Research Report
“Parallel Action”
The gangster movies are one of the most enduring and popular film genres, they could date back to the early days of film during the silent era. The famous gangster movies have The Untouchables(1987), Akira(1988), Miller’s Crossing(1990) and so on. My Research Report will mainly focus on two gangster movies, one is The Godfather(1972) directed by Francis Ford Coppola and another is A better tomorrow(1986) directed by John Woo. The particular scene is The Baptism scene and The Restaurant scene. Although both scenes show the killing actions, the continuity requests are different due to different situations. This research report on my exercise of “parallel action” as in Godfather.
In two scenes, both protagonists Mark and Michael kill their enemy. However, Mark has direct responsibility because he is the one shooting at the location but Michael has a more conceptual association because he has no direct relation to the death of the head of other families. This difference leads to different strictness of image continuity. In the restaurant scene of A better tomorrow, the strict continuity of cause and effects are demanded because Mark has direct relation with the violence and place. Therefore, a bunch of verse and reverse shots are used for depicting the tension killing clearly to the audience. For example, Mark shots and we see the reaction shots of people getting killed. Conversely, In the Baptism scene of The Godfather, parallel actions are used to demonstrate the participation of Michael. Michael has no direct relation to the killing, however by alternate editing Michael with the images of killing of other families together, it builds a conceptual association between the actions. Therefore, the audience will default Michael masterminded the murder. At this time, strict continuity between images is not necessary. Both films require a significant amount of rehearsing and advance preparation to get the continuity of images. The restaurant scene demands more of the actors and camera person’s practices ahead of time and the Baptism requests a beforehand and precise plan of shot list and the way of editing shots together.
Reflection to the parallel exercise
The storyboard:
-Reflection on the shooting
High standards and high requirements of the director makes the film a high quality film. It’s the normal thing for the actor to act time and time again until the director satisfies their performance. However, when it comes to my exercise, it’s difficult to implement. My actors are not professional, they are all my family members who come for help. Therefore, it’s hard for me to keep asking them to keep shooting over and over again. They will be impatient as well so the maximum to shoot one scene is around five times. A good director is able to guide the actor to inspire his largest potential and get the perfect shot. However, I found this is the ability I miss. My parents and grandparents always cooperate with me. However, my uncle doesn’t listen to my requests. When I ask him to walk beside the window and make a phone call. He responds “let me play guitar for you”. When I ask him again, he says “the plants need pruning.” It’s just so hard to get him to perform the way I want. There are always opportunities to work with those actors that don’t listen to your request or have lots of restrictions. For instance, some female actors don’t accept nudity on screen or they may even don’t accept kisses. It’s important for directors to quickly respond to these accidents and find a way to solve the problem.
The script keep changing until the last minute, this is the final scripts:
Throughout my exercise work on “Parallel action”, I’ve changed scripts for several times and until the last minute. The problem of the absence of aunt and my brother is communication. I took it for granted that my aunt would be willing to participate in my shoot, so I told her the shooting plan one day before. My aunt responding with unwilling attitude and recommend her son as my actor. Therefore, I went to my brother on the other day. After shooting, he told me he will go travel with my aunt two days later, which means he won’t be able to attend the shooting on weekend. Therefore, I made an appointment with my uncle before one week and rewrite my script again. However, the accident happens again. He had a cold on Saturday and he felt uncomfortable so he couldn’t go to my grandmother’s house for dinner. Thus, I can only go to his house, shoot some images and change my script once again. Accidents happen all the time and the best way is to prepare plan b and plan c to reduce the loss as much as possible.
The process of Editing
First version:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XPAJ4Oe6Nb6nSYfICIZ0PMPrFfC7hx9q/view?usp=sharing
After finish shooting, I start to edit around the material I got. Editing is a process with no right answer, different person comes up with different version. I regard my first version of editing as a draft because the process I’m doing is mainly selecting the good and useful shots from a bunch of clips and arrange them as the same way of script. I exporting this version with a feeling that something goes wrong with this version of editing and Robin’s word make the flaw clear. The balance between scene is disorder, some of the scene might be too long, which could be tighten, most importantly, this version of editing did’t clear explore the notion of parallel action. With knowing the problem, I watched the Baptist scene again and this time, I only concentrate on the soundtrack. The overlapping voice-over consist appears throughout the montage, which increase the connection between different scenes and creates this atmosphere parallel action. Furthermore, with the voice-over reference of Ermanno Olmi’s I Fidanzati (1963), it shows what voiceover can do is to create a third meaning with editing the associated silent images and clips. These knowledge and thoughts results to my second version video.
Second version: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RXbko5dIw8Iq1m5gUl6LObEH36qk1U48/view?usp=sharing
In order to form a parallel scene like The Godfather’s Baptism scene, I put voiceover of cooking sound in the kitchen overlaps with the other scene to form a sense of these scenes all happening at the same time. With remove the useless shots and tighten the rhythm. I feel this version is much better than the one before. I’m pretty satisfied with this version and with the suggestion from Robin, I tried to remove the black transition between picture and get the third version of the video. I feel like the last version looks better!
Final Version:
https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/557892803
Sorry, I forget the password for Vimeo Mediafactory so I just share the link of google drive
Thank you very much!