This is a weird idea I have, let’s see where it goes. An aside: this is how most of my ideas begin with this site.

I’ve become fascinated as of late with a lot of people’s screencapturing related posts on the internet. From Ryan’s “Freeze Frame” (which was birthed from The Film Experience’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot“), Peter Labuza’s “Images of the Day” and a few others over the years that have struck me. We all love film for so many reasons, and one of them is the obvious visual element. I wanted, like these individuals, to highlight this idea but at the same time without completely taking and repurposing it.

Then I started to question what if the same progression we witness over the film’s complete runtime was able to be condensed into only a few images, but rather than being selective of those images make it completely structured? What would we notice now that we may not have while watching the film? And this idea is born.

The idea is this, take a film and take a snapshot every ten minutes (as close as possible with my feeble shakey hands on VLC) and play with the narrative and focus of the film. The inagural film will be the 2006 South Korean horror film The Host. 

I think the most interesting I can note about this film through these images is how we see Park Gang-Doo change from images of hope to despair when he’s with people in a frame to being alone in the final two shots. While we’re watching a monster film which separates a family the film remains a film about how happiness can only be achieved together. The two shots above when the family is not together but with outside members are the complete opposite of images of happiness. However, every shot which has one or more family member (of any family) together has hope and happiness of some kind.

What do you see?