This week we focussed on exposure and focus. During our Wednesday class, each of us took turns to adjust the focus and exposure of a shot ‘properly’.  This was much harder than expected, and I realise that I have pretty much forgotten everything that I learnt about camera operating last year. The following Friday, we went out to Bowen Street and did a focus pull from very deep depth of field to a shallow one. Mostly, we just played around, focussing on random individuals who were walking towards camera. Can’t say I’m the best at it, but I did enjoy it. When you describe focus pulling, it sounds very simple, almost trivial – all you do is pull the focus according to markers. But in reality, it is so difficult. First of all you have to keep your eye on the subject and where they are going, secondly you have to monitor the markers on the tape and make sure that you’re hitting all of them at the correct timing. You can’t see how the image looks until afterwards so you’re kind of clueless and insecure during this whole process.

Afterwards, while we were waiting down in the edit suites for Robin to make his rounds, we reviewed what we had filmed and realised that our images came out quite ‘flat’. It got us thinking about some other ways we could do it better next time – if we should move the camera closer or further, what focal length it should be, how big or small the aperture should be…etc. Some students also showed their documentaries they filmed last year. I found them all to be interesting, and I’m not just saying that out of politeness. They told me they were less ‘trained’ at the time of filming, but I think it might not have made such a huge difference – or maybe it would have actually, I’m not sure. Nevertheless, I still enjoyed them. I guess I am trying to achieve something similar with my project, just an editing version.

Today everyone presented their proposals on what they’d like to personally investigate. Surprisingly, there was a lot of variety; I found that none of the proposals overlapped so I think results of these proposals would be really interesting.

Listening to my peers’ ideas, has sparked my imagination for some other experiments I might look into if I have time. For example, I found Aki’s idea really fascinating. She made the point that in animation, the possibility of perfection is greater because anything is possible. How the set will look, character facial expressions, body gestures and movements can created through CG exactly as the director wants- it is a highly controlled construction, but that is what enables the director’s vision to be fulfilled. I wonder how it would be to create an animation, that reproduces a live-action scene. Although I won’t be able to create an animation myself, it would be good to at least look into a film that has both live-action and animated versions.

Another thing that I want to do is create a set of ‘cinema rules’. Rules like the 180 line, continuity, establishing shots, and other ‘common sense’ types of things like showing the actor’s facial expression while they’re conversing – I want to break all of them, but somehow make them work. This is actually something that I always wanted to do but I kind of forgot about it. This project is definitely something I can put into practice. Rachel mentioned a couple of times that everyone gave themselves too many restrictions. For this activity, I will give myself the only restriction of breaking the common rules of cinema production.

MIS EN SCÉNE

Mis en scene, according to what I learnt in year 12, is something like an all-encompassing term which describes the composition of a frame. From my memory, it is French for ‘to put into frame’ or something similar, and so it involves whatever is seen on screen such as set design, costume, make up, and actors’ blocking. I remember we used the acronym ‘CAMELS’ to help us remember the production elements of film, and mis en scene fulfilled the ‘m’ in the acronym.

C – Cinematography, A – Acting, M – mis en scene, E – editing, L – lighting, S – Sound

It is not exclusively about aesthetics, nor production elements, but somewhow fuses these two and combines them with aspects of the narrative to create meaning or symbolism.

So that’s my take on mis en scene, now I would like to explore how others think of it. In my research, I hope to gain some deeper insight into what mis en scene involves since currently I have a relatively ‘shallow’ idea/memory of what it is.

Allan Rowe and Paul Wells describes mis-en-scéne as the ‘visual aspects which appear in a shot’ (2003, pp. 63). They make a note of how some theorists limit the elements to those which are shot by the camera, and not the camera itself. Mis-en-scene would include props, lighting, costume and makeup, setting, and performance. The concepts was developed by thinkers who were interested in autership, and the role of participants – particularly directors – in the construction of meaning. This is because directors usually have only a small role, if any, in production and post-production, and so their style will predominantly be delivered through the mis-en-scene in the production stage.

Elements of Mis En Scene

Setting – produce authenticity: help audience to realise where? what period/age? what time?

Costume/makeup – subtle changes in costume and makeup usually signify something, a develop in relation to the narrative

Props – used by characters, may have significance in narrative

Performance and movement – ‘coded’ quality to this. The nuances in speech, body language, and expressions of performers convey things not outrightly stated

Lighting – enables depth of vision, when used in addition to a smaller aperture, enables camera to record over a number of fields of action (>André Bazin argued that this form of shooting was more ‘realist’ because it resembles the eye’s to recognise objects across a wide depth or adjust their focus)

Camera and camera movement – this part is contested. Some may exclude this from mis en scene refer to it as ‘mis-en-shot’ instead. Bordwell and Thompson state that the original use of the term ‘mis en scene’ was in reference to the direction of plays and therefore involves the components of stage theatre which overlap with film (2013).

Mis en scene, from what I’ve read, is defined quite concretely. In any case, it has to do with visuals, whether cinematography is included or not.

MONTAGE

A montage is a series of several images edited into one sequence. They can be used to depict multiple situations occurring concurrently or the progression of time, like a time lapse. Though I do remember studying this at some point last year during the Editing Media unit I did last, year I don’t remember much of it.

The word montage is French for ‘to edit’. A montage involves arranging parts of footage to create one whole (Joyce, 2003) and was adopted by Soviet filmmakers. They realised the cinema’s ability to link unrelated material into something coherent – or at least something that makes sense to the viewer.

There are four types of film montage:

– Intellectual (dialectical montage or discontinuity editing): shots are ‘conflicting’ and audiences have to be active in interpreting two images and making connections between them

– Linkage editing (constructive editing) – a scene is fragmented and the parts are used to ‘build up’ the scene

– Hollywood montage – a quick succession of events over a period of time

– Fast cutting: to build suspense or tension, usually used in action scenes

The Kuleshov effect illustrates how edits can change how audiences interpret things. In one instance an actor may look displeased, and in another, he may look hungry depending on what image he is juxtaposed against.

Sergei Eisenstein pushed his theory ‘montage of attractions’. He believed that he could shock the viewer with every cut that juxtaposed one image with another. Audiences have to fill in the gap and make assumptions about what has happened from one shot to the next or interpret how they are associated.

If a montage is merely a piece of work which has been produced by the assembly of smaller parts, it seems as though anything which has been edited could be regarded as such.

DECOUPAGE

I don’t recall much of what decoupage consists of, all I remember is something about images not being arranged side by side, but being mounted on top of one another. When we close our eyes and see an ‘image’ and then we close it again and see another, it is similar to a cut in film. We don’t arrange these images we see horizontally, they are mounted (?) on top of each other.

After doing a bit a research I discovered that I seem to have the wrong idea of what decoupage is. In film, it is regarded as a break-down of a shot. I looked through a couple books in the AFI centre but couldn’t find much on decoupage, so I took to the internet. On a website called Caboose, I found a short discussion on decoupage. It is commonly confused for, or rather, replaced by editing. There is also mention of mis en scene and how it affects the piecing together of footage. Actually, there is mention of a lot of other things. Decoupage is kind of a mystery.

UPDATE: DECOUPAGE

So the last time I did a database search on decoupage at RMIT Library and in the AFI, I could not find much so this time I changed up my technique. I google searched ‘decoupage in film theory books’ and it brought me to some blogs on the net which spoke about how decoupage was discussed in different texts. I then searched those texts in the AFI database, and voila, I finally got some hits.

In film production, decoupage refers to either the ‘shooting script’ that precedes filming, or a realism editing style that emerged during the advent of sound cinema.

Bordwell (1997), differentiates the decoupage editing style from the earlier montage style of the Soviets. Soviet filmmakers marked realism in the locations and non-professional actors, but their editing techniques came to “define the most artificial aspects of montage” (Bordwell 1997, p. 51). They cut in abstract, poetic ways to convey ideas and created scenes from cutting separate details at a time that may have never occurred during the same time or space.

Decoupage may be considered the opposite of this as it conveyed spatial and temporal continuity in fragments. A normal shot list of a conversation between two people may comprise of: 1. an establishing shot, ‘plan americain’ style framed from knees up, 2. a medium two shot, 3.cut back to establishing shot where more drama plays out, 4. medium shot on one character, 5. reverse medium shot on the other character. In all shots, continuity is honoured.

Some writers like Astruc argue that it is more theatrical. I would have to agree that decoupage compared to montage, it is more telling and ‘simple’.

But Burch (1969) goes into more detail in ‘Spatial and Temporal Articulations’ and decoupage becomes a bit more complicated. He describes decoupage as being the ‘underlying structure of the finished film’ which is made of two ‘partial decoupages, one temporal and the other spatial’ (p.4). In the discussion following, he describes the ways a certain scene could be played out through different cutting techniques, and all are merely spatial/temporal articulations. He mentions continuity and discontinuity but does make note of whether they are integral to decoupage discussion. Instead, it appears as though the unfolding of time and space within the film is decoupage, regardless of of whether there was realism-defying treatment of footage involved (like time reversal, repetition, ellipsis or omission).

Barnard, T 2014, ‘Montage, Découpage, Mise en Scène: Essays on Film Form’ <https://www.caboosebooks.net/montage-decoupage-mise-en-scene>

Bordwell, D 1997, “Andr Bazin and the Dialectical Program” in On the History of Film Style, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England.

Bordwell, D & Thompson, K 2013, Film Art: An Introduction, 10th Ed., McGraw-Hill, NY.

Burch, N 1969, ‘Spatial and Temporal Articulations’ in Theory of Film Practice, Martin Secker & Warburg Limited, UK.

Nelmes, J 2003, An Introduction to FILM STUDIES Third Ed. Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, London.

Shot begins with Van running down the stairs hurriedly, there is only a close up of her shoes so the audience does not see her face until the next shot. When she turns the corner, she tries to snoop quietly though this is in vain. Here, the camera, hand-held, follows her as if the audience are snooping with her. As Cine opens the door and calls out to Van, the audience is able to see his face clearly through a well-lit medium close up. Cutting back to the hand-held shot we can see, in the foreground, Van’s troubled expression and Cine in the background, who is asking her for her name.

Van slowly turns around to face Cine. The camera is re-positioned to show her face from the front, still in a medium long shot, though the lighting here allows for a better view of her face. The shot-reverse-shot pattern is continued until Cine cuts her off and drags her elsewhere. As he does this, they two are filmed in a medium long-shot though it eventually turns into a medium close up as the characters walk towards the camera and the tracking stops. The camera movement helps to highlight the action in this shot.

At this point, X makes an appearance, asking ‘What’s all this racquet?’. The mid shot emphasises her confusion and frustration. The following cut shows Van and Cine (who has now let go of her arm) framed in a mid long shot, enabling the audience to see both their reactions to X. When X finds out Cine’s name, she similarly blurts, ‘What kind of a name is that?’ in the same manner Cine did to Van earlier. The screen cuts to mid shot where X drags Van into her room, though X is in the foreground, the emphasis is on Van who is visibly taken aback by this action. Cine walks to the right out of frame looking displeased. In this last shot there is a moment of, not necessarily discontinuity but rather, awkward editing. The speed at which Van was dragged inside the room does not correspond with the speed Van was moving in the mid long shot which could be jarring to some viewers. The scene concludes on an image of doors which matches the scene’s name.

 

The Activity

I will shoot a scene from a movie. Right now, I am looking for a scene which could be interpreted in several ways but this is proving to be harder than I thought. Me being an indecisive person does not help either. Once I have done this, I will draft the shots I would like to use in the final edit and also write up an extended list of possible frames to remind myself that I have to shoot a variety of shots. This is so that the footage will allow for different edits to be produced, which is an important point in my project.

Once filming is complete, I will make my own edit and ask two other people who haven’t studied cinema to create their own edits as well. Along with the raw footage, they will receive the script. My instruction to them will be: ‘edit this as you feel’. I will help them with the technical side of things, though I won’t interfere with the creative side.

The Objective

There are a few things I want to take from this exercise:

– What is the relationship between production and post-production like? Is the meaning intended throughout the production process carried on throughout the editing (even with minimal contact between the shooting crew and editing crew)? How does the meaning of ‘stuff’ change in the interval between these two stages? I will ask the participants how they interpreted the script and footage, what kind of emotions they thought the actors were trying to convey, what the atmosphere is like…etc.

– While I edit, I will justify all my choices and explain the intention behind them in a sentence, or more if I need. This part is really important since I often forget why I cut the way I do or choose to use one particular frame over another. So, with all my purposefully executed editing,  I will consider: how the message I want to deliver through my conscious decisions compares to how it is received by audiences. Will the viewer even notice these subtle messages, will it affect them the way I want? Or is it not particularly meaningful?

– Evaluate my skills: is the edit done my someone unfamiliar to this process any less effective than mine? In a way, I’m questioning my own position as a cinema student. Does it make any difference that I have studied cinema and have film theories embedded in my brain (kind of)? Will people be able to spot my edit? Will they find any of the edits better, worse, or just different?

I have a lot of questions and in the realisation of this little project, I hope to find some answers to them.

Working in the edit suites today reminded me of a problem I have with sound editing. Sometimes I feel when dialogue has been re-recorded for a clearer and cleaner sound, it doesn’t match well with the footage. Since the actors are much closer to the microphone when this happens, their dialogue tends to sound too ‘close’ and ‘intimate’ and ends up being a bit jarring when combined with the visuals. This is especially the case with my week 6 mini project. I filmed it in an area where there were mostly hard surfaces so the actors voices’ echoed while performing.  We decided to do a sound-only take at the end of filming so the lines could be heard more clearly. However whilst I was editing, I found the cleaner the sound, the weirder it was to both listen to and look at. Something about it was disorienting and threw me off; I didn’t like it. In the end, I scrapped the idea of inserting the clean sounds and just went with the dialogue they had recorded while performing.

I am not sure how this is done in the industry, and I actually don’t notice sound editing much. I take note of sound effects and music of course, but not really the way dialogue has been edited, if it has at all. I guess another problem is that I don’t know how to work the boom mic and sound device. If I had known how to do that, maybe I wouldn’t have encountered this sound editing problem. It also just occurred to me that we have minimal discussion about sound editing when we review scenes in class. I think this would be quite interesting look into.

 

Pre-production stage: For this mini project, we are required to re-shoot a scene filmed earlier in the semester.

This time I have tried to thoroughly plan out what I want to do, or rather, put it down on paper. It probably needs more refining, or maybe it doesn’t.. I feel like I have a good sense of what I’d like to film. Or maybe, I just need to articulate it more clearly. In any case, it will be interesting to see how it all turns out, whether the filming process goes as I expect/want it to.

Production:

Things went relatively smoothly today. I was able to get some pretty similar shots to what I had in mind; although it was not exactly how I envisioned it, I plan in acceptance of the fact that the real takes won’t be precisely what I want. However, I am a bit concerned about how the editing will go. I feel as though my shots won’t edit well, or I should have covered the scene more thoroughly just in case…

Post-production:

While I was generally quite satisfied with the shots and coverage, I did wish that I would have looked at the framing and composition more carefully. I found that for a lot of the shots, the frame was slightly crooked, or not as symmetrical as I would have liked it. Also, we moved around a lot that day to accommodate to the lighting of the area, but that meant my characters’ position shifted slightly between some cuts. Although it’s not that noticeable (I hope this is the case), I still would have preferred more continuity.

Today (a Saturday), we filmed our little projects, which consisted of re-shooting a scene done earlier in the course. Although I had always known I was the dependent type of person, the many setbacks we experienced today got me to register the full extent of that dependency.

It took us 15 minutes to work out how to format the memory disk, and not to mention, we struggled to just turn the camera on. I didn’t know how to operate the sound mixer, and neither did my peers that worked with me on the day, so when we encountered a problem with it – I don’t even know what the core of the problem was – we kind of just gave up on it and used the internal mic instead, and this also took us some time to work out. If these situations occurred in class, another more experienced camera/sound operator would have surely known what to do. I receive so much help from others, I think I have become too accustomed to not dealing with technical issues myself. Additionally, I found that although I was the ‘director’ of my own project, I still relied on the rest of the crew to give me feedback and suggestions as to what I should do.

To sum up, I am highly reliant on others, and will need to hone my technical skills. This is a dire need.

In our Friday class last week, we shot two scenes with ‘performance’ being the key focus. Since I had arrived late to class, I missed the introduction/explanation of what we were doing so I didn’t know we were focussing on performance until much later on – after I had already edited the scene.

This got me thinking about the relationship between production and post-production. When I was editing the scene, I was more concerned with the pacing and rhythm of the edits rather than the actors’ performance. In the final cut, some may consider it to accommodate the actors’ facial expressions, gestures, movements, and whatnot (though I don’t really know how others might interpret it, this is just a possibility). However, in the edit room, I wanted the tempo of the cuts to illustrate atmosphere and changes in tone. Of course, performance also plays a part in it, so all in all, I probably assigned a 50-50 weighting to them. In the real world, I wonder how this would play out. How would the director communicate to the editor how to edit certain material, if at all?

This week, we were also encouraged to brainstorm ideas for our presentation on what we would like to do for the rest of the semester. Coincidently (or maybe, as a result of last week’s editing) I decided to my little project on how the editing process may be intended to deliver the scene in a certain way, and how that is realised by the audience. Actually, I want to explore more than that, though right now I can’t seem to articulate it. I will need to organise my thoughts.

Today, I realise my rough-ness anew. As I mentioned in part one, the way I do things is unrefined; I go with the flow and just do whatever feels ‘right’ at that moment and I think this really contrasts with the way production is carried out in the real world. Since I didn’t have much of a role today (I mostly just helped out here and there with small tasks), I was able to observe how each role was handled.

The director interpreted and discussed the overall atmosphere of the scene and the possible relationships with each character with the actors, explained how they should perform, and ran through rehearsals with them before any shooting began. Even when time was running out, she was able to remain calm and focussed on the quality of the shots rather than quantity. The camera operator also ensured the composition of the frame was the way he intended and that the director agreed to it. He made sure the camera was level and characters were in focus properly. Members in charge of sound communicated with each other to make sure that sound levels were appropriate, working together to solve any problems there were.

Even though I didn’t have much of a role in production today, it was still insightful just to observe how other people worked and learn from them. Comparing and contrasting their work ethic to mine, I realise how I can learn from their constant meticulousness even in situations where time in scarce. For me, this is a major thing for me to work on because whenever I am aware time is running out, I will most definitely stress myself out. I would forget planning or rehearsing and just film whatever is convenient. I’m sure if I was in the directors position today, I would have had a mini-breakdown and told the crew members ‘in any case, just film’. But as a result, the editing process would be a real struggle and I would hate myself.

Apart from my sloppy style of working, I would also have to work on keeping calm when it comes to deadlines and not letting them interfere with me.