Rear Window Symmetry

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Week 13: Classical Narrative

So I've emailed out the slides from today's class. What follows are a few other links to pursue around this issue of narrative conventions.

For Monday's class, we looked at a film by this director. His interviews with Francois Truffaut are available online, and great listening if you're interested in this man's work.

Resources

There are some who say that no one's thought better about the why's of drama than Aristotle. Fear not, his thoughts aren't exclusively carved in Ancient Greek on the columns of the Parthenon, they are very freely available. (If you do find the unity of time and the unity of place in there, let me know -- I can only find the unity of action.)

More recent books. For a regular, highly-opinionated take on the ways of being a screenwriter, the Script Notes podcast is essential listening. (When I think of what some gurus charge for screenwriting advice, the wealth of material these guys give away amazes me.)

For a take on Hollywood storytelling with a strong sense of narrative design and filmmaking technique, David Bordwell (see his blog also) is the critic to go to. The Way Hollywood Tells It is the key book, and if I'm not mistaken, there should be a free chapter of it available online here.

The thing Bordwell gets right is that it's very hard to separate 'pure narrative' from the way you frame it, the way you express it through music, through performance. In the end, the story is told through sounds and images. The form has to express the content.

Which is why another book is well worth going through at some point in your filmmaking life. (The earlier the better.) Cherry Potter's Image, Sound and Story jumped out at me one day in a second hand book store, and is valuable for the same reason as Bordwell's.

The Gurus

You should be aware of some of the other writers in this area, and I've learned a lot from them all. Look at one or two of these books - you don't need them all. If they come to town and give a seminar for $400 a person, keep in mind that much of what they say will probably be in their book, often available for $20-$30. The book might require a bit more initiative on the reader's part, but you'll have saved a lot.

Firstly, there's John Truby, who wrote The Anatomy of Story. This is his website. He puts a lot of emphasis on developing the web of oppositions, the designing principle and the scene weave that will express your theme. In the end, he comes back in the end to '7 basic structure steps' that appear in all narratives. Some of his audio lectures on genres alerted me to quite a few things I didn't know I knew.

(Maybe there's something in that -- this stuff shouldn't fight your intuition. You're figuring out how to tell stories after a lifetime of being on the receiving end. Pennies should drop if these authors have cottoned onto genuine truths.)

John Yorke's book Into the Wood: A Five Act Journey into Story felt like one of the strongest of these when I surveyed the field back in 2013. Accessibly written by a working writer, and a tendency to go beyond the 'whats' and entertain the 'whys' of storytelling.

The original 'three act' man was Syd Field. His 1979 book Screenwriting first presented that three act convention that is discussed so casually by script editors and screenwriters alike to this day.

There are others: Christopher Vogler (particularly if the name Joseph Campbell means something to you), Robert McKee, Linda Seger, Michael Hauge, Linda Aronson. Many working writers are profoundly skeptical about what these gurus have to offer. My own attitude is if it's the way you discover aspects of the craft, and it doesn't cost more than it should (the cost of a book or two), there's nothing really wrong with it. (Just don't dogmatic about it - use what works.)

I can't speak for Blake Snyder (Save the Cat), or any of the others. There are too many books in this area given the common ground between them.

Addendum

Look, it's got nothing to do with classical narrative -- really, nothing at all -- but I was struck again by the array of beautiful images this director and his teams have given us.

Scene Analyses (Task 4)

As you're thinking about how to approach Task 4, the proliferation of video essays in the last few years provides a lot of examples of ways to take apart a scene. (Note: there are a lot of text essays around -- I'm just focusing on video essays below as they allow you to see what the author is discussing while they're discussing it.)

From 1848 Media, an extensive piece on one of the beach set pieces of Jaws. (Note how many of the techniques we saw in Schindler's List's nightclub sequence are active here.)

A recent video essay on exposition in the opening sequence of Fincher's Se7en.

From Antonios Papantoniou, wordless shot-by-shot analyses of The Untouchables (I showed part of this in the editing class), Cape Fear and others.

Matt Marlin offers video essays on Whiplash (strong on editing and cinematography in emphasis), Boogie Nights (very good on sound) and others.

A strong dissection of the influences of Inception and its status as 'surrealist'.

Tony Zhou, Jacob Swinney and Kogonada tend to be more about aesthetic arcs or visual motifs across a whole film or many films than specific scene breakdowns, but they're a good model to look at as well. The latter's 'What is neorealism?' must be one of the most valuable video essays yet produced.

From Martin Scorsese's Personal Journey through American Cinema: 'The Smugglers' (those who snuck subversive ideas into mainstream entertainment); The Western (a genre study).

Turning the camera on Scorsese, here's Mark Cousins' Scene by Scene (a TV series from the mid-90s). Cousins is also the director of the majestic Story of Film series and A Story of Children and Film.

Also consider these: Pulp Fiction (breakfast scene, Nicolas Eason), Psycho (opening, Max Cannon), Citizen Kane (specifically the blocking, Mind on Film), Raising Arizona (IB Film II), No Country for Old Men (Landrey Lemons) and the ending of the same film (Rolling Bottle).

Week 12: Task 3 (Scene Analysis) and Task 4 (Research Case Study)

Today we outlined the two remaining tasks for Story through Sound and Image. Here are the slides for today's class.

Task 3 - Research Essay (individual work; due week 15, week 16 at the latest)

We sent you a long email describing how the research process was meant to work for this. Along with it went another soft copy of the subject outline (correcting some date errors in the original), and some attachments, including a list of films we suggest focusing the assignment on, a suggested reading list, and a couple of previous successful essays.

One resource to consider: Cinephilia and Beyond

Let me know what films you are interested in covering next week.

Task 4 - Scene Breakdown (group presentation; presented in week 16 or week 17)

In each class - week 12 - week 15 - I'll be taking scenes (usually out of the films we've been watching), and providing analyses of them, as examples for what you want to be looking at. Today we focused on the opening scenes of Schindler's List. On that note, if you want a closer look at Steve Zaillian's screenplay for Schindler's List, click here.

The Music Class

Welcome back from your shooting period. Probably the one thing you don't want to think about now is what the camera needs now, so this week's subject is about as far away as could be: music in film. We talk about the different types of music, some of the practical issues around the process, and how we can make use of this powerful tool as storytellers.

Perhaps the best way to measure what music can do is to take it away. What would Star Wars be? Or Goodfellas for that matter? (So much for it being all about that steadicam shot.) Or poor Britney? Film music is a nuclear weapon. (Sometimes those win wars.)

Another way of measuring what an underscore can do is to look at what other music might have contributed in the place of something we know well. This reconstruction of how Alex North's rejected score for 2001: A Space Odyssey might have been intended to work is worth seeing for this reason. (Film scores are the one aspect of the filmmaking process where rejection of work is reasonably common. Some high profile rejected scores include The Exorcist, Mission: Impossible, Troy, King Kong, Pirates of the Caribbean, Drive - reasonably common in other words.)

Other online resources:
- Andrew Ford's series The Sound of Pictures contains a lot of gold. Interviews with director Peter Weir, the maestro of maestros Ennio Morricone, and others (find links through those) can be listened to online, but are also available as transcripts in Ford's excellent (entry level) book.
- Composer roundtable from The Hollywood Reporter's annual series: 2015, 2014 and 2013.
 - Film Music Notes - This site's annual series on the Oscar nominees for Best Score goes beyond gushing and gets into the thematic mechanics of the scores. Great work.
- Few working composers get the sort of time you'd need to explain your creative decisions in detail to a lay audience. Somehow Bear McCreary (Battlestar Galactica, Outlander, Constantine) finds the time.
- Coffee table books tend not to be the cheapest way to get to know an art form. Matt Zoller Seitz has put out a couple of books on Wes Anderson's films, and the latest on Grand Budapest Hotel contains an interview with Alexandre Desplat that amply illustrates why he is the film composer par excellence of our time. If you don't want to buy that book, look at this piece on Imitation Game instead.
- Speaking of Desplat, his cues are beautifully intricate. This deconstruction of the Imitation Game main title should open your ears if all you hear when you listen to scores is 'songs without lyrics'.
- From another age of the internet (2006 HTML!), Film Music on the Web. I only mention it because I was its last editor, writing many of the gushing-yet-critical reviews that dotted its front page.

Scenes considered in Monday, 10am: Trois Coleurs: Bleu, Shanghai Triad, Once, The Great Gatsby, Gravity, Octopussy, Planet Earth (Otters), 2001: A Space Odyssey, 'Duck Dodgers and the 24 and a half century', Infernal Affairs, Girl on the Bridge, The Leftovers, Masters of Sex.

Scenes considered in Tuesday, 10am: Trois Coleurs: Bleu, Shanghai Triad, Les Intouchables, Gravity, Planet Earth (Otters), 2001: A Space Odyssey,  'Duck Dodgers and the 24 and a half century', Star Wars, The Leftovers.

Class 7: The Soundtrack

I will fill in this entry a bit later in the week with some links and observations.

Filmsound.org is a website that gave me hours of fun when I first found it.

Andrew Ford's book The Sound of Pictures offers a nice window for listening to the music and (to a slightly lesser extent) the sound of films. One of the highlights is the interviews with filmmakers and composers he conducted for the text. His interview with the late Rodney Holland can be listened to at ABC Online.

The sounds of Tarantino's films.

Films shown in class: Gunshots (Collateral, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Great Gatsby, Infernal Affairs, Miami Vice, Godfather), Footsteps (Tracks, Mon Oncle, Looney Tunes, Blue is the Warmest Color, Manhunter), Atmospheres (Ran, Shanghai Triad), Voices (What Maisie Knew, Citizen Kane, Vertigo, The Grey, House of Cards, Enduring Love), 'Truckstop' from 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould.

Class 6: Movement and Editing

Notes for this week's class are bundled together with the notes for week 5 & week 7 here.

Movement

Tony Zhou showcases the role of different types of movement in the films of Akira Kurosawa. He makes a good point that movement tends to draw the eye more than any other anomaly in an image. He also provides a list of types of movements that can play a part in shots: (i) movement of nature; (ii) movement of groups (of people); (iii) movement of individuals (characters); (iv) movement of the camera (the one we focused on today); (v) movement of the cut (matching and contrasting movements).

A recent article on the balance between shot rhythm and cutting in Birdman, famed for its smooth, long-take photography. (See the section halfway down on Technique.)

Screen Direction

Another Tony Zhou piece, this time showing a recent sterling example of screen direction from Bong Joon-Ho's graphic novel adaptation Snowpiercer.

Editing

For more on Walter Murch: 6 principles.

Murch's books In the Blink of an Eye and The Conversations (actually Michael Ondaatje's book) are essential reading for aspiring editors.

This vimeo contributor provides solid, detailed expositions of the shot-by-shot rhythms of key film sequences. Here he tackles a sequence that tipped the hat to Sergei Eisenstein's 'Odessa Steps' scene, The Untouchables' train station shootout.

Much of this analysis of a critical sequence in Jaws brings it down to editing rhythm.

A recent article on editing Grand Budapest Hotel.

Intensified continuity editing is compared here to the older continuity editing system using two versions of the same story, both adapted by Hollywood. (The 'IC' idea is Bordwell's really, which is why so many of the links in this post are to his articles.)

Eye Trace

A thoughtful contribution of the path of the eye and how we can motivate those eyes towards different things. (Note in particular how viewers asking different questions see different details first.)

Films Covered in Week 6

Monday class: Ran, Solaris, Mic-macs, The Horse Whisperer, The Red Balloon, The 400 Blows, Shanhai Triad, The Godfather, Tree of Life, Remains of the Day, All the President's Men, Pride and Prejudice, Once Upon a Time in the West, F for Fake, Red Road, Colombiana, 2046, Undertow (nail in foot), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Untouchables, Walkabout, Trois Coleurs: Bleu. 

Some others were played on Tuesday: Vertigo, Psycho and Nostalgia. (Note: several of the above weren't played, due to the greater emphasis given to these three.) Also we started with Upstream Color.

Suggested reading (in addition to the above)

- David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction (chapters on editing)
- Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time
- Pudovkin, Film Technique
- Karen Pearlman, Cutting Rhythms

Class 5: The Camera and the Eye

We didn't talk much about the science of the eye - we compared the eye and the camera more in vaguer language. But if you want to put names on things, this video should suit you. And it turns out we're not the only ones doing this class.

A link for the slides referred to in this class and over the next few weeks.

Films featured in class this week included Solaris, Pride and Prejudice, 2046, Fallen Angels, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Tokyo Story, Stalker, Vertigo, Mr Turner, Once Upon a Time in the West, Collateral, The Insider, Paris Texas, Planet Earth, Remains of the Day, Citizen Kane, Beyond the Hills, In the Mood for Love, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Manhattan. (Yes, a lot today.)

Opening vs Closing Images

There are so many films that you could have included here, but those Jacob Swinney selected tell a story. Similarity and dissimilarity can serve equally well when choosing the opening and closing images of your film. It depends what you most want to put in our minds.

Take the last two in the montage. John Ford's The Searchers (the empty doorway) explicitly recalls its opening with its finale - the ways in which the world and the characters have changed is effectively brought to mind. (Good image motif.) 

Brian Singer's The Usual Suspects works the other way. Those frames couldn't be more different. The first is as small a detail in that scene as they could find - Kayser Soze is concealed. The last shows Soze unmasked, for all to see.

People will Read Again

The two books I sent around the room today (actually, only in Monday's class) were Gustavo Mercado's Filmmaker's Eye, and Christopher Kenworthy's Master Shots. Joel asked about Werner Herzog's superb memoir, which is called A Guide for the Perplexed.

Visual Arcs: Discovering the Face

I referred to a film of my own which utilised the 'arc of unveiling', moving from viewing a character from behind to look them full in the face, and exploiting the mystery inherent in that journey. The film was Go Quickly, and the character was the father. He initially seems to be the film's antagonist, but as we come to see him more clearly for who he is, our feelings about what is going on should be shifting.

Depth of Field

The Illusion of Intention. A focus bump in a recent documentary is interpreted as a character's evasiveness.

Aspect Ratio

On the pitfalls of an aspect ratio too wide for your subject matter, consider this recent piece.

On the peculiarities of 4:3 and how Wes Anderson uses it in Grand Budapest Hotel.

On the 'infamous' (?) 1:1 aspect ratio of Xavier Dolan's Mommy.

Colour Palettes

A great recent video essay on the use of colour in Kimmy Schmidt.

To see a lot of colour palettes on regular basis, sign up to the RSS feed of Movies in Color.

Class 4: Sense of Place

Hello all. Our fourth class approaches, which means a couple of assessments draw nigh.

Friday March 13th (Task 1)

As noted in the subject outline, all groups must send me their Task 1 tomorrow by email. (Let's say before 9pm.) This will include one worksheet filled out for the group, as well as the 10 storyboards put together by each of member of the group. You were emailed an electronic version of the subject outline by Manuel on Monday March 2nd. You do not need to submit the actual photos for this stage, so don’t worry if you haven’t yet actually shot your presentation. Email me at the usual address.

Key things: 

1. Only one submission required per group

2. The submission must include the 10 storyboards for each group member, clearly labeled and numbered

3. Make sure in your submission that you clearly label the document - indicating what task it is, and who the two group members are. 

If for some reason it's too big to send by email -- if your scans of your storyboards err on the side of hi-res, for example -- I suggest sharing it with me via a Dropbox folder or a Google Drive folder.

Next Week Class Time (Task 2) - Monday 10am or Tuesday 10am

In your Story through Sound and Image class next week, you and your partner will be presenting your Task 2 Sense of Place Slide Presentation. 10 photos, scanned and arranged in powerpoint. Soundtrack is optional. You will be ‘running the projector’, so to speak, so you control how quickly or slowly the slides pass by. (Give that a bit of thought before the day.)

After you present the slides, we will as an audience try to piece together what we’ve just seen. We’ll then ask the presenting group to explain their intentions, and read their script. Interesting things emerge. 

We will need all presentations ready for the start of the class (ie. 10am Monday or 10am Tuesday). It’s a courtesy to your fellow filmmakers to be there to see their work if they are prepared enough to watch yours. You must present in your regular class time, unless you have permission to do otherwise. (And we would usually only grant that where a group was split over two classes.)

What's it all about?

If you're still to shoot your story, or perhaps even still to plan it, and you're overwhelmed by the detail and have forgotten what it's all about: Two people meet in a public place. Tell us a story with that at the core, and tell it visually. This is an exercise in visual storytelling. That's all. :)

When Formalism gets Realist Sound

Ouch.

Class 3: Drama Pitch

For this week's class, we'll be using the timeslot for the Drama Production pitches. Even if you're not doing that unit this semester, I suggest you attend and watch the pitches, as it will inform your own efforts in later semesters, and you'll get a sense of who is in the class around you.

Don't forget that in the following week, we will be playing our 'Sense of Place' slides in class, so you and your partner(s) should complete work this week. Email the completed slideshows (as powerpoint files, unless you've created a quicktime movie) to me a day before your class time.

You will also need to send me your group's version of Task 1, which includes answers to a number of questions, including a copy of your script, your shooting schedule, and, FOR EACH GROUP MEMBER, a set of storyboards that interpret your story. You will only end up shooting one set of 10 shots, but we need to see the plan each of you separately developed.

Unlike the actual presentation, you will not need to process anything in order to email me Task 1. So I'll stick to the submission date described in the subject outline -- send me your group's Task 1 by Friday 5pm of week 3 (March 14).

Remember, storyboards should be labeled, numbered, and while the drawing does not have to be draughtsman standard, the idea is that a reader will understand what is happening in each shot.

Things are getting busy. Let me know if you're having troubles with this. All the best in your work. :)

For posts on our previous classes, see Week 2 Film Style and Week 1 Mise en Scene.

And a bit of fun. If you want to see why Wes Anderson's films feel so neat, consider the role of symmetry in his framing. (Very formalist.)

Class 2: Film Style

The main additional resource for today are the notes handed out in the previous class, which go some way towards explaining style, some of the nuances of thinking about it, and how you can be making use of it already. Check your email for that dropbox link containing some of the clips we'll be focusing on this week.

A good practice exercise would be to seek out a film you're particularly taken with and study it for style cues. Look at the sorts of frames it uses, settings, lighting, camera movement, sound effects, editing style, performance and music.

Another approach: look at any of the cinema classics - Vertigo, Citizen Kane, Tokyo Story, for example - and study the style choices within these films. (Note: the style in these films is not constant, but often changes with the story.)

Some thoughts on those clips handed out today, and others we looked at in class. (I'll put my thoughts here after the classes for the week have passed.)

Lawrence of Arabia  - Tripod shots of varying size, obeying rule of thirds and 180 degree rule. Seamless continuity editing. Clear screen direction (Lawrence looking right, all of the Orient looking back to frame left). Music and sound atmospheres echo the shape of the drama. We never think about the view back the other way. Performances give a strong sense of what characters want and inner concerns also. Believable settings with some sleights of hand (day for night). CLASSICAL.

A Zed and 2 Noughts - Patterns galore, with recurring symbols, image motifs and ideas. Symmetric, closed frames. Recurring figures over many frames (the zebra texture, the missing leg) and overt visual arcs (the poster frame in the background of the crash site). Foregrounded visual transitions. Camera movements independent and choreographed. Expressive colour scheme and lighting. Characters feel like caricatures, mannered in their preoccupations, emotions and dialogue. (This could be a satire, but the performances are even a bit further than that.) The titles sequence typifies montage editing. Music has a strikingly independent presence, both the agitated saxophone of the opening titles and the grim adagio that follows the death of the swan. The music is not particularly cued to character actions, unlike Lawrence above. ('Something else on its mind.') We laugh at death. Highly FORMALIST.

Husbands and Wives - Restricted POV, long takes, jump cuts, whip pans between positions, at times clumsy camera repositioning as actors move 360 and action heads into unanticipated territory. Lived-in locations, believable costumes, strong sense of natural light (clear practical sources, soft depth of field that results), grainy resolution. Characters conscious of camera. Emphasis on real sound. All of this suggests REALISM.
Note also the sense of design at work here, subtle enough that we're not even aware of it: despite the odd stumble, the camera achieves clear framings - two shots, singles, behind the head shots - that suit each story moment. Consider that the couple breaking up mostly are observed in well-lit two shot positions while the surprised couple are rarely connected without a whip-pan. That says something. Also the fact that all characters, including the one that moves to another room, are on-mike, is a concession to the storytelling.

Naqoyqatsi - Montage editing, where edits create connections between unrelated images, is the driving force here. The image is largely graphics and 'filtered' footage, often with colours inverted and natural image qualities severely bent. The images ride the music more than the other way around. The Qatsi trilogy (which began with the groundbreaking Koyaanisqatsi) largely are FORMALIST wordless documentaries, and Naqoyqatsi is the most formalist of them.

Mon Oncle - Formalist elements: designed settings (whether it's the rustic village or the suburban architectural holocaust of that house), caricature performances, (people compared to dogs, and the dogs have more personality), imagery syncing to music (the car indicator), footsteps that sound very unrealistic, 'writing on the wall' (credits written on the walls of the story world). Classical elements: Ubiquitous camera mostly cutting around seamlessly from one moment to the next, tripod use. FORMALIST-CLASSICAL.

If there's 5 types overall, the missing one from this set was Realist-Classical. Take a look at any of the following: Captain Phillips, Z, Battle of Algiers. Any will do, and all combine those two traditions in similar ways.

Films played over the classes over the last two days: (note: not all clips plays on both days)
Realism: that youtube video of the woman diving, Husbands and Wives, Flight of the Red Balloon, Cloverfield, Tree of Life, My Blueberry Nights, Meek's Cutoff (realist western)
Classical: Inception, Lawrence of Arabia, Mad Men, North by Northwest
Formalism: 'Clarity', 'What Does the Fox Say?', Tears of the Black Tiger, Standard Operating Procedure, The Great Beauty, Moonrise Kingdom, A Zed and Two Noughts, The Great Gatsby 
Style Shifts:  I Am Love, The Grey, Killing Them Softly.

Another reading on the subject, with other examples: Film History

Follow up: On mise-en-scene and frame design last week, in the Tuesday class Ethan mentioned a recent video on the way the frames of Refn's Drive employed 'the Quadrant system'. Here's that video. The main idea here is that dynamic framing takes the eye on an interesting journey around the whole frame, using all of the space in an interesting way. It's not the only way to do it, but if it helps you achieve the effect yourself, by all means use it.

Style and Substance

Formalism.

Classicism.

Realism.

And, if you're in the mood, the difference between surprise and suspense.

Class 1: Mise-en-scene

It was a pleasure to meet you all today. A few links to follow up on things we saw in class 1.

Things to remember:
1. Form a group of 2 with a fellow classmate to tackle Tasks 1 and 2. (The question arose - should your individual storyboards be based on the same story? Yes.)
2. Take a look at the Film Style clips and the reading handed out for our week 2 class. (See your email for the dropbox link to that clip).
3. Look at the reading from Katz on Storyboards, and the chapter from on mise-en-scene.

The documentary Touch the Sound (our first example) is actually entirely viewable on youtube. (That can't be great for the film's acoustics, but it's a start.)

If you want to see more of Lumiere and Company (which contains the Lumiere exercises of 40 directors, including David Lynch, Peter Greenaway, Michael Haneke), large sections of it are viewable on youtube. (Type 'lumiere and company' into google video.)

The elements of imagery we explored today: line, shape, colour, tone, depth, texture, space. You could add 'movement' to that list as the main difference between still frames and live action.

We talked about a few qualities images could have:
* Balance / Lack of Balance (this is where symmetry, the rule of thirds, the golden ratio all come in - see links below)
* Open / Closed frames (see link below) - Spike Lee's film was an open frame, the Lumiere frame was a bit more closed
* Finally we talked about a couple of ideas about how to use images over a story. One was an image motif - a repeated frame whose features are echoed in some way throughout the film. (Remember the image from The Conformist.) The second was a visual arc - where some visual quality (e.g. a horizon, a costume, a colour) changes over the story as a way of expressing what's happening. (Remember the arcs in Her, or in Manhunter.)

Some readings on mise-en-scene: an accessible article, and a denser chapter from a book.

On open and closed forms, and how they apply in film. (No pictures here, but still good points.)

On the Gestalt principles: this and this will give you a good start. (Both come at it from more of a flat art / graphic design perspective, but the ideas are clear.)

On the Golden Ratio and composition: this and this.

Lastly - all those stills we saw in class. What films were these? A lot of films were in there, including Manhunter, Persona, Mauvais Sange (Bad Blood), Grand Budapest Hotel, Moonrise Kingdom, The Conformist, Moving, The Mirror, Under the Skin, Frozen, Her, Broken Embraces, In the Mood for Love, Rear Window, North by Northwest, The Red Balloon, A Zed and 2 Noughts and, for Monday's class, Infernal Affairs.

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to Story through Sound and Image. This blog will serve to reprise the odd key point from class, and also to provide links for further investigation.

Some key links:

David Bordwell's Observations on Film Art - Of all film's academics, Bordwell strikes closest to the tools we work with as filmmakers. His textbook is a worthy acquisition also, and you'll find sections of it for free on his website.

Tony Zhou's Vimeo Page - Tony Zhou has an editor's eye and a filmmakers' sense of form. If you're not a reader, you'll find his short videos on key aspects of film art a good path into the subject.

Mark Cousins did a series for Channel 4 based on his book The Story of Film: An Odyssey. If you don't know much about the history of cinema, you'll be amazed at what you've been missing. A humbling vision of what has been done with the art form.

Gustavo Mercado's book The Filmmaker's Eye provides a strong visual demonstration of the key types of shots that recur throughout films. The publisher, Focal Press, maintains a blog that features occasional posts.

And if I had only one book on screen studies to keep me company, I'd probably take one of Cherry Potter's books. Particularly Image, Sound and Story.

And one last film link, which isn't so much about Story through Sound and Image. Hollywood screenwriters John August and Craig Mazin have a podcast called Scriptnotes, and it's a valuable compass for aspiring screenwriters.

Lastly, my own, occasionally-tended blog, which largely seems to be comments on films.

Keep in mind that online film resources to arm yourself for your work are close to limitless and largely free.