Drumroll

Director/ Creator: Steve McQueen

Drumroll is a 22 minute long film by British-born, Amsterdam-based artist Steve McQueen. McQueen is a filmmaker and is seen as one of the leading contemporary video installation artists. He won the Turner Prize in 1999 for his Film ‘Dead pan’. Since, McQueen has been commissioned by the Imperial War Museum to visit Iraq to produce a work in response to the war.
Drumroll is a large room-sized installation consisting of three-projected video screens; each screen shows a different camera angle from within an open-ended barrel, that the artist is pushing along the streets of Manhattan. The three circling views of New York are then displayed on each of the screens.
Drumroll comes from a clear combination of the artist’s interest in performance art, improvisation and sound. The film also shows the artists interest in the tradition of film and Cinema, as the film has a clear sense of experimental work in the mediums of film and video. His minimalist approach seems to Challenge the mainstream, high budget films produced by Hollywood studios. It is as if McQueen is trying to return to an artistic process of movie making; with the control returned to the artistic creator in the same way that we view he fine artist. McQueen described it as a film that in, which “Everything that slipped into frame was permitted,” and that “it was impossible to make a ‘mistake’, everything is allowed."
The Theme of change is apparent throughout with the randomness’s of a day in the heart of New York being the central idea. There is also a strong notion of the real and the premeditated. McQueen uses his cameras to record reality as it comes, un-edited, however at the same time the viewer is experiencing Three viewpoints simultaneously, since this is impossible without mechanical assistance, The camera acts as a strange mix of un-filtered reality and at the same time shows us the impossible. This gives the viewer a strange kind of “third eye”
It is clear that McQueen’s films have more in common with photography than they do with mainstream cinema. Techniques McQueen uses are similar to photographers such as Roy DeCarava or Nan Goldin. However where these Photographers look into psychological issues, McQueen rejects this philosophy. His films contain no details of people. Any human form in the picture is likely to be there due to random chance, and speech is always a part of the soundtrack but normally originated from an external source not meant for the film, such as other people’s conversations. McQueen’s videos are normally described as video installations. They have as much in common with sculpture and performance art as they do to the cinema. Unlike traditional films, McQueen’s narratives show no conflict and therefore no resolution or any other aspect of conventional cinema such as character or passage of time.
In my opinion McQueen’s work is effective due to its elusive nature. It has a strong focus on change but never evolves, acting as a strange state of contained evolution. Beginning and ends converge to the point that the film could continue forever. I think this is one of the strongest aspects of the film, McQueen has found balance between two absolutes, these make it very hard to criticise the peace. Its simplicity is clear while at the same time it is very open to interpretation metaphorically.