Good morning everyone, I would like to share my ideas on my project to you that what I have focused, thought, written and investigated. I was wondering why directors love to do take a same shot over and over again. I am curious about they like to repeat the same thing insistently even there won’t be any difference. Even we all know filming is very time consuming. But after I have seen Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, my mind was changed. There is a long take in The Shining and it was taken 127 times, and it made Staley Kubrick to hold the Guinness World Records of “Most takes with dialogue scene”. I didn’t understand why he had to shoot over hundred times with one single shot, wasn’t there any shot could satisfy him? And I found that Stanley Kubrick filmed this shot with this crazy amount of takes was just wanted everything to be perfect. I don’t mean that I have to shoot hundred times on every single shot would make my stuff become perfect, but the attitude to do the same thing over and over again to reach perfection. This motivated me to deal with problems when I am lack of knowledge of coverage, to start the things over again and clarify what I actually want in the scene.

No one can avoid to practice to get success, even as talented as Kubrick, keep practicing would be important in filmmaking. The weekly exercise in class is a good example. I think I would be handy on filming when I have practiced enough to direct a scene and even a movie in the future, to be confident to overcome the failure through practicing.

Martin Scorsese says “Every scene is a lesson, every shot is a school, so let the learning continue.” We keep learning when we are living, but if we want to learn something, that we have to do it first. Try and error, start over again and again. I think I would be benefited greatly by shooting even the script is not 100% developed. As I remember when my group was stuck in filming documentary last year, Paul suggested us to do the “running and gunning” method, shoot it first, whatever we have got, and try to bring back the inspiration and ideas from the footages we have shot. I think it might be easier to get more ideas for the cover the documentary and keep learning from errors and failures, try to correct them when I start it over.

So I want to achieve in this project is to be comprehensive on set as a director through doing an actually shooting rather than communicating with DOP and actors abstractly in a limited time. I think it is not necessary to concern too much what I have to cover in the project, because we cannot film with only ideas and theories but also need to practice, go to shoot some footages even there are not any actors, just do the empty shots and edit a rough cut to see what I would have got, then I observe it, figure the problems out, correct them, and reshoot again. The plan might sound so unplanned, but I think practice is a key to make my picture in my mind to be visualized and boost up the efficiency when I have a kick start with my project.

Goal and plan of my project

I want to achieve in this project is to be comprehensive on set as a director through doing an actually shooting rather than communicating with DOP and actors abstractly in a limited time. I think it is not necessary to concern too much what I have to cover in the project, because we cannot film with only ideas and theories but also need to practice, go to shoot some footages even there are not any actors, just do the empty shots and edit a rough cut to see what I would have got, then I observe it, figure the problems out, correct them, and reshoot again. The plan might sound so unplanned, but I think practice is a key to make my picture in my mind to be visualized and boost up the efficiency when I have kick start with my project.

Every scene is a lesson, every shot is a test, let the learning continue.”— Martin Scorsese

We keep learning when we are living, but if we want to learn something, that we have to do it first. Try and error, start over again and again. I think I would be benefited greatly by shooting even the script is not 100% developed. As I remember when my group was stuck in filming documentary last year, Paul suggested us to do the “running and gunning” method, shoot it first, whatever we have got, and try to bring back the inspiration and ideas from the footages we have shot. I think it might be easier to get more ideas for the cover the documentary and keep learning from errors and failures, try to correct them when I start it over.

I believe “practice makes perfect”

“The Shining” is one of my favourite films of Stanley Kubrick’s, the reason why is that I like Jack Nicholson crazy talented acting for sure, but another reason is Kubrick had taken this shot for 127 times to make it perfect. That’s not the point to discuss how great or crazy of Kubrick to hold the Guinness World Records of “Most takes in a Dialogue Scene” with the 127 takes, but he kept perfecting the film persistently until he was satisfied.

Although it is arguable when he pushed too much on actors to make them felt stressed on set, for example Shelley Duvall, Wendy in this scene, she became physically ill by the stress from Stanley Kubrick on set. Of course, I won’t take this of my methodology on my filmmaking, but his insistency of making his films become perfect. I believe practice makes perfect, most of the people including me could not shoot perfectly with only one time. We cannot avoid to practice making shot better and better. Besides, we might find something better or more interesting than my ideas during practicing and shooting, I may not make a shot looks perfect, but I believe I can make it better and better.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/53389/12-stanley-kubrick-strategies-perfecting-film

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/237-facts-about-stanley-kubricks-the-shining-20130326?page=2

I am going to analyze a scene of The Wolf of Wall Street, it is one of the most famous scenes in the film, Jordan Belfort (Leonardo Di Carpio) is having the first luxury lunch on Wall Street’s high class restaurant when the first day he works as a stock broker with his boss Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughney). This restaurant scene is one of the most iconic scene of the film because it is the scene started with Matthew Mark Hanna’s chest chant.

I will start to deconstruct and analyze the scene that stated Mark Hanna doing drugs in the restaurant because they started the conversation from that moment. There is a wide shot of the table of Jordan and Mark that shows both of them side by side and we could see the view throughout the windows and some tables and waiters walking around, also the dishes, glasses and cutlery on the table would make us understand that they are in the restaurant. I would say this shot is the cover shot to cover the whole scene because this shot appears couple of times from the beginning to the last shot of the scene.

Then the next shot comes with medium close ups of Jordan and Mark that they start the long conversation. The shots of them have been swapped over ten times when they are discussing about drug issue. There are couple of shots around one minute but there are only two set ups.

After that, they turn back to the wide shot that appears before when the waiter comes in with little panning and tilting. Then the medium close ups of Jordan and Mark again and we can the waiter is standing at the wedges on screen.

An extreme wide shot of the restaurant appears afterwards, it comes for a very short time. But, we could have a bigger and clearer picture of the restaurant that the background are the top parts of the skyscrapers and cityscape of New York, to illustrate they are in the high class restaurant in New York. Also, we could see the restaurant is full house with dressed-up people and waiters walking from side to side, so we could understand Mark has an extraordinary status on Wall Street.

After the long conversation again about the rules of Wall Street and how to make money as a stock broker of Jordan and Mark, the medium close ups of each other again. And the scene finishes with the chest chant jamming with Jordan, and it ends with the wide shot that we could see before. I would believe it is the same set up. So actually there are only 4 set ups of the whole scene and there are just little camera movements, the structure is simple but it turns out a very good effect and became one of the legend scenes of the film.

#3
In the week 3 class of The Scene that we did a very interesting exercise to direct a shot individually. This exercise was supposed to be not a hard job because we just needed to direct one single shot. But, I found it could be very challenging when myself as a director on the set. When it was not my turn to in charge my shot, I have been acting, a first AD, and camera operator while swapping roles, I thought it was pretty easy to work on it because I only followed the director’s instructions and got the job done, nothing more. However, when it was my turn to be a director, I felt a bit lost when I was giving instructions to the crew, because I was the only one that have the whole picture on the set, I had to describe the picture/what I wanted to shoot in my mind to the crew, it was very challenging. To me, language issue is one of the problems, I might not instruct them accurately to make misunderstanding. Then, I needed to be decisive, time is money, especially in film production. We were not making money by shooting those shots but we were in hurry to finish all the shots during the class, so we were in similar situation. Then I had to decide all the things quickly and to believe the decisions were right, and then we needed to finish one shot as fast as we could, so it was an interesting and meaningful exercise in this week.

#4
This week class is the most exciting class so far, in the Wednesday’s class we formed a group to prepare shooting a scene on Friday that we had to assign a role by ourselves, and I was the director of sound. It was challenging to me because I am not really familiar with the sound mixer, but then it pushed me to do the revision before the shooting to make sure I could handle the mixer. After the shooting we swapped the roles and started over again with the same script, and I was the camera operator. The whole experience was totally changed that I changed to manage the video from audio. That was the role that I could do with more confidence and the 2nd second was bit easier comparing with the first one that might due to the lack of time, but the overall the flow was smooth and had a very fun shooting. And it was a very good experience that similar to the last week class, we had to finish the shooting in limited time, we had to do a well-planned preparation before shooting and follow the plan tightly while we were on set, for example we did the site visit and a shot list etc. on Wednesday class and followed what we have planned before on Friday, so it was a very good experience working as a big group to do the trouble shooting when we were on set to kill the problems.

It is a fantastic kick start of the semester that we could play around the Sony EX3 in the very first tutorial, I have not played with this camera for a long time and obviously was not familiar with this huge toy as last semester Film-TV 2. Back to the tut that was very inspiring about the staging when we were on set, I think it is very important to actors, directors and the crew, especially DOP and lighting, because they would need to adjust all the things on the frame all over again and use different kinds of lighting when the staging has changed. The exercise in the tut is a great practice that we cannot use handheld, tracking, dollying and zooming when we are shooting, to remain the same framing as much as possible that we could only use tilting and panning as the camera movement to maximize the efficiency of staging. Also, in the “lecture”, we have learnt how to shoot a scene in the most efficient way that doing the staging before the shoot to enhance the efficiency of shooting, speed up the shooting progress and shoot more economically.