‘Ash Is Purest White’ Film Footage Description and Analysis 

Movie Clip:

 

This clip comes from the crime love movie “Ash Is Purest White” directed by Chinese director Jia Zhangke, which was released in mainland China on September 21, 2018. The film tells the story of love and betrayal, separation, and reunion between the male and female protagonists over 17 years.

I chose this clip as my second movie description and analysis because the first point, this clip uses almost all the knowledge points we have learned in class during this time. I think it is very valuable for learning. The second point is this clip. I believe that during the filming process and the early stage of the filming, the crew has made sufficient preparations so that many details of the camera movement can actually be seen in the footage. The last point is because this clip was shot with film in accordance with the director’s requirements, and I think it’s very meaningful for me to use a one-shot technique.

The whole clip can be said to be almost shot in a one-shot way, using a medium shot to shoot, and the so-called one-shot is that the shot is not cut, and more important is the actor’s performance ability and shooting technical ability. The director’s use of a one-shot technique can also strengthen the sense of stage drama. The most important thing about the sense of stage drama is the performance of the actor. Whether the effect is good or not depends on whether the actor can perform well. The second advantage is that it highlights the sense of maze. In this clip, it is the process of the heroine looking for the hero, and this feeling of searching can be more apparent with a one-shot shooting method. The third advantage is to clarify the paragraphs of the film, macroscopically the whole film, this one-shot clip is particularly prominent in the film, because this paragraph is a turning point, the director also used a special technique to divide the paragraphs clearly. In this clip, there is actually a cut that is after the heroine enters the door and then the door is closed, cut until the heroine enters the door, but it does not hinder the integrity of the entire clip, because of the characteristics of the screen direction, the outside and inside the smoothness of the angle of view of the camera is connected, and the audience does not feel any abruptness. Outside the door, the camera was shot from back to front, the process of taking the heroine’s back into the door, and after entering the door, the camera was shot from front to back, taking the heroine’s front face. Then the camera followed the heroine and led the audience’s sight slowly to the few people who were playing mahjong, and finally fell on the hero. The setting of the camera here is actually a fixed position shooting, using the pan and tilt method to let each character enter the lens. In the previous shots outside the door, it was actually following the heroine in a handheld manner. Because it was the action of entering the door, the handheld could highlight the move process. After entering the door, the heroine found the person she was looking for, so she used a fixed use pan and tilt to slowly guide the target that the heroine is looking for.

The whole clip actually looks very simple and clear in structure, but it is actually very difficult to shoot and operate. It is simple and clear because there are only two lenses, one camera, and the other handheld shooting, but the difficulty is the difficulty in the early stage. the preparation and planning, floor plan, and storyboard are fully prepared because there is no chance of NG in one-shot, if something goes wrong, they have to start over again, so this is particularly important for the early planning.