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.