Keywords for Mirac Atabey

miracatabey,

Here, I lay out the cinematic concepts that interest me in filmmaking. I believe they are embedded in my films and my production models, or at the very least, I have experimented with or pondered over every single one of them.

To test this claim, I encourage you to watch my films and see for yourselves if these ideas breathe on the screen. Of course, you don’t need any of this theoretical background to enjoy my work; after all, even the simplest blockbuster can be deconstructed conceptually, but we don’t need it to appreciate the film. To me, as filmmakers, without any distinction, we are all building the cinema; we all make films, but I want to point out that I make one thing (perhaps along with some like-minded filmmakers), and others do another thing. And I don’t want to express it with cliched and hollow terms such as arthouse, festival film, or independent cinema, because we no longer understand the same thing from those words.

So my aim here is to present myself accurately. Because nobody else is telling my story (yet). And the film world isn’t waiting for me with open arms to understand and appreciate my efforts or my attempts to contribute to the cinematic evolution. Therefore, I must first create this context myself. In the cultural and artistic landscape, “to love me is to contextualize me”, even though I always aspired for it to be vice versa.

I presented the concepts by dividing them into my two feature films, A Hero of Our Time (2023) and Marriage A-la-Mode (Completed in March 2026). I didn’t mention the short films because they already represent the infancy versions of most of the concepts in the features.

The Shared Concepts (A Hero of Our Time & Marriage A-la-Mode)

The structural, aesthetic, and ethical concepts shared in both A Hero of Our Time and Marriage A-la-Mode.

Cinematography & Mise-en-Scene
  • Static Shot: Motionless camera locked onto a tripod without pan or tilt movements.
  • Plan-Sequence: Capturing an entire scene in one uninterrupted continuous take.
  • Long Take: Keeping the scene long to make the audience feel the literal weight of time.
  • Distant Observation: Maintaining a deliberate physical gap between the camera and the subjects.
  • The Surveillance Gaze: A camera angle evoking the feeling of security camera footage.
  • The Bruegel Gaze: A high camera angle that shares the elevated vantage point of a surveillance gaze, while evoking the aesthetic pictorial composition and simultaneous human narratives.
  • Tableau Aesthetic: Composing the cinematic frame as a living genre painting.
  • Pictorial Complex Composition: Architecturing the visual space using layers reminiscent of a genre painting.
  • Dynamic Mise-en-Scene Choreography: Generating rhythm through actor and object movements in and out of frame while the camera remains static.
  • Mise-en-Abyme / Frame-Within-a-Frame: Using mirrors, doors, windows, screens, or aspect ratios to create layers within a single shot.
  • Off-Screen Space: The invisible world beyond the frame, evoked through sound, gaze, and positive space.
Time & Editing
  • Real Time: Strict 1:1 ratio between onscreen action duration and the audience’s physical time.
  • Lived-in Time: Preserving routines and dead time to reflect the rhythm of everyday existence.
  • Elliptical Editing: Omitting actions or time through cuts to encourage the viewer’s mind to bridge the structural gaps.
  • Red Herring: A deliberate misdirection designed to manipulate the audience’s investigative focus or viewing habits.
Aesthetic Philosophy
  • Form as Content: Elevating the how (angles, sound, duration) over the what (the plot), which makes the form the main subject itself.
  • Hyper-realism: Presenting reality in its rawest and sharpest form.
  • Ultra-Naturalism: Presenting the environment and human behavior as if they were untouched.
  • Anti-Allegory: Refusing to imply political or moral messages, the onscreen event remains as itself.
  • Anti-Symbolism: Refusing to imply hidden metaphysical meanings, an apple remains just an apple.
  • Incremental Experimentalism: Gradually using formal experimental elements to subtly evolve a particular cinematic language and style.
Audio-Visual Harmony
  • Soundscape: Layered and three-dimensional auditory world built from ambient textures and sound effects.
  • Audiovisual Permutation: The sequential reordering of priority between sound and image based on a ratio.
  • Audiovisual Homeostasis: State of sensory harmony where sound and image coexist symmetrically without overpowering one another.
  • Bressonian Sensory Economy: The minimum visual and auditory elements necessary to trigger cognitive impact.
Spectatorship
  • Active Spectatorship: Demanding the audience act as co-creators rather than passive consumers.
  • Open Work: Lacking particular resolutions to incentivize the viewer to complete the work.
  • Interactive Cinema Language: Audiovisual plays with the viewer’s cognitive and psychological thresholds.
  • Emotional Distancing: Keeping the audience in a rational and analytical mindset by preventing dramatic identification.
Directing Methodology
  • Inherent Casting: Casting individuals who already possess the physical and psychological traits, as well as the personal life experiences, of the character in real life.
  • Blind Directing: Directing scenes without giving the actors the screenplay or any other insight into their characters, but rather creating an environment and guiding them with indirect verbal methods to keep their performance raw and authentic, thereby opening space for their freedom and creativity.
  • Framed Freedom: Setting boundaries without the actor realizing it, while the actor is given complete freedom to behave and react naturally, their performance fits with the predetermined screenplay.
  • Constructive Manipulation: Manipulating the actor’s attention, expectations, and focus by giving them a decoy task or false objective to keep up their motivation.
Production Practices
  • Horizontal Collaboration: A production model that refuses set hierarchies and gives voice to the entire crew.
  • Fair Labor: Full compensation for all professional labor regardless of the project’s budget size.
  • Absolute Risk Absorption: The producer absorbing %100 of the financial risks.
  • Level-Ground Partnership: Engaging with external industry partners strictly on level ground and refusing to compromise artistic integrity.
  • Processual Universalism: Treating universality not as a given package, but as something dynamically built by the specific and local.
  • Cultural Integrity: Refusing to simplify or exoticize local cultural codes for easier consumption by global audiences.
  • Audience Initiative: Demanding labor from the viewer to explore the existence of the film.

Contrasting Concepts (A Hero of Our Time vs. Marriage A-la-Mode)

Concepts established in my first film, A Hero of Our Time, that are inverted or deconstructed by my second film, Marriage A-la-Mode.

Viewer’s Role
  • [A Hero of Our Time] Narrative Co-Creation: The viewer fills in plot gaps and character motivations, co-authoring the actual narrative.
  • [Marriage A-la-Mode] Meta Co-Creation: The viewer fills in the reality/believability of the cinematic medium itself.
Cognitive Direction
  • [A Hero of Our Time] Narrative Suggestion: Whispering a mood or event to the audience without displaying it explicitly.
  • [Marriage A-la-Mode] Meta-Suggestion: Implying cinematic artifice and the mechanical/mathematical nature of the film.
Narrative Continuity
  • [A Hero of Our Time] Gapped Narrative: Gapped plot built on missing information and major time jumps.
  • [Marriage A-la-Mode] Continuous Narrative: Continuous linear block of events without missing parts.
Psychological Dimensions
  • [A Hero of Our Time] Psychological Affinity: Profound psychological understanding of each character that grants the viewer access to their motivations.
  • [Marriage A-la-Mode] Psychological Opacity: The blurring of psychological understanding, as characters dissolve and become trapped within the dynamics of a couple or group.
Auditory Form
  • [A Hero of Our Time] Acousmatic Sound: Sound of unseen elements on and off-screen, detached from visible source.
  • [Marriage A-la-Mode] Embodied Sound: Sound of visible and explicit sources within the frame.
Formal Unity
  • [A Hero of Our Time] Formal Continuity: Loyal to a single set of audiovisual style from the first frame to the last.
  • [Marriage A-la-Mode] Formal Rupture: Breaking the homogeneous aesthetic flow.
Directorial Presence
  • [A Hero of Our Time] Authorial Presence: The imprint of the director’s authority.
  • [Marriage A-la-Mode] Decentralized Authorship: The deliberate destruction of the director’s authority.
Existential Dynamics
  • [A Hero of Our Time] Existential Isolation: Focusing on a single character standing apart from their environment.
  • [Marriage A-la-Mode] Existential Erosion: Focusing on two or more people trapped together, rasping each other’s existence.
Production Model
  • [A Hero of Our Time] Industry-Funded: Backed by institutional grants and systemic legitimacy.
  • [Marriage A-la-Mode] Industry-Free / Self-Funded: Completely self-funded with zero ties to institutional or market funding actors.

Exclusive Concepts (Marriage A-la-Mode)

Concepts established only in my second film, Marriage A-la-Mode.

Meta-Cinema & Deconstruction
  • Meta-Cinema: A self-aware film that reminds the audience of its own constructed nature.
  • Cinematic Deconstruction: Breaking up film conventions to expose the cinematic illusion.
  • Reflexive Realism: Acknowledging the viewer’s thought as a part of reality.
  • Symbiotic Meta-Narrative: The onscreen narrative and the film’s disclosure of its own medium feed off each other.
  • Transmedia Narrative: Using external digital formats, such as a real-world YouTube channel, to expand the film’s narrative universe.
  • Semiotic Trap: Deploying cinematic symbols and objects to ambush audience expectations, which underline the anti-symbolist nature of the film.
  • Anti-Film: A film that doesn’t feel like a film, which fails to deliver the overall impact one might expect from a film.
  • Anti-Auteur: Deliberately sabotaging the director’s own cinematic style and artistic ego to expose directorial choices, which prevent the audience from falling into a passive position.
Narrative Subversion & Anti-Drama
  • Narrative Displacement: Directing the audience’s focus away from the established narrative.
  • Subjective Truth: Reality as unstable and fluid, bound to the perspective of the camera or character or viewer.
  • De-dramatization: Removing major conflicts of plot and presenting them with flatness.
  • Anti-Empathy: Blocking the audience from having emotional identification or sentimentality towards events and characters.
  • Anti-Trauma: Treating major traumatic events with detached neutrality.
Sonic Interruptions & The Narrator
  • Sonic Title Cards: Audio interruptions instead of visual text.
  • Non-Diegetic Intervention: Artificial sounds or voiceovers invading the film’s diegetic universe.
  • The Post-Modern Benshi: Voiceover that dictates the onscreen action.
  • The Trojan Narrator: A narrator who builds trust with absolute truths to bypass the audience’s skepticism and execute subtle deceptions.
Industrial Defiance
  • Insulated Autonomy: Shielding the crew as a unified front against market and institutional pressures/expectations to preserve total creative freedom inside.

Conceptualizations