Martin Scorsese on Cinematography

I love what he said about deciding what goes into the frame. It’s like he’s treating film as an animation, whereby everything that exists within the frame is created and intentional, it doesn’t just happen to be there.

I also love the point that he said about the limitations of the frame. There’s a lot that you can do with film and a lot that you can’t, and I think limitations aid creativity rather than extinguish it. By understanding your limitations you can try to push the boundaries on what can and can’t be done. For example, you can’t physically touch someone through film, but by putting the right thing in the frame you can elicit the feeling of intimacy and being touched.

I was also excited to read that Scorsese and who he calls the greats all prefer long takes. This is because I do too, and I thought that perhaps it was a naive thing because in film and in particular in TV, directors seem to prefer quick, fancy cuts. This is more technically difficult but easier to cut together, whereas in one take it is easier to set up but harder to execute well. I prefer the latter. As he said “it seems like an older style of filmmaking” which makes me feel that it is old fashioned and unstylish, but it may be classic according to Scorsese. However he is right when it comes to editing in the best shot.

I love his style so it was awesome to read how he goes about constructing a frame, using a normal lens and avoiding zooms and long lens shots. Then he uses an effect, something fancy, something noticeable, whether it be lighting or the aesthetic or a prop etc. It has to be interesting for him and I think that’s a rule I’d like to apply to my own filmmaking, where if the shot doesn’t interest me it isn’t right.

Lighting Class

We noted key light and off key lighting, soft light, diffusion, reflection and hard lighting. We learned to set up lights and dismantle them. How to adjust them and which colour temperatures would work in which scenarios and how to adjust for this, eg blue tones lights or blue gels when working outside in the daylight.

Our project will be difficult to light as we are shooting outside, however half our shoot will be at night so we will definitely need lighting. We’ll be using the handheld LED lights, that have no wires, for safety reasons and convenience.

We will have to use a yellow gel to make the lighting look like artificial street lighting and add warmth. We will also use a C-stand and reflectors, so it is fantastic that through the lectures we learned how to use and dismantle these. As many of our shots will be wide shots the lighting will be diffused as we don’t want it to appear like a spotlight, it must be soft and dreamy.

 

Blow Up

This scene was very intricately put together. Most of the shots are moving shots, incorporating panning, tilting and zooming in unison. The entire shots were in focus which would have made things easier but it would have taken a lot of rehearsing to be able to follow the actors’ choreography as fluently as the cameraman did.

The room was also full of props and set design was very interesting. The placement of the reflective surface and the beams which the actors used would have been carefully through through. The camera was placed at odd angles at times to get the characters in frame, although at times they were only shown partially, in an artistic way. The actors would not have moved at random, their paths and body language toward the camera would have been planned meticulously by the director.

Then the director would have instructed the camera man to follow and pan with the actors, filming before, during and after the actors had walked in and out of frame.

Week 8 lecture, Media 1

Korsakow clips mean nothing on their own, they gain meaning through their connections to other clips.

Filtered through the subjectivity of the maker. Doesn’t have to be grounded in reality. It’s all about the voice of the filmmaker. The essay and its relationship with experience. Documentary is all non-fictional cinema. Essay films are a category within documentary. Not so much telling you what to think as an invitation to think with the creator. Exploratory as it is a thinking through of a … who knows what.

Style and genre differ. Genre has specific qualifiers that make it a specific genre, styles have different elements that are similar but can fit into different genres. Genre is more about content than how you make it go about. Style is about what it is about. Our Korsakow films can be any genre, but the style is important.

We cannot know what our intent is. Intent does not survive anything. Parody and satire undermine intent. Intent counts for nothing.

Lighting Class, Film 1

I am really excited by the fact that the lights are easier than expected to set up and operate. As a videographer who uses natural lighting for all of my work (as a low budget events videographer must) I was used to making do and working with what was there. The idea that I can manipulate lighting, and quite easily, is really exciting and opens up so many possibilities. I know that soft lighting is really dreamy and easier to work with, but I really like the theatrical possibilities of using direct, hard lighting. Films such as Sin City and The Graduate did it so well!

Self Portrait as a List

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(I have no idea why this is sideways, the original file is the right way up and when I tried re-inserting it after adjusting the photo it did the same thing.)

Here’s a list that I made as a self portrait, following the advice from the reading where the purpose of the list is to evoke an idea or an emotion rather than a narrative and meaning. It is similar to the lists in the Lists as Art post, and I really like it. I think our group Korsakow project should be similar to this in theory.

The best Korsakow reading so far, week 7

This was the best reading so far, it inspired many ideas and my desired approach to the group Korsakow assignment. I am now thinking that rather than create some kind of story or some kind of meaning, I want to create a poetic experience. The aim is “evocation and experiential knowing” not a hard and firm meaning, which is what my rational mind fought for when it came to the abstract and ambiguous Korsakow medium.

This reading finally made me understand how it isn’t about information or story; it’s about the experience. In my discussion of the last reading here I argued that even linear films are experiential, but now I realize that it is in an entirely different way. It is aesthetically experiential and guided by plot, information and meaning. Korsakow films are entirely about the feelings that they evoke, the emotional experience. A logical and informative interpretation is not necessary and in most instances not even desired.

Lists as Art

In order to compliment this week’s Media 1 reading, I looked into the art of lists, or lists as art. As mentioned in a previous reading, lists are considered naïve compared to traditional literature because they lack narrative and story. However, this doesn’t mean they aren’t valuable or beautiful.

I read this article about artists and their lists, unrelated to their art

And this list of artists who use lists in their art

It was interesting because the lists say so much about the people who write them, and in my opinion are more personal even than a story written by these artists might be. This because they are true, they are not fiction. Lists are compiled by what is chosen to display and what is chosen not to display. You can tell a lot about a person, or an artist by what they choose to list and what they do not.

Week 6 Reading Media 1

An interesting point to this reading was the fact that digital interactive documentaries are limited as much as they are innovated by technological advances. In this way works become outdated and not accessible anymore as online languages change.

Another point is that Korsakow stories are “contemplative, interpretive and explorative” rather than “propulsive.”

I would argue that Adrian Miles and the writer are wrong, and that even linear narratives are experience based, not only information based. I also think they’re rather interpretive works.

“Works that challenge easy consumption of ideas…” Does this statement infer that all works that are difficult to understand are challenging the easy consumption of ideas. And what is wrong with this easy consumption of ideas, what is wrong with clarity and transparency? Even metaphor and symbolism are easier ideas to consume (for example in literature) than many ideas represented in Korsakow works. The ideas are ambiguous. Difficult and potentially not even there, and therefor audience-constructed.

Behind the Candelabra

I watched this movie almost by accident, I had nothing to do and was procrastinating wildly when I found it on my housemate’s hard drive and gave it a play.

I belong to Gen Y. A generation that is so used to hypermedia that we refuse to pay attention for more than two minutes to anything we stumble across on the web. So naturally, I found myself skimming through the movie.

I watched this semi-non-fiction, fictional narrative, in a non-linear way. It was an interesting way to go about it. Completely different to the Korsakow project that I created and the ones we viewed. Those were not narratives, they were lists. The interface guided the user between objects on a list, whereas in the movie I guided myself between different stages of a story. It didn’t matter that they weren’t in order.

This I think would be the only way to effectively tell a story through a Korsakow project. Rather than trying to tell a narrative, take different stages in a story. It needs to be a story such as the exploration of the deterioration of a relationship, where the cause and effect aren’t necessarily the most important thing, more rather, the beginning status and the end status are important and different events that show how the protagonists got there.

I now have an idea for a Korsakow fiction project where it explores one person’s life through a diary. Each clip having a date but the viewer not having the opportunity to watch them in order, only relatively randomly. So you can explore someone’s journey not from start to finish but from random state to random state and piece together their personality gradually. I think it’s a great idea and could work fictionally or non-fictionally if you were to use a real person and a real visual diary, or to create a person and their story through fiction.