Reading- A Man Of Excess by Paul Schrader on Jean Renoir

This reading is a conversation that ranges from reflections of a director through historical significance, and the analysis of film techniques. It goes on to determine the individual style a director had, and how it impacted the way they created their films. A screenwriter, director and former critic, Paul Schrader talks about the filmmaker Jean Renior and others including Bresson. I saw this to be relevant, as I am on a process to discovery who I am as a filmmaker, and my working methodology.

The filmmaker Jean Renior had a film style that was artistic and captured humanist values that lead him to the title of the godfather to the post-war European art cinema. His films were a mixture of humanism, comedy, technical innovation, all based around a social basis. he not only approaches the film as an actor, but he has the ability to have an intellectual depth of field. He can see how everything will work before he starts anything. He now how the performances will go, where the camera will move to. The interview goes on to talk about how the director is also the editor and the camera operator. The director sits in front of the monitor, and can playback the scene until it is right. They admire that every shot is a new set up, and the notion of continuity is contingent on a master shot. In class we have tested this out, by focusing on one shot at a time, and having every one taken from a new perspective. This shows how far you can go to get the perfect scene, with the best individual shots. Another point that was brought up was the secrets of fluid editing is having the actors’ movements force the cuts, and I tried to do this in the stair scene that was created in class. I made the cuts in a way that the actors movements went into the next shot. This allowed for a greater impact on the audience and easier and more realistic to watch.