‘What is a shot, anyway?’ 2009 in Reilly, Tom, The big picture : filmmaking lessons from a life on the set, Thomas Dunne Books: St. Martin’s Press, New York, pp. 16-18.

‘Blocking is overlooked and undervalued’ 2009 in Reilly, Tom, The big picture : filmmaking lessons from a life on the set, Thomas Dunne Books: St. Martin’s Press, New York, pp. 93-97.

 

A directors decides how he will cover a scene by first determing where the actors will be and what they will be doing. They director and DP will then decide where the camera will be placed for the first shot aka. the master shot. Generally all other shots are derived from the master.

A scene could be covered with a single shot or contructed by a series of shots. A director may choose to cover a scene with a series of several shots quickly intercut to build energy. Contrastingly they could cover the scene in one long extended shot which may for example feature complex  choreography and camera movements.

Blocking is the precise staging of actors in order to facilitate the performance of a film. How a scene is blocked has a dramatic effect on the final outcome of the film. Its all about choreographing the scene, deciding where actors will sit/stand and move amongst the scene. A line thats delivered by an actor directly in front of another will imply a different relationship to the same line if its delivered from the other corner of the room.  The blocking should be planned by the director, many however bring the cast on set to see what feels right and try different things. The reading talks about this techniques as being flawed as it undermines the directors role in controling the scene. Woody’s approach however involves deciding on the shot with the DP then laying out the scene with stand-ins. When he is happy with the action, camera movement and composition he will hand it over the set the lighting crew. This way the actors have no or little input into the scene which means its entirely his vision. As a director, this is what a film should be, your vision of the film. A director should block each scene on how it will connect to the next and how it all comes together in the context of the whole film, not on what an actor feels in natural. This can all be summed up in the last line of the reading ‘actors should act, directors should block scenes’.