Since the last exercise, I have discovered that I am more comfortable with directing actors and integrating the performances as a direct response to the space or location. My weaker areas as a director are paying attention and maintaining control of what the camera actually captures or frames and monitoring sound as well.
In my practice so far, I am slowly getting use to thinking about scene coverage in general. Initially it was very difficult as scene coverage has always been something in the subconscious for me, even when i am analysing the works of others. Only through the exercises and discussions in the course did I start to notice its significance and effects. With that said, I am currently at a point where I notice it in the films I watch and write about, but I am still getting carried away with reinterpreting the scenario and motivations of the characters and events more than anything. I suppose when I try to create something I am constantly trying to generate meaning rather than play around with what is presented.
Maybe my trouble is trying to fit into an industrial film making practice, where each individual have their own positions or roles within the collaboration, whilst being in a post industrial environment, where collaboration is becoming a less systematic process and distinction between roles and contributions are becoming less prominent.
In this week’s exercise we had more time and actually got time to plan and discuss ideas before the day of the shoot. This was quite helpful. During the shoot I discovered that as a director, I was more focussed on curating and making sense of the performances and it wasn’t until production that I realised I had paid less attention to the framing captured and the sound quality than I should have. I realised I should have taken the time to check the shots and look through the camera more. Another thing I realised was that we had a lot of problems with the reflections of the crew being in the last shot. This would have been avoided if we all bobbed down below the frame.
At the end of the shoot we were told that we are doing individual edits of the scene, this was a surprise to many of us in our group, as we assumed it was going to be a group edit hence we only covered the scene to be edited in one particular way. So my biggest epiphany for this week is: no matter what, always cover each shot from alternative angles to allow options in post production.
The trial scene in M (1931) by Fritz Lang demonstrates many visual elements and relationships in the film. This is the only scene where the main character, a psychopathic serial killer who preys on children, expresses his perspective in the story. The scene features his only monologue in the film and is the end point in which all three character groups (murderer, criminals, police) intersect.
The scene coverage in this 15 minute sequence explicitly portrays the murderer as small, child-like, fragile and victimised. Influenced by the disproportionate forms of expressionism, Lang intercuts between the close up narrow view of the lone murderer and the wide view of the large community of accusers. The murderer was also carried into the scene by a group of men who later was also able to hold him back from escaping. In another shot, the murderer is overshadowed by the balloon in the air that represents one of his child victims, Elsie.
It also depicts his madness and alienation. Throughout the sequence, the murderer is framed narrowly in a close up. By using the technique of shot reverse shot, he is isolated from the opposing crowd who accuses him. The murderer’s isolation is further emphasised by revealing how detached he is from his surrounding reality when he is tapped on the shoulder several times by the hand of a blind witness, his legal defender and the police.
When the murderer is framed with his legal defender, he confesses to the murders and that he was forced to kill by a voice or a shadow chasing behind him. This sparked a debate between the accusers and the legal defendere about whether the murderer is liable for his crimes. The mise en scene in the shot where the murderer is kneeling on the floor below the lawyer, can be seen as a religious reference of guilt and repention as well as referring to the philosophical debate between free will and a God determined world.
All of the above expresses the disempowerment of the main character in comparison to the rest of the film where he is only represented on screen by his shadow and whistle; unseen and hidden from the community while he had power over their fate.
The film is dated during the end of the German Expressionist movement and the beginning of the New Objectivity, where art and literature became concerned about a more practical engagement with the world and the reflection of society. For most parts of the film, the characters such as the police and the criminals are using evidence and practical methods in their attempts to solve the crimes and find the serial killer. The set design was also more realistic and is expressive of the state the society was in rather than representation of emotional or psychological experiences. However, M can be viewed symbolically of the conflict between the two aesthetic movements. The isolated psychopathic killer in the trial scene perhaps can be seen as the last struggles of the outdated expressionist style in a film dominated by social and economic concerns.