describes the process of a man who stood in front of a pool and then jumped into water. He was frozen in the space as he jumped. The stillness in the background is emphasized by the murmur sound of the forest and water rippling. In addition, the moment that he was frozen in…show more content… The dreamlike cave that Boonmee and his family members walked in was depicted as a world that he was born and reborn, as same as The Reflecting Pool by Bill Viola. The importance of photos which portrayed memories, early moments and past lives in Uncle Boonmee based on documentary shooting style. The photos represented history and wars which conflicts with regret at the same time. The usage of documentary images also shows the political reality. The way this video art was deconstructed is a collection of moving pictures with different reels to create complexity and implicit story. In contrast, The Reflecting Pool is a whole continuous understandable story in a predetermined