Cinescope mask
![cinescope mask cinescope mask](https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.180735278.2594/raf,750x1000,075,t,101010:01c5ca27c6.jpg)
The picnickers stand still, seemingly fossilised by time, in an uncanny tableau which cinematographer Russell Boyd’s zoom lens surveys with baited breath. Ants and lizards come in and out of frame, pieces of foliage peer out-of-focus in the foreground. Once there, the soft, diffuse light and that hauntingly atmospheric pan flute music sets up some of the most bewitching sequences of 1970s cinema: slow-motion and superimpositions, dissolves and 360-degree pans, all weave an indelibly hypnotic flow of images. Before the girls even get there, their mysterious premonitions should ring as ominous signs.
![cinescope mask cinescope mask](https://render.fineartamerica.com/images/rendered/small/phone-case/iphone12pro/images/artworkimages/medium/1/cinemascope-sunset-debra-banks.jpg)
The scenes of the picnic around the Rock encapsulate the film’s power. Mood and atmosphere, dreaminess and the uncanny, permeate this film. Three of the girls, along with their mathematics teacher Miss McCraw, have vanished somewhere on the Rock, seemingly into thin air, and the coming days will bring only unsuccessful search parties, frustrated local police and a sensationalist media circus. But by evening things will have changed irreparably for all concerned. The boarders prepare for a special picnic outing under a nearby extinct volcano known as Hanging Rock - an occasion stirring gleeful excitement in the morning. It’s February 14, 1900, at Appleyard College, a girls’ boarding school in rural Victoria, a few hours’ ride outside Melbourne. So it is a considerable feat that when Peter Weir was given the chance to direct an adaptation of Joan Lindsay’s classic Australian-Gothic novel (her life-defining work which had already captured the imagination of the Australian public), he retained and distilled that mystique to create the most iconic work of the Australian New Wave. Just because you have in your hands a story laden with pre-existing mystique, one whose origins were already shrouded in curiosity-arousing mystery, does not automatically mean you’ll make a great film out of it. A stylish master of mood and atmosphere, often creating a sense of covert menace through use of music and editing, with a thematic interest in culture clashes, and individuals in psychological crises trying to make sense of strange new worlds.Ĭollaborators: Russell Boyd (cinematographer), John Seale (cinematographer), William Anderson (editor), Harrison Ford (actor), Mel Gibson (actor), Maurice Jarre (composer), Hal & Jim MacElroy (producers).Īre but a dream. Traits: Known as the leading figure of the Australian film revival of the 1970s, before becoming a Hollywood director in the 1980s. “ Music is the fountainhead: everything comes from that.”īorn: 21 August, 1944, Sydney, Australia. There’s no real consciousness of where you came from.” “ It’s really a trauma that the country’s still going through, this dislocation from Europe, with a complete severing of roots.