This scene is from a musical romantic comedy-drama film “La La Land”, written and directed by Damien Chazelle and released in the United States on December 9, 2016. It tells a love story of Mia and Seb who meet and fall in love while they pursuing their dreams in Los Angeles. I chose this film is because I really enjoy watching it. Apart from the storyline, the visuals are the stunning point of the film, lots of camera ‘coverage’ are designed elaborately for visual interests and storytelling. The more as I learn, the more I feel complex of the shots in this film. Thus, I think it’s a film worth to unpack.
The “Someone in the Crowd” scene is start from a one minute master shot, in a medium long shot, with a handheld camera following the actors shuttling around the room, showing a fascinating musical performance of Mia’s friends persuading her to attend the party. As the camera goes around the room, it established the environment of the room. This master shot can be considered as an economic shot because there is only one continuity shot need to be taken, however, it require a significant amounts of rehearsing and advance preparation. The performance, position, actions of actors and the camera coverage are all choreographed designed perfectly match with the music. For example, in 0:31, three girls runs out to the corridor and the camera follows the green dressed girl through two different colors of rooms in a close up shot. As the girl disappear behind the camera, it continues move forward, we see Mia and the red dressed girl appear in the end of the room. Then, the camera follows Mia through the arch and continue moves back with the movement of Mia, other three girls come back on the screen in different timing and performance. Their performance matches perfectly with the lyrics as well. This scene skillfully uses the three-dimensional space of the room, smooth camera movement and wonderful performance of singing and dancing, really mobilizing the mood of the audience, gives the audience more immerse cinematic experience.
In 2:35, in a medium close up shot, with a horizontal pan, we follows Mia to the mirror. As Mia stares at the mirror and starts singing, the red bathroom lamps replaced by spotlights, this design of lighting allows the audiences goes into Mia’s inner world, Mia’s singing lyrics represent her inner thought as well. Further, when Mia looks direct at the mirror, camera zooms to a medium shot, which makes it seems like Mia is talking direct to the audience which break the forth wall and create a further emotional connection.
In 3:33, in a slow motion and a wide angle lenses, camera follows Mia enters the party, the slow motion of visuals and music represent the sad mood of Mia’s inner world. Suddenly, the camera changes its position to shot from Mia’s back, this requires a restart performance of the actors and breaks the 180 degree rule, however, keep the continuity. The color of lighting turning from red to blue, with the snowing falling in the image, it engages the audiences with this visual spectacle. As the music and dance turns quicker and quicker, Mia walks out of the screen and the camera continue moves forward pans up and captures the character jumping into the swimming pool. It is said that the continuity shot of following the character jump into the pool is actually shot by two different camera and the editor cut them together afterwards. Another camera positions under the water and rotate horizontally, in a wide angle lenses, showing the attractive performance of people dancing around the pool. Match with the rhythm of the music, the camera rotate quicker and quicker and the camera moves up shows the blooming fireworks, the atmosphere reaches the peak as the music ends. The amazed part of the scene is that the lighting and camera coverage helps to deliver characters’ feeling to the audience, with match the music perfectly, it also offers a strong audio-visual experience at the same time.
In this week’s class, I further learned how to transfer the script to a movie. In the group discussion, I discovered that everyone has a different interpretations of scripts and there are lots of things need to consider, like the camera position, the image size, how the characters enters the frame, is tracking shot needed and so on. During the discussion, we put forward different suggestions and finally chose the best expressed way.
For the exercise 3, I did a floor plan before shooting therefore this time I took less time to complete the shooting. As Robin mentioned in the class, the jump cuts appears in the video. That’s a problem I didn’t think of. While shooting, I was just thinking to get another close up shot to show the details and my origin purpose is to shot with another angle. Therefore, l learned that if I want show shot in another angle, it need to be larger than 30 degree.
From the reading of “Big Picture”, I learned that the master shot is a long shot that captures all or most of the action in a scene. It is an economic shot because it can not only save time and money but also eliminates the need of coverage and matching. Furthermore, because the master shot allows the actors to perform in a more natural way, it gives the audience more immerse cinematic experience compare to those “cut together” scene. Another difference is that the master shot only have one way to edit but the “cut together” scene could be edited in different way by the editor which might different with what the director want to express. I think it’s quiet interesting that it seems to be a financial choice but offers more “beauty, elegance and creative freedom.” I think master shot is more of a design for particular purpose rather than a commercial choice. For instance, in the beginning scene of “La La Land”, the master shot of people dancing and singing on the road is been used to immerse the audience into the world in the film, sharing the emotion.
in this week’s class, I understand different language may course different effect, not only to our understanding but also to the performance of the activity itself. For instance, we use the word “coverage” as the process of filmmaking. In French, this process is called “decoupage”, literally means “to cut up” and the editing process is called montage, literally means “joining or sticking together.” This different meaning results to different approaches for filmmaking process. The difference is decoupage implies a premeditation, or pre-visualisation but the editing is a solution. In France, filmmakers tend to plan everything while shooting and when they go to the editing room, they can just connect every scene together to finish the editing. However, in other countries, filmmakers shooting in different image size and camera angles until they make sure they coverage everything they need and when they come to the editing room, the final film is not sure, they may have different editing version. This different approach is because of the language. In other side, this language difference offers a wider perspective to filmmakers in other countries. In China, the word for editing is “剪辑”, literally means editing and rearrangement and the editing process is called “蒙太奇”, it’s just the translate of word montage. I think these words came from abroad to China, and then filmmakers used them all the time.
From the reading, I learned that continuity is very important in the film. When we shot we need to make sure the eye line and camera direction seems normal when they cut together. Further, a lot of details need to notice while shooting like the hairstyle, the making up, the blood on the shirt, the water marks on the ground, all these details need to handled properly, otherwise, it will break the continuity of scenes. The 180 degree rule is a cinematography guideline that help to create a normal conversation and to avoid unintended confusion amongst the audience. However, rules are design to break. We can break it to challenge conventions, to identify a change in the story and to achieve visual variety. For example, in Paper Moon, filmmaker cut across the line when Ryan reaches across the table, shot the conversation outside of the restaurant. In this way, the filmmaker changes the tone and power relationship. The boy became the one who has power, we can see that from he yelling to the man ” I want my two hundred dollar!” In addition, I’ve seen some mixed cuts recently, editing characters from different movies together in this new clip, but I didn’t feel any discomfort. That’s because the editing follows the 180 degree rule, two actors’ eye line matches perfectly that the audience will assume they are look at each other. In this way, editing can become more creative!
