Why I Never Became a Dancer by Tracey Emin is narrative-driven documentation of her life as a teenager in a small seasides town which had nothing for young people growing up there.
The piece is lead by narration from Tracey herself talking about her teenage year and experimenting with sex as an escape from the boredom she found in the town she grew up in and how she overcame this struggle through dance. The combination the narration is met with the use of footage which consists of B roll footage from her home town. This is effective as to puts you in the protagonists (Emin) Perspective. Furthermore the use of shaky and almost first-person style footage cement that perspective.
The narration and the footage link by the use of Emin’s words and the action shown within the shot. At one point the film, Emin states how a man ‘asked her to grab his balls’ and we are presented with the imagery of someone using an arcade grab machine, in which the ‘grab hand’ grabs a teddy. The use of imagery help aid the audience though the story and keeps them intrigued.
The shots at the beginning of this piece are pan slowly or are entirely static however in the last half of the piece the shots become more fluid and the pans are significantly quicker. This is to aid the storytelling in the piece as at this point in the film Emin had found her freedom from this town and the ridicule of the men who reside there.
I feel like this film used the use of imagery perfectly and painted a picture of how it was like for her growing up without having to reconstruct it with people and actors.
Film Link – http://www.ubu.com/film/emin_dancer.html
Courtney Yarwood ARD 415 and ARD 416 