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Research Project:
The Scene in Cinema-Assignment 4 submission
on Month: May 2020
on The Scene in Cinema-Assignment 4 Research Project
on Research
In this research, I intend to investigate Long take. It will cover three parts: What is a long take? What are the meanings of long takes? How to achieve a long take?
A long take also called continues take or continues shot, is a shot lasting much longer than the conventional editing space either of the film itself or of films in general. Many action film use the long take as a way to authenticate a fight sequence. In 1917, the long take also give audience a sense of immerse. The long take also looks just a single shot .The composition of a single shot, however, contains extremely complex elements :(1) different scenes (close-up, close-up, mid-range, panoramic, and large perspective); (2) position and Angle of the camera; (3) motion changes of the picture composition and composition; (4) selection of lens (standard lens, telephoto lens and wide-angle lens) and depth of field; (5) focus and change of focus; (6) light and illumination (high and low, light ratio); (7) color and color contrast (color sheet), etc. The expressiveness of a single shot depends on the comprehensive use of the above elements.
Today’s movies are made up of several thousand editing cuts, putting together typical shots comes with enough challenge. But while a typical final cut rarely exceeds three seconds per shot, a true long take can last several minutes — or even last for an entire film, as in “Russian Ark” (2002).
These tracking takes involve complicated camera movement, countless hours of rehearsing, and enormous amounts of patience, as a single mistake forces the team to prepare and shoot the scene all over again.
Of course, long takes almost always stand out from the rest of the film when done right. Whether it’s an elaborate action sequence or an establishing shot, viewers love watching a scene unfold without any visual interruptions. This is why many directors pay close attention to long shots, even if it might cost them valuable time and resources.
The aesthetic features of long takes
- the time and space recorded by the long take is a continuous and actual time and space.
The long take does not interrupt the natural process of time, and maintains the uninterrupted process of time. It is consistent with the actual time and process, and eliminates the possibility of montage compression or extension of the actual time through lens cutting.
The space represented by the long take is the real space that actually exists. The natural transformation of the space is realised in the movement of the lens, and the connection between the part and the whole is realised, which eliminates the possibility of montage camera splicing and piecing together the new space.
(2) the long take has documentary features.
Andre Bazin’s “long take theory” holds that long shot can maintain the unity and integrity of film time and film space, express the continuity and integrity of the action of characters and the development of events, so it can more truly reflect the reality and conform to the characteristics of documentary aesthetics.
(3) from the perspective of shooting, long take is divided into fixed long take, long take with depth of field and long take with motion.
The meanings of long takes
- Establishing a Theme. A long take is sometimes seen as little more than directors’ showing off but at some point, is to accentuate the theme of this movie. That’s why long takes were used a lot in some thrillers ,suspense films and action movies.
- Technical Innovation.Long takes don’t have to be about gathering response from an audience. They can also about accomplishing something for those behind the camera for get a kick out of overcoming technical obstacles. The long take can be an exciting opportunity since they are often extremely difficult to pull off.
- Creating Tension. The legendary three minutes opening can shot of Orson Welles masterpiece Touch of Evil. The scene follows the journey of a car with a literal ticking time bomb in the truck among many other things. This scene highlights how the long take is a powerful technique for creating tension unlike editing which obscures the audience’s perception of time and manipulates it. The shot plays out in real time and the long take makes up painfully aware of every second ticking.
- Capturing Realism. The long take enhance that with wonderfully believable touches of realism while cuts continually changes perspective angle and shot type. Long takes are continuous. They flow and immerse the viewers into the story. This makes the scene much more powerful in certain instances. We are experiencing the entire story, the entire event, the entire experience moment to moment
How to achieve a long take?
1.The director’s mise-én-scene
Scheduling is the hard part. A long shot often needs a lot of scheduling: actors direct, lighting setting and equipment setting…This is a huge project which is a great teat for the director’s coordination as a team.
2.Lens selection and depth of field
A real long take often involves several scenes, and this control is also very difficult, not only need to be in place at the same time, but also need smooth focus and reasonable light distribution, which is several times the workload of separate shooting. So it will be hard to select lens and depth of field. The cinematographer of 1917 Roger Deakins says “There was some painting on the river with a 47mm lens because I wanted to cut out more of the background elements. In addition, a 35-mm lens was used in the basement in Germany, because I wanted to create the feeling of a tunnel.”
The immersive feeling of the film picture is proportional to the difficulty of shooting, which can be imagined as the shooting pressure. Shoot, each a lens is around the actor’s performance, in order to present more immersed in a “mirror” picture, taken in the actor’s performance is not interrupted, it is impossible to change camera, so in a lens beam former is pressure has been accumulated. In addition, in order to ensure the matching and coherence of the front and rear shots, the machine position point cannot be wrong. The shooting pressure does not stop there. The “one mirror to the end” mode of operation also determines that the weather will become one of the factors that have a great impact on the shooting. In this regard, the studio two ALEXA Mini LF and two sets of equipment are always on standby, in order to respond to changes in the weather.
3. Continuity of performance
Long shot gave up the pros and cons of playing lens, montage… The director could not say “cut” after the start of the shot. The performance for such a long time requires very high requirements of the actors, especially the cohesion, precise positioning, posture, expression and lines. Every aspect is required to be exact. Actors usually have to rehearse for a day and then film for a day, which can double the cost.
4. Uncontrollable factors
In order to find the right weather, a long lens may only be turned on once a day.
Above all, to achieve a long take really needs great cooperations and amazing scene control.
The Scene in Cinema-Assignment 4 Reflection 5
on Assignment 4 reflection 5
It was quite interesting that Robin told the story first and then show us the clips. I should admire that everyone has different skills to tell a story so that’s the difference between script writers. The script is important for the actor to understand the acting. But there are some performance would not be mentioned on the script. For example, the car chase scene in script maybe just like “ the BMW chasing the Ferrari” but in actual shooting , the cinematographer and director , also the actor should make a lot effort on this.
Last year, I did a short film with my classmate for school project. I did the script, the shot list, shooting schedule and to direct. During that time, I figure out the relationship between the director and actor. And also how the script work and it doesn’t work in the film. You see, there will come out some new idea which is not planning. It is interesting things like that happened.
Recently, I watched The Platform. It is a Spanish sci-fi thriller released in 2019. It has nothing to do with the platform of the train and the platform of the car, but is similar to the Snowpiercer which can be understood as a vertical version of the Snowpiercer.
The prison pit in “hunger platform” has 333 floors. There are no exits, just four gray walls, and a central patio provides a few square meters of space for a platform filled with food to move vertically from the top floor to the bottom, where residents eat leftovers from the upper floors.
In theory, there would be enough food for each layer if it were distributed equally. But by nature, the result is that the people at the top eat too much, and the food gets less and less as they go down. The people at the bottom have no food at all, so they can only eat and kill each other.
The above is similar to snowpiercer, but there are also differences. “Snowpiercer” has a fixed class of people, while “hunger platform” has a rotating class. The prison pit releases narcotics every other month, and people are rotated to different floors while asleep.
Of course, this is the director and the screenwriter set up to be a metaphor for something, a real problem — class division, class mobility, wealth inequality, and so on. Behind the thriller science fiction film, there is the human nature of selfish indifference and greed.
For this kind of movie with space sense and limitation, I think we can conduct in-depth research
The Scene in Cinema-Assignment 4 Reflection 4
on Assignment 4 reflection 4
Cut between scenes
A movie has to go through three births: script writing, shooting and editing. As an editor, I can see the progress of the narrative at a glance, and deal with countless possibilities: can I get rid of the play just now? Next 3 minutes can jump off; Nesting this period of time into another period of time to link two otherwise unrelated scenarios; It deals with the overall structure: the pacing and the moral tone of the film. These questions can be distracted by a thousand factors, ranging from speed to ambient noise to how the main character’s opponent exits a conversation. In fact, there are always going to be a lot more footage produced than the final film, on average 25 times more. The editor has to sort out the best material from a sea of material and put them in the right order. Ideally, the construction of a film is a harmonious combination of all the hidden patterns in sound and picture materials, such as the arrangement and interpretation of different musical themes in a symphony. Film editors in the early days were mostly women as far back as the era of silent films. But after the sound, the electricity, the engineering, the women left. Talented directors decide what to accept and what to exclude in order to protect a common vision. It falls to the editor to actually look at all the material the director has produced, to sort it, to evaluate it, to rebalance it, and to write specific notes on some minor details. Editors must make the best use of the hands of all materials, must be in the display of the material at the same time, in a natural, exciting way to present the layers of idea of the film, the audience is easy to grasp, the mysterious when it’s mysterious, the popular time to (micro level, decided to stay in each shot the exact length; Macroscopic work involves reconstructing the scene, reordering the scene, and sometimes cutting out the subplot entirely.) . Film editing has its deadlines, and an idea has to come up. Editors should try their best to look at the problem from the perspective of the audience and avoid seeing the actors take off their costumes or out of the role, as well as the scene. The more we focus on exploring the emotional aspects of things, the more we focus on the metaphorical power of sound. Reality can only go so far, further down, must go beyond reality, beyond the viewfinder. The design of the structural relationship of the lens and the choice of where to end the lens are related to the rhythm and balance of the material up to the present moment. The invention of the film can not only be seen in the invention itself, but also in the social and cultural environment around it. Movie music is always written after the fact, and composers simply react to the action that is filmed and edited. There is an interactive, feedback relationship between script, music and film, each enlightening, perfecting and influencing the other. Such dynamic relationships do not exist in most traditional filmmaking processes. Even the most brilliant script, in which the characters are deeply flawed in their characters, gives them a certain impartiality, both emotionally and intellectually, as an editor. This is complex and dangerous, and cannot easily be ignored.
The Scene in Cinema-Assignment 4 Reflection 3
on Assignment 4 reflection 3
Presentation review
After finishing the meeting for our presentation, I was so impressed by all of my classmates. My idea for the research project is about long take also called continuous take or continues shot, is a shot lasting much longer than the conventional editing space either of the film itself or films in general. What brings me to do this research is I had a discussion with Robin about this before and also I watched 1917 which surprised me so I have interesting to do this topic. It was so enjoyable to watch some smooth and skillful continues scenes.
Jack shared the elevator scenes which is similar to David’s. They both focus on scenes in a limited space. The area of elevator is a rectangle which needs measure specific to take place in. And also, Jack mentioned the lens coverage in elevator and showed us some example. The dialogue in elevator usually no long but give us the theme and information of the film. I was so surprised to this idea.
When Ada talked about car chase scenes, I was impressed. I am fond of action movies and there were some exciting car chase theme in action movies such as Fast & Furious, Mad Max…She focused on which special shooting equipment may use, the movement of the car, camera movement and how to approach. There must be a lot of safety measures for a car chase. In Fast & Furious, there were a number of expensive cars by sponsor which created luxury visual. Some of the chase scenes, due to safety problem, may use visual effect. I watched some behind the scene of chase car scene before. When some directors shoot these scenes, they put the car on the moving trolley. The vehicle is not moving, but by the movement of the surrounding objects, it looks like the car is moving, but what is actually moving is the pulling trolley. That is an amazing idea for shooting car chase safety.
Each of my classmates showed their great idea for the research project. And thanks for Robin and Brian gave us some suggestion and advice.
The Scene in Cinema-Assignment 4 Reflection 2
on Assignment 4 Reflection 2
This week we start our research project. It is quite hard to choose a topic but I already knew what I had interesting in. So maybe I will get in to the research soon.
Robin showed us some actors running scene in class. About the scene like this, I remember there was a scene in Rocky, Syllvestor Stalone was running on street and someone thought he was the actual athlete and thrower him something and he caught that. That shot was so nature which I thought was planned. Syllvestor Stalone was so professional that impressed me.
I watched a lot of Tom Cruise action movie, a recurring element in his movie, he runs. On screen, it looks like he running so fast. In fact, filming a Tom Cruise running sequence can actually be difficult because it turns out the actor is super fast. Much faster than his co-stars.Action movies tend to be looked down upon by movie critics, in large part due to the fact that there is less “acting” going on, but according to the director of Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, Edward Zwick, that’s not the case. He tells Screen Crush that even when Tom Cruise is running he has to act, because he has to look like he’s running at full speed, even though he apparently has to pull up a bit in order to run with Cobie Smulders.
With all the practice that Tom Cruise gets running in his movies, it’s not really that surprising that he’s fast. Eventually, if you do something often enough you can’t help but be good at it. Although, it sounds like Cruise is even better than you might expect. Edward Zwick says that Cobie Smulders is pretty fast herself, but Cruise leaves her in the dust when he’s going full tilt. That’s pretty impressive.
The Scene in Cinema-Assignment 4 Reflection 1
on Assignment 4 Reflection 1
This week we talked about actors’ performance. Robin shared us some short clips to help us get more information of acting. That reminds me last year I played a character in my classmates’ short film which I found out that is so hard to be an actor. Somehow I just felt so awkward acting in scenes. From that on, I stop judging some unprofessional actors’ performance. At some point, some people could be looked better when they was showed on screen. Some people has good looking but not photogenic. In my opinion, because I read a research about the different face looking at different focal length recently. In some focal length, it will stretch people’s face.
Narrative means the central place in most films. Actors adjust the quality and energy of their gestures, voice and actions to communicate their characters’ shifting desires and dynamic relationships with other characters. At each moment of the film, actors’ performance are keyed to the narrative. The clip that Robin showed us was a man in a swimming pool scene. The actor was so talent to show us his movement, action and his best angle on screen. Every action was so detail. This reminds me Charlie Chaplin’s performance in City Lights(1931). He was so intelligent with his action. And I think the blocking is essential as well. Before shooting, director and actors will have a conversation about the position and the camera movement and do the rehearsal.
The quality and energy of actors’ movements and vocal expression are equally important in experimental cinema, for actors’ performance contribute to the mood or feeling conveyed by the piece as a whole. Through rehearsal and individual script analysis, actors find the quality and the energy their intonations and inflections must have to convey their characters’ changing experiences. Sharp, sudden, staccato bursts of words might be used to show that a character is alarmed, while a smooth, sustained, legato vocal rhythm will be used to show that the character is at ease.