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.