‘INTENSIFIED CONTINUITY – VISUAL STYLE IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN FILM’ by David Bordwell.

In recent decades, filmmakers are more inclined to create scenes through single shots, which allows for the director to control the scene’s pacing in editing, and to focus more on the actor’s performance. The director would give a scene a wide format, which has a tendency to place the actor off centre, leaving the scene’s locale visible. Directors focus on the faces of the actors. The mouths, brows and eyes become the principal source of information and emotion. Bordwell goes on to talk about personal coverage styles for directors. Christine Vachon asks directors to shoot both master shot and closer views, because they tend to lean towards shooting important dramatic scenes in a single continuous take, that leaves no room for change of pace or unsteady performances. Bordwell suggests that the “search for something good, from a wide range of angles. will make filmmaker’s more inclined to cut more often.”

To understand framing within a film, I deconstructed the final scene from ‘The Age of Innocence’ directed by Martin Scorsese.The opening shot is a Medium close up with the male actor situated in the left of frame, having the right of frame with more space. Only the man is in focus, however his eyes are looking up into the right side of frame. This is another example of External Composition from my blog post ‘Method of Working (Part 12)’. This shot forms a compositional relationship between this shot and the next. The next shot is of an open window, and the audience suspects that what he is looking at/for is someone inside of the room, as the open windows suggest there is life inside. The shots after this are shot one and two repeated, cutting back an forth between the two. In one shot the light from the window shines on the man’s face, and it initiates memories and flashbacks of a woman. Now the audience knows that this is the woman he is looking for. The male actor always remains to the left of frame due to the action happening to the right of frame through external composition. After the flashbacks a man closes the windows, suggesting the end of something. The end of the flashbacks and an end to this relationship between the two, as the male actor has been shown with a smile on his face, now is shown expressionless. The shot after this is of the man in the center of the frame, taken from a wide shot. Here we see where the man is, and up until now the audience has been completely oblivious to his surroundings. Now it is the only thing we can see, he is drowned out by the black and neutral colours, illustrating his insignificance and loneliness. This shot is a long shot, as the audience sees this character walk out of the frame to end the film. Having him walking away shows how he is closing this part of his life, and it is how the audience says goodbye to the character, along with the film. The last couple of seconds when he is walking away is when the audience sits back and contemplates what just happened and why it did.

Directing: ‘Film Techniques and Aesthetics’ by Michael Rabiger. 

This book is a manual for those who like to learn by doing. It talk about directing, and creating your own scenes. As a director you must know how to choose a piece of writing for the screen and then know how to shape and develop it. You must now how to critique, deconstruct and reconstruct the chosen piece.

External Composition:

A form of compositional relationships is the momentary relationship between one shot and the next. It is known as external composition, and it is hidden because the audience is unaware of how much the transition between one shot and then next influences our judgements and expectations. A common use for this composition is when a character leaving the frame in one shot leads the audience to the very place in the next shot.

• An example of this:

“The character Eric enters, stands in front of William, goes to the phone, picks up a book from the table, looks out the window, and then sits on the couch. The whole action has been covered by three camera positions. Making a floor plan for a sequence allows you to: recreate what a whole room or location layout looks like, record how the characters move around, and decide how the camera is placed. This will help you decide where to place your own camera in the future, and it reveals how little of an environment needs to be shown for the audience to create the rest in their imaginations”.

The book goes on to talk about the camera and asks the reader questions about the coverage of the shots.

“Use of Camera

• How many different motivations can you find for the camera to make a movement?

• Does the camera follow the movement of a character?

• Does a car or other moving object permit the camera to pan the length of the street so that camera movement seems to arise from action in the frame?

• How does the camera lay out a landscape or a scene’s geography for the audience?

• When does the camera move in closer to intensify our relationship with someone or something?

• When does the camera move away from someone or something so we see more objectively?

• Does the camera reveal other significant information by moving?

• Is the move really a reframing to accommodate a rearrangement of characters?

• Is the move a reaction—panning to a new speaker, for instance?

• What else might be responsible for motivating this particular camera move?

• When is the camera used subjectively?

• When do we directly experience a character’s point of view?

• Are there special signs that the camera is seeing subjectively? (For example, an unsteady handheld camera used in a combat film to create a running soldier’s point of view.)

• What is the dramatic justification for this?

• Are there changes in camera height?

• Are they made to accommodate subject matter?
• Do they make you see in a certain way?
• Are they done for other reasons?”

I am starting to come to the idea that I prefer Anonioni’s way of shooting, such as I construct each shot individually, with a different coverage, and each shot is artistic in its own way. After I directed a scene (Refer to blog post: Epiphanies Week 5) I like the idea of challenging myself and having the creative freedom to create a new coverage for each shot. This way I could see how it will all come together and how each shot will tie in with the next to create a greater impact on the audience. I could have shot the scene from the beginning to the end with three different camera locations, however I chose to have each shot in a new location, almost editing with the camera. This way it allows for a broader range of shots, and less constraints. You can really get involved with the camera, and be the camera yourself, and think about the endless possibilities of where the right shot will be taken from. This is exciting, and I found that when you realise you have the right shot, it encourages you to do the rest at a higher standard. At the moment, at about a third of the way into my Method of working I am surprised at how I have come to terms with the different types of coverage, and come to one that I prefer over the others. This is exciting and inspires me to continue on this path and see if I get as much out of it as I have done so far.

Style and Film Form seen through David Bordwell and Kirstin Thompson:

Form engages the viewer, and the distinctive patterns of technique we find in a film constitute its style, along with artistic decisions. Patterns of technique work within the film’s overall form, shaping the effects the film has on the audience. Tastes, fashion, dominant trends and stylistic norms all influence the restraints whilst making a film. Many filmmakers let stylistic elements cooperate to show different story lines and locations, yet mise-en-scene allow us to keep track of the shots, and when they occur. The filmmaker may discover significant patterns in the process of making the film. The task then leads to ways that enhance those patterns in a way that will give the audience a specific experience. The audience tends to create expectations about the style within a film, and like other kinds of expectations, stylistic ones come from both our experience of the world and our experience to the film and other media elements. A director’s job is not only to direct the cast and crew, but also the audience’s attention, which shapes our reactions to the film. The filmmaker’s technical decisions affect what we perceive and how we respond. Filmmaker’s deliberately design the film style to create parallels or underscore developments in the drama. Style is a subtle sense of narrative progression. Style is connected to the emotions and meaning that the film empresses, and it readjusts the story information, guiding the viewer’s knowledge every moment. Each and every filmmaker has their own style in cinema, and this course is sending us i the direction to find out for ourselves what our own individual style is.

Research: ‘Film Art: An Introduction’ by Borwdell, D and Thompson, K.

I now wanted to move into the direction of the coverage of a scene, starting with framing. Framing is carefully considered by the filmmaker to create powerful cinematographic techniques, and allows the director to create a dynamic composition that engages the audience, highlighting the most important features. It defines both onscreen and offscreen space, that creates a vantage point that will create a specific distance, height and angle. The framing will change, depending on what is being filmed. Depending on the ratio of the shot, will determine what the scene will look like, how it will be displayed, and the larger the ratio, the more the director is likely to put more information off centre, so that the viewer can concentrate on that. There is two elements to framing and that is onscreen and offscreen space. Offscreen space is where the audience can tell what is going on when they cant see what is happening outside of the frame. The sounds can be offered as cues as to what is in the space, building up the audiences expectations. This space is created by that of the camera and its surrounding, due to the area around the camera being used imaginatively. Only a couple of cues are needed to suggest to the audience what is happening in and out of the frame. The angle of a shot illustrates how the filmmaker wants the audience to see what is happening, and the level of the shot can either be horizontal or canted, where canted is normally used for a more disruptive effect. Height is determined by the level and angle of the shot, as it is how the filmmaker wants to show the visual style, and capture a certain connotation, depending on how the viewer sees the action unravelling. This is evident in the ‘Oh Lucky man’ final scene that I analysed, where the camera shooting from above the action, illustrating that the audience is seeing the party as an outsider, where the balloons start to fall on everyone, and not in amongst the actors, like the majority of the shots. All of the functions of framing create a clear understanding of what will be shown in the shot and how it will be seen to the audience; this is an important feature in cinema. as it sets up the overall connotation and context. There are distances and angles that form patterns that guide us in building up the story, which is again evident in ‘Oh Lucky Man’, where there is a repetition of specific distances and gales of the shot, that reiterate the action; this makes framing an important motif within the film. Through the movements such as panning, tracking or tilting, the audience becomes aware of the space being shown or implied. The camera shots are taken with a connotation to the rest of the film. very shot has its own meaning, and its own positioning, and the way the camera shots is placed, determines how the audiences sees the scene. We tend to see the camera movement as a substitute for our own movements.

~Research: ‘Film Art: An Introduction’ by David Bordwell and Kirstin Thompson.