"Sole Mates" was the first in our string of end of year films. My position for the shoot was that of D.I.T. Although this was a quite straight forward role there were a few problems that had to be overcome. The main problem was that the DIT kit did not come with a charger for the laptop meaning that when the battery ran out we had to back up footage onto a different laptop. Unfortunately this laptop wasn't compatible with the hard drives we were using to store the footage. Fortunately this wasn't that big a hurdle and all the footage was backed up safe and secure.
On our second shoot, "Breathing Room" I was focus puller in the camera department. This was a much more active role on the set and I found it highly enjoyable. I never thought I would enjoy focus pulling as much as I did. I think it’s the almost computer game like feel to it; aiming, judging distance etc. The set also had a very good atmosphere with many of the crew staying over which made for a very enjoyable experience. I don't think you can underestimate how much staying near location positively affects the moral of a crew because quite simply it means more sleep, a chance to relax on set before you need to start, and less travelling.
Our final shoot was "Broken Bubbles", a film I was to D.O.P. I think everyone went into this one a lot more relaxed compared to the other shoots because we had had a bit more time to prepare. At least in terms of shots and lighting I felt very comfortable going on to set. I think it was very important getting a chance to set up the lighting the night before shooting though. I had had a plan for a while about how I would like to light the film and we started putting this plan into action the night before. We lit the set and I really liked the way it looked. That is until we looked at it through the RED. We couldn't see anything. With so little experience on the RED I had no idea how light hungry the RED was when using a zoom lens (for ease I had planned to shoot the film on the zoom lenses). After we upgraded all the lights though and stuck up a few extra it started to look on the RED how it had looked when we had initially lit it by eye. I think this experience really helped me because it showed me you should never light a set up by eye because it will not look the same on camera. All in all though I was very pleased with how the interior scenes looked. I wanted it to look like the workshop was actually just being lit by a few practical lamps around the room and I think this effect was achieved.
I was also ecstatic about a few of the exterior shots we got at sunset at Mugdock Park. When we had been shooting the day scenes it had had been quite grey and cloudy. It wasn't looking good for the fairytale sunset we had been hoping for. It wasn't until just before we were about to shoot the sunset material in fact that the clouds disappeared and we were left with the sun in that perfect, twilight position just on the horizon, creating this brilliant flaring light. It was clear though that we wouldn't have this light for very long and everyone did really well. I'm very grateful that everyone worked so fast and professionally to ensure we got as much shot in this light as possible.
All in all I believe I have learned a huge amount from these shoots. I find it interesting how much you learn when you are just thrown straight into a new situation and are forced to adapt. Yes, I had experience as a D.O.P before but I think this was the first time I felt comfortable enough in my own knowledge to be creative with it. I also believe the none-stop aspect of the shoots has reinvigorated my enthusiasm and love for making films.
Wednesday, 30 June 2010
Thursday, 18 February 2010
Critical and Contextual Studies 3 - Cinema Movements
“Film is really a kind of theatre of thought. You're watching people think in movies, which is the fascinating and completely unique experience of film versus other kinds of theatre, where the thoughts have to be expressed in words. In film, of course you have words, but mostly you have thought and attitude, and that attitude is mostly expressed in the eyes of the characters.” (1)
I believe the idea Walter Murch is suggesting here is that only in film is an audience really allowed to get into a character's head, to feel the character's emotions and follow their thought process. It is the idea that a picture holds a thousand words, we might be able to tell more about a character from a few frames of film than several pages of dialogue. It is not by accident that this happens, it is all to do with how the film-makers construct their film. I believe how a piece is edited has a massive part to play in allowing the audience to connect with a character and get inside their head. I think a scene in which the editing does this well is the Italian restaurant scene in The Godfather.
This scene is where Michael, the youngest son of the Corleone Mafia family, is going to assassinate the men who tried to have his father killed. Michael has never had anything to do with the criminal side of his family up to this point so this is a very big moment in the film. We want to follow what Michael is thinking, his anxiety and his thoughts on the dilemma he is facing, but obviously he can not verbalise his thoughts at the time. I want to look at how the editing of this scene allows the audience to get inside Michael's head and feel what he is feeling.
First of all, up until this point in the film the story has centred primarily around Michael's father, the Godfather. It is in this scene that the story changes to follow Michael and his own rise to becoming the Godfather. To transfer us into Michael's perspective the editor has used an interesting progression of shots.
- After the wide establishing shot of the restaurant we cut into this shot of Sollozzo from over the shoulder of Michael. The audience is watching the conversation between the two men as a third person.
I believe the idea Walter Murch is suggesting here is that only in film is an audience really allowed to get into a character's head, to feel the character's emotions and follow their thought process. It is the idea that a picture holds a thousand words, we might be able to tell more about a character from a few frames of film than several pages of dialogue. It is not by accident that this happens, it is all to do with how the film-makers construct their film. I believe how a piece is edited has a massive part to play in allowing the audience to connect with a character and get inside their head. I think a scene in which the editing does this well is the Italian restaurant scene in The Godfather.
This scene is where Michael, the youngest son of the Corleone Mafia family, is going to assassinate the men who tried to have his father killed. Michael has never had anything to do with the criminal side of his family up to this point so this is a very big moment in the film. We want to follow what Michael is thinking, his anxiety and his thoughts on the dilemma he is facing, but obviously he can not verbalise his thoughts at the time. I want to look at how the editing of this scene allows the audience to get inside Michael's head and feel what he is feeling.
First of all, up until this point in the film the story has centred primarily around Michael's father, the Godfather. It is in this scene that the story changes to follow Michael and his own rise to becoming the Godfather. To transfer us into Michael's perspective the editor has used an interesting progression of shots.
- After the wide establishing shot of the restaurant we cut into this shot of Sollozzo from over the shoulder of Michael. The audience is watching the conversation between the two men as a third person.
- As the conversation goes on the shots of Sollozzo begin to change. We can no longer see Michael's shoulder. It is almost from Michael's point of view.
The audience has gradually been taken into Michael's point of view, we are seeing things from his perspective now. Seeing things from a character's point of view helps an audience connect to a character because they are now literally seeing things through the character's eyes, they are in the character's head. It is interesting that the editor did not simply cut straight into the closer shot of Sollozo, after all the audience would still be seeing things from Michael's point of view. I think he did this to show us the shift in perspective happening. It follows the "kuleshov effect":
"the viewer's interpretation of an individual shot is determined by the context (or sequence) in which that shot is seen." (2)
In other words because we have seen the previous shot we understand the meaning of the new shot; We understand that we have been transferred into Michael's perspective.
We are now seeing things from Michael's perspective but how else can the editor help show the audience his anxiety and the internal battle going on in his head? I think the shots the editor has chosen of Michael himself during the conversation with Sollozzo have a big part to play.
- There are a few shots of Michael from over the shoulder of Sollozzo.
-However, the editor has chosen to use the close up option of Michael for the majority of the conversation.
A close up is an excellent option for this situation. The audience can not understand Michael's emotional state through dialogue so the editor has chosen to concentrate on Michael's face, as Murch said, in film we can watch someone think. The Close up is the best way to do this:
"A close-up of a person emphasizes their emotional state. Whereas a mid-shot or wide-shot is more appropriate for delivering facts and general information, a close-up exaggerates facial expressions which convey emotion. The viewer is drawn into the subject's personal space and shares their feelings." (3)
We don't need to see anything else just now except Michael's face. The situation has been established and all that matters now is concentrating on Michael and getting the audience to feel what he is going through.
The length of time the editor chooses to hold these close ups is also very important. This clip is a good example of how long some of the close ups are held on Michael. Apart from the small cut away to McCluskey the close up lasts almost 20 seconds.
If we cut too soon from the close up then the audience will not have had time to concentrate on the character and take in their expressions. The editor holds on Michael so the audience will pay complete attention to him and what is going through his mind.
Another very interesting use of editing to root us in Michael's head is when he goes to retrieve the gun from the bathroom.
I think the interesting thing about this clip is when it cuts away to Sollozzo and McCluskey at the table. Technically it does not make sense, we are following Michael and therefore if he can not see them we should not be able to either. The editor has done this to show us what is going through Michael's mind. He can not see the men but they are all he is thinking about, the two men he is about to kill. The editor has been able to show the audience visually what the character is thinking.
Even though the cutaways do not technically make sense, if we look at Walter Murch's "rule of six" it suggests that this is alright (4). According to this rule "emotion" should take precedence over technical flaws in the edit. The shots might not make sense but they help the audience follow the character's emotions.
Also, at first Michael can not seem to find the gun. The first cut away to Sollozzo and McCluskey helps the audience feel the anxiety he must be feeling. This is because it makes the moment seem longer than it is. The editor has used Elaboration:
"to take a moment and make it larger, to stretch time." (5)
The audience are kept in the dark that little bit longer.
I think the editing of this scene is really what makes it so powerful. The editor, Peter Zinner, understood that the most important thing in the scene was the anxiety and dilemma faced by Michael. Using the techniques I have mentioned he managed to put the audience firmly inside the character's head so that they could feel exactly what he was going through during the scene.
Bibliography
(2) - www.filmreference.com/Directors-Jo-Ku/Kuleshov-Lev.html -Richard Taylor
(3) - http://www.mediacollege.com/video/shots/closeup.html
(4) - "In The Blink of an Eye" by Walter Murch, Silman-James Press,(08.01.01),Page 18
(5) - "Film Directing Fundamentals" by Nicholas T. Proferes,Focal Press,(11.02.04),Page 12
Tuesday, 16 February 2010
a trip to the continent
The first thing that hit me after watching "Gomorrah" is how similar it felt to "A Prophet" a film I had seen a few days earlier. It was hard to pinpoint why exactly they felt so similar. They are of course both European films so you might expect some degree of similarity but they were made in completely different countries and therefore there are a lot of cultural contrasts. I think it was the films' attempts at realism that made me make the link, through the way they are shot and the way the story progresses. Unlike Western cinema we are not spoon fed information, we pick up tiny morsels from conversations the characters have and we have to piece together what is going on ourselves. We can't just turn off as we sometimes do when watching an American film. However I want to disagree with this style of storytelling.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In both of these films we frequently jump into scenes and we lose our bearings because the situation has not been established. It is only halfway through the scene that we realise "oh, that's the character he was talking about a few scenes earlier". In their attempt at realism they don’t seem to want to tell the audience exactly what is going on. I think this has a negative effect because any point you are trying to make can be completely lost because the audience is still trying to catch up. This is what happened when I watched "Gomorrah". I followed the stories fairly well but I was not sure exactly where we were scene to scene. "A Prophet" however worked a lot better, I felt engaged throughout. Maybe it's because "A prophet" only really followed one character which made it slightly easier.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I simply feel that to make your points felt in a film the audience needs to be in a structured environment which allows them to concentrate on the characters and the story being told.
Thursday, 14 January 2010
Documentary
We have been discussing with Adam and Zam the methods behind constructing a piece of documentary filmmaking. I decided to watch a few new mainstream documentary's to see how they are constructed and what methods they use. The two I watched were the BBC's "the man who can't stop hiccupping" and an American documentary called "28 stone teenager".
Now first off I chose these because I find the increase in these sorts of "freak show" documentaries interesting, are we as a nation now more interested in this sort of sensational entertainment? In fact "the man who can't stop hiccupping" seemed to be one of the most viewed programmes on the iplayer for over a week. As for the "28 stone teenager" that seemed to be part of a marathon of "fat people doc's". I think that human beings have always been interested in strange deformities but now it is a guilty interest that people don’t really want to admit to.
These documentaries were both very similar in construction and I think this similarity helps show just how constructed they were because it shows that there is now a formula for how these documentaries should be handled. They can't just show what they have filmed they need to build it into a familiar narrative. In both these films there was the same structure; we meet the subject; we are introduced to their problem; they are shown trying to get over the problem several times but each time they fail, in the end a solution is found and the person is "cured".
After watching both documentaries I started to wonder would they have worked if we had changed this structure? In particular what would happen if a "cure" wasn't found? Would the films still work? Whilst watching both films I remember feeling that if this problem wasn't overcome I would be annoyed. In the case of "the man who can't stop hiccupping" the story of a man who can't stop hiccupping is probably worthy of documenting in itself, even if there isn't a cure. I think though that a documentary is like any film and it needs this structure, it needs a beginning, middle and end. We need to see the person reach their goal or the whole thing seems pointless.
Now first off I chose these because I find the increase in these sorts of "freak show" documentaries interesting, are we as a nation now more interested in this sort of sensational entertainment? In fact "the man who can't stop hiccupping" seemed to be one of the most viewed programmes on the iplayer for over a week. As for the "28 stone teenager" that seemed to be part of a marathon of "fat people doc's". I think that human beings have always been interested in strange deformities but now it is a guilty interest that people don’t really want to admit to.
These documentaries were both very similar in construction and I think this similarity helps show just how constructed they were because it shows that there is now a formula for how these documentaries should be handled. They can't just show what they have filmed they need to build it into a familiar narrative. In both these films there was the same structure; we meet the subject; we are introduced to their problem; they are shown trying to get over the problem several times but each time they fail, in the end a solution is found and the person is "cured".
After watching both documentaries I started to wonder would they have worked if we had changed this structure? In particular what would happen if a "cure" wasn't found? Would the films still work? Whilst watching both films I remember feeling that if this problem wasn't overcome I would be annoyed. In the case of "the man who can't stop hiccupping" the story of a man who can't stop hiccupping is probably worthy of documenting in itself, even if there isn't a cure. I think though that a documentary is like any film and it needs this structure, it needs a beginning, middle and end. We need to see the person reach their goal or the whole thing seems pointless.
Monday, 14 December 2009
"This Film is Not Yet Rated"
I was shocked when I watched Kirby Dick's documentary on the American film certificate system. You can see what he was trying to do with this film, to show people outside the film business how unfair and broken the system is. It's ironic then that it was this system in the end that stopped his film being seen by a wide audience.
I think what annoyed me the most was how these nameless people on the panel are somehow deemed to be the moral line for a nation of millions of people. I also think its ridiculous to have people with no specific professional training judging films on what effect they may have on an audience. Dick made a good point by suggesting that surely we should be listening to a child psychologist when it comes to deciding how a child could be effected by what they see on screen. He's is not saying anything against the panel, it is just their job, but if they are unable to give specific reasons for their decisions then they shouldn't be making the decisions in the first place.
I think what annoyed me the most was how these nameless people on the panel are somehow deemed to be the moral line for a nation of millions of people. I also think its ridiculous to have people with no specific professional training judging films on what effect they may have on an audience. Dick made a good point by suggesting that surely we should be listening to a child psychologist when it comes to deciding how a child could be effected by what they see on screen. He's is not saying anything against the panel, it is just their job, but if they are unable to give specific reasons for their decisions then they shouldn't be making the decisions in the first place.
Saturday, 5 December 2009
the 400 blows
The 400 Blows
I found "The 400 blows" to be both interesting and entertaining. Although it does not completely follow the sort of default film structure an audience is used to you remain engrossed throughout. I think the most interesting thing for me was the nature vs. nurture argument it brought up. I may be reading this wrong but I felt that Truffaut was trying to assess what makes a child or a person good or bad. Is someone just born a delinquent or is it the world that changes them? I felt this idea was presented best when the boys went to a Punch and Judy show. In this scene we are shown the innocent faces of the infant children in the crowd watching the show. The puppet show maybe be masked as children's entertainment but the story being told is a very violent one. I think this scene is trying to show that children are born innocent and it is how they are exposed to the world that makes them what they are.
I found "The 400 blows" to be both interesting and entertaining. Although it does not completely follow the sort of default film structure an audience is used to you remain engrossed throughout. I think the most interesting thing for me was the nature vs. nurture argument it brought up. I may be reading this wrong but I felt that Truffaut was trying to assess what makes a child or a person good or bad. Is someone just born a delinquent or is it the world that changes them? I felt this idea was presented best when the boys went to a Punch and Judy show. In this scene we are shown the innocent faces of the infant children in the crowd watching the show. The puppet show maybe be masked as children's entertainment but the story being told is a very violent one. I think this scene is trying to show that children are born innocent and it is how they are exposed to the world that makes them what they are.
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
A Fistful of Dollars
I've just finished watching "A fistful of Dollars" for the first time. I thought it might tie in well with us looking at stars and how they were used in hollywood. Do people watch this film because its a classic piece of cinema or do they watch it because they want to see Clint Eastwood swaggering and grimacing around the screen? I suppose its not that good an example because these are the films that really established him as a star. But the character he plays seems to be the model for later Eastwood films; the fierce, quietly intelligent hero. Maybe then this is how a star is created and then used. Audiences loved Clint Eastwood playing that character and would pay their money again and again to see him play it. Studios see that audiences like this and so put him in the same roles and so this "star" image is created. Clint Eastwood is no longer an actor hes a brand the studio can advertise and sell.
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