Frampton's Formula

Frampton says that whatever happens the most in the film is what the film is about. When watching Natural Features I picked out dissolving/decaying faces in about every frame, but I don't think that's what the film was about. Because there were many elements in the film all taking part. There were watercolors, paintbrushes, the color black, all of these things were in every frame also. I think what Frampton was trying to get at is the theme of a film or the moral of the story. I don't think he meant a specific thing you see in a frame. Because if you have a moral or reoccurring theme then yes, that is what the film is about. I do believe if we watched a film and just picked out the one thing that happens the most whether it be a color, camera movement, etc, then it would probably change our view of the film. If I just watched Natural Features for the color black I would see the film as being a very dark film in its subject matter and its lighting. Overall, I think that we shouldn't apply his method of discovering what a film is about because then we only focus on one part of the whole, there is so much more in films. Maybe if every new time you watched it you paid attention to something else then I guess you could add up the parts to the whole idea of what the film is about, but who wants to do that. I also believe and want to state that maybe what Frampton was talking about is what the viewer does subconsciously every time when viewing a film. I know I have picked out one certain thing in a film before because I could relate myself to that scene(I had gone through a similar situation) . After walking out of the theater my friends and I discussed the film and they all thought the same thing about it, but when asking my opinion were surprised to hear my reaction to the film. I viewed it in whole different, unique way from the way they did. We all perceive things differently and that's because we are all different and come from different backgrounds and have different experiences. And that's the beauty of films. They are ambiguous. There is no right or wrong answer.