So I was researching for my cinema essay today on the use of time and space in Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express (1994) and began really thinking about time and space within our documentary especially through interior and exterior spaces and what Maggie experiences. One of Gina’s thoughts on our documentary was that it was a bit of laugh, not necessarily in a bad way but that we kind of don’t truly relate with Maggie because she almost covers everything in a veneer of laughter. When thinking about this I thought that I needed to think about what Maggie wasn’t saying more than what she was and convey this on a visual level as well as the possibility of being reflexive. Anyway, Maggie’s story is about overcoming the fear of going outside or being part of this world. I think this brings up a very common theme of the ‘outsider’ and also a common theme across women’s homelessness, where the outside world is a daunting process as Maggie says ‘she’s scared of falling back’ so I think Maggie’s story is overcoming being scared of the world, even though things do hold her back, which is revealed at the end. When thinking about this I divided our story into 3 parts, which are quite explicitly: past, present, future, with a slight flash forward at the beginning as to where she is now. Her past is brief made up of fleeting stories: why she barracks for richmond, her son getting taken away and stealing cigarettes with a toy gun as well as Napier street. This stories make up her past, which are a lot longer than now and her future, these seem more fleeting, where the past is imbedded. Her past is where this fear of leaving is intangled especially in the Napier street story, which is embedded within our documentary our of chronological order, near the beginning, even though it was the place previous to where she is now. The Napier street story harnesses her fear but on a health level rather than metophoric she didn’t want to leave because she was overweight.
Even though, I am sure this is the case it seems that she is covering over other issues with physical embodiments of herself. Being overweight was an excuse not to go outside, her shoulder now his a physical attribute she can use to explain and justify who she is, without expressing this on an emotional level. Her story is defined by illness, yet at the end we realise that really it is men that she is scared of that we get fleeting accounts of in Rodney getting taken away from her and the cigarette story.
Our approach with visuals was be as obvious as possible and we also using this to create soundscapes as well to make Maggie’s story away ambiguity into the realm of understanding. I think we can heighten this. Her past is defined as the rough area, the area she won’t go into and I feel that we need to get the sense of this further with a slight reflexive moment where I ask her to talk about her childhood but refuses then we actually hear her talk about Richmond. In these instances the outside world is out-of-reach she is confined within interior spaces unable to see the world that is out there. Therefore, I think that the interior-ness of the interview should be blatantly clear in terms of some slight colour grading. The outside world, which we have shot bright and colourfully should appear completely out of reach.
When Maggie talks about getting her son back I think this is the moment when the story lifts and goes into the world of the new Maggie the colour grading of her interview should lift to begin to match the bright exterior shots and when she talks about actually going on holidays with the girls it should lift even further. Basically, the colour grading should place an even stronger emphasis on Maggie’s feelings. The last section where she talks about the future should be somewhere in-between because it is unknown it is untangible, there is a world of unexpectedness and things to overcome, yet it almost seems unforeseeable as well.
I also think we should have a time-based soundscape here. Even something such as a ticking clock or something like that. We need to feel the intensity of not knowing what’s going to come next. Something that we all do feel.
All of these thoughts are really fine-tuning without changing what we’ve got already but layering a more dynamic feel to the documentary. One that conveys more meaning and makes Maggie, well Maggie. She talks about things on different scopes. Things that we as general humans can comprehend and some feelings that we will never understand; this makes Maggie’s story both universal and insightful.
Tomorrow’s shoot is going to be a filling gaps interview as well as capturing all our cutaways. This blog post is more or less an organisational tool that I can use tomorrow to make sure that we cover all the areas that we’ve missed.
Today I went through some of our footage and started to insert markers for some of our longer takes to make editing easier and found some great things that really correlate to our new structure being from desperate Maggie to a Maggie that is able to face the world full on. She says these great things that metaphorically translate into the rythym of our entire documentary such as the ability to walk downstairs and the simple gesture of someone asking her to come down the stairs changed her world, but as she says later on “only one step at a time.” Tomorrow, in my interview I want to focus on different areas of Maggie’s life where there are gaps. Meenal and Sarah pointed out an issue with our story being that in order to know that she has improved we need to know what happened before. These are the holes that Maggie has left in her story. To fill these in I will ask questions that refer to things that she’s already told us to get a better sense of coherence, questions:
- Last week you told us that you had a big medical appointment this week, how did that go yesterday?
- Could you please run us through your life and the different places you’ve lived over the course of your life?
- Questions that run from this: last week you told us that you lived and worked at the Abbottsford Convent what type of work did you do there?
- How long were you there for and from what age?
- Last week you told us that you had made yourself a better person and that you had made some mistakes. What mistakes did you make that you have now gotten over?
- You told us that “everyone makes mistakes” and that some of the people in your past have made mistakes directed towards you? What mistakes have they made?
- You told us that when living in Fitzroy you were too scared to leave the house and go out into the world. Have there been other instances of this in your life?
I think this approach will bring Maggie to focus on certain areas and help us to visualise a timeline of her life. Even though we don’t necessarily want our film to go in chronological order we want to have a sense of where everything she told us last week fits into her life so we can depict her as accurately as possible.
Visual things we need to capture:
- Maggie’s hats: We will also ask her the significance of some of her hats and get her to show them to us and go through them. Meenal, however will focus on capture the hats more than Maggie to use as overlay.
- Maggie’s photos: We may be able to scope out a few things through her photos and therefore will get us to talk about her photos while Meenal focuses on the photos on her photoboard to get a glimpse visually of Maggie’s past life.
- Exterior shots: Maggie talks about venturing into the outside world, however we need to be able to visualise this. We will ask Maggie to perhaps walk outside or take some exterior shots of Maggie experiencing a world that she shares with other people.
- Door numbers: One of the problems that we had was that it wasn’t clear where Maggie was now. We can express this visually through showing the different door numbers in her house or by showing an exterior shot of her room that contextualises it as a room to herself rather than a house. This could be further emphasised by other shots of the place in which Maggie lives such as shots of the outside sharing area.
- Maggie doing something: This could be something simple like her filling up her water bottle or making a cup of tea, we just need to show how Maggie can look after herself and live more independantly in the world.
I think this will really fill the gaps in our film and make it more visual where we can use the visuals to contrast with what Maggie is saying or match what Maggie is saying and therefore bring these things into the editing room to suss out. I think it’s so important to really analyse what Maggie is saying not just her words but her body language and to really see what she’s saying on both a literal and metaphoric level. How do the things in her life now reflect her wider life story?
I also think that if we have time we do some reflexive stuff such as ask Maggie what she would like to have in the documentary and why she wanted to be in our documentary? This might just add a bigger textual level to our doco.
Filed under: tv2 | Tags: cinematography, ethics, kirsten johnson, reading
Often I feel overwhelmed by the amount of men that seem to dominate the film industry and therefore found the interview from Kirsten Johnson particularly enlightening and particularly relevant to our own documentary. Whilst reading I found myself writing down words and phrases that came to mind regarding our own documentary that were extracted from the words of Johnson who has a great grasp of her own visual style and the ethical boundaries that forms her work, which really resonated with me. I truly thank Meenal for telling me about this reading as I feel that this will help our documentary move towards something more insightful.
What first comes to mind, is what Meenal talks about in her own blog post and I feel similarly about this, being that when you are capturing ‘questions of social difficulty’ it is important to capture them beautifully. We are definitely looking to capture this in our own documentary. Originally, we wanted to make it rough, handheld to reflect the hardships of her life. However, now we have stepped back and realised the necessity to shoot our documentary beautifully. We want to keep or audience engaged in the story and to feel an attachment and therefore feel that we need to portray visually a more flowing approach that will harness her life in a way that is engaging to the audience and pays respect to her as our subject.
In conjunction was something Johnson said in terms of expanding the scale of your documentary and making it universally about a certain subject. Yes, we are interviewing one woman but we are trying to say something about homeless women and therefore are using our subject as a spokesperson for homeless women. Johnson speaks of this in relation to a film she did on prisoners where by:
isolating the hands against the uniform that they’re wearing, indicates that we’re talking about prisoners, not just one prisoner
In saying this we need the visuals of a broader context, not only do we need her as our subject, but we need her hands, her feet, the streets, the houses, etc. We need to show that this is not just about her but about homeless women on a broad scale, and what it means to her (to all of them to overcome homelessness). I think it’s important that her words resonate and that some of the things she says applies on a more general level as well, this will also form the questions that I write to target in on contextualising her within the realm of homeless women.
Ethically I feel that from what she says Johnson steps back from her role as cinematographer and truly sees that she is dealing with people who are putting trust into her and her crew.
It’s often incredibly painful for people to talk about some of what they’ve experienced, and yet they have made some kind of choice to let themselves be filmed. In that arrangement, I think there’s a space for human attention.
My first principal is, “Do no harm,” which I think is possible within filmmaking, and it’s a constant question one has to ask oneself.
Both these quotes really resonated with me and emphasised the constant fact that you are dealing with someone’s life and need to know yourself what you are achieving and why, what are you asking and why. Ultimately, these subjects are trusting you and it’s your obligation to do them no harm. In our tutorial on Tuesday we had a group meeting and Sarah asked me if I’m willing to dig, because you have to be, you have to get the information. Even though I totally agree with her there is this need to get information, it is not the prime objective because if this documentary is going to upset our subject we are not making the film that we as a group went out to make, we are trying to strongly position ourselves as showing the realities of homeless women in a positive light. I think there is always a line and your role as a filmmaker is to not cross it, but to find a way that deals with your subject in a way you will get the information without forcing it out of them and I always think there is something to say about people that can’t share their emotions. Johnson talks about a similar case, where she filmed a subject that was very stilted, serious and unemotional, yet after watching him realised this was a cover for the deep emotion he felt, where everytime he took a glass a water he was drinking it to hold back the emotion. She claims it was one of the most emotional interviews she ever filmed. Therefore, there is this overwhelming need to capture movements, capture when the subject drinks, because every movement could be speaking so much louder than the subject can in words. This truly emphasised something Liam asked us last week being why are you making a documentary about this, what can you say that can’t be written in an article? This is it, it is every subtle movement that cannot be expressed in words, but more poignantly than words expresses your subject.
Reference:
Cunningham, Megan. “Searching the Frame, Exposing a Vision.” The art of the documentary : ten conversations with leading directors, cinematographers, editors, and producers, (p. 149-175). Berkeley, CA : New Riders, 2005.
Image Source:
KJ and masai man. “Interview: Director & Cinematographer, Kirsten Johnson.” Still In Motion. <http://stillinmotion.typepad.com/still_in_motion/2010/04/interview-director-and-cinematographer-kirsten-johnson.html>
Filed under: tv2 | Tags: cinematography, observational documentary, reading
This reading was great in terms of relating with what has been the focus of my previous blog posts in terms of observational documentary. Haskell Wexler precisely articulates the issues with observational documentary in terms of its authenticity. This comes as somewhat surprising considering that he was part of the direct cinema entourage of Pennebaker, Leacock and the Maysles Brothers.
Even though the interview is short it captures moments that articulates how observational documentary cannot work, where he exclaims “Of course we coach people.” Followed by “we are not like the surveillance cameras in the supermarkets.” This indicates a major point in terms of documentary filmmaking, in the mere fact that we are still making films, and therefore need to stimulate natural drama. It reminds me of the fact that we still need to think like filmmakers, you are still thinking about how you’re going to cut your film together, such as in Wexler’s case asking Keith Richard’s to walk through a door again to ensure that he could edit the segment together.
This to me is not toying with the truth, because we all walk through doors numerous times on a daily basis and is not being untruthful because this truth doesn’t matter it will not change the integral drama of the doco, it simply keeps flow and ensures a finished film product.
The point Wexler makes most poignantly is that:
There is “no reality.” Once images are recorded, by whatever medium, they cease to be reality. It becomes the filmmakers reality. All the images we see are images now presented by the people who are able to present them.
(pg. 89)
I think this point is so completely relevant with documentary filmmaking that it makes the observational filmmakers seem rather silly in claiming that they just captured reality, when the reality is the relationship between the director, subject and camera. There are so many different things in play, that in saying that we just recorded reality is a lie in itself.
The image is always controlled by the filmmaker, whether they want to control it or not. We all have a vision and even if we try to avoid it it will convey endlessly through our work. Last semester in Integrated Media 1 there was a massive argument about what it means to be creative and Adrian Miles argued that you have to have an intention, an initial purpose. This carries through to documentary. Film is art, documentary is film and these all involve creative processes, whether they end up being the epitome of your intention or something completely different, it was your intention that sparked the whole project.
Reference:
Cunningham, Megan. “A Conversation with Haskell Wexler.” The art of the documentary : ten conversations with leading directors, cinematographers, editors, and producers, (p. 88-89, 149-175, 277, 284). Berkeley, CA : New Riders, 2005.
Image Source:
Jump Cut, Haskell Wexler’s Latino: an “ethic” soldier’s story, http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc50.2008/Latino/2.html
With cinematography it is valuable that your images link to the overall documentary. There is no point getting beautiful images if they don’t relate. You need to be able to control the image. You need to be ready, prepared with the right equipment, but also with the right mental preparation to be prepared for adverse conditions.
What is possible?
Dennis O’Rourke’s example shows that anything is possible. He is literally positioned on the boat with a heavy camera and sound. He managed to get that personal close footage and also maintained an interesting aesthetic.
Because documentaries can take any form, so can the cinematography. You can approach making the documentary in any style you want. Documentary has moved above the hand-held camera, no lighting aesthetic.
Gypsy film: This shows that the skills learnt for making a fictional film, can also be used or adapted for your documentary film. Be aware of the equipment you have access to and choose accordingly to what you need to use the camera for, you may want to utilise different cameras for different situations within your documentary.
Steer away from using automatic functions. It’s about controlling the picture as much as possible to create the best possible aesthetic for your project. This is vitally important as you want to be in control of your picture.
Automatic focus: It focuses on the centre of the frame and defeats creative composition. You need to look after your focus, think about who will look after the focus. Get in the habit of knowing distances for which you achieve focus. Think about focus pull in terms of people getting up and walking, because it’s a documentary and people will most likely to walk around. You need to work out which way is towards infinity and which one is towards smaller numbers. The camera person needs to know and memorise this according to the different cameras. If it’s hand-held you wont want to turn the camera around, it will be clunky. Think if you want everything in focus or if you want to focus to go in and out and not be perfect. All these creative focus options are only available with manual focus.
Exposure: Think about using the mini monitor if it’s going to help your project. Remember to set the view finder to your own eye, so it’s more accurate. Use zebras to to keep track of your exposure and change it while shooting to maintain exposure. Don’t be afraid of under-exposure for aesthetic reasons, but be careful about over-exposure.
Quince Tree of the Sun: A lot of emphasis on composition and frames within frames as a compositional tool. The camera is not hand-held but static or smooth, capturing moments between people. Creating parallel action through post-production, was it planned? Did these moments occur at the same time? Probably not.
Camera operation: The view-finder is extremely useful, however you can’t judge exposure or pick focus. You need to move yourself into the camera and put yourself in the position of creator. You need to be physically engaged with the camera look through the lens.
Hand-held camera work: Think about which camera will best suite your hand-held camera work. A bigger camera may be more useful because it is more steadier. At shoulder height perhaps think of using the bigger camera. Have a try and test different cameras to see what works better for you. A heavier camera may be better.
Interviews: Good interviews may be the result of good research. Don’t believe the research will give you the answer, everyone need to listens, you may need to adjust in terms of the answer to the question. The camera position you have may not be appropriate. You need to adjust the frame all the time. example: Hearts and Mine never unlock the pan and tilt you need to change. The camera is constantly re-framing as the interviewee moves, the camera seems to predict these movements. They are subtle movements but it creates a more dynamic interview. Never lock off the interview be prepared for change.
Metal and Melancholy: How do you get coverage with only one camera? Gets footage of the interior and exterior of the car, and you’ve also got to capture him. So you need to capture what’s important. Think how you’re going to make it appear that these moments are happening in real time.
Shooting too much: You need to ask yourself if you’re ever going to watch all this stuff? and if you choose to shoot a lot make sure you watch it all. Be organised label all your footage and add notes.
Last week a few of my friends and I watched some films, one being House of Flying Daggers. I have watched this film before, but when I watched it this time I noticed how amazing the cinematography was. It is probably the most beautiful cinematography I’ve ever seen. What I was most impressed by was its great use of depth-of-field, which varied extensively through the film. I was also impressed by the amazing use of colour that was used to perfection throughout the film. Through this blog post I will analyse two of my favourite scenes that both exquisitely capture something so incredibly beautiful through amazing cinematography.
The first scene I will analyse is one of the opening sequences in which Xiao Mei plays the echo game by flicking beans to hit drums around the room. The scene contrasts between close-ups and wideshots from showing the close-up of the beans in a bowl that cuts to a wideshot that contextualises the whole scene with the circular drums surrounding the room. The focus and camera movement captures each bean as it flies through the air, while simultaneously moving back to capture Xiao Mei’s movement as she hits the drums with her sleeve. The seamless camera movement creates flow and aims at capturing every slight movement. The depth-of-field captures the intense emotions of her face blurring the background, yet still moving the camera around her in a circular motion, keeping her beautifully in focus. However, it is the next shot that is truly beautiful as the camera captures a bean flying seamlessly through the air as it bounces off two drums. It is truly amazing. What is so fantastic about this scene is the cameras ability to capture every moment in such fine detail through constant seamless camera movement and a really creative use of depth-of-field. Obviously, there is so much technical perfection and every shot would have been planned in great detail with an emphasis on creating beautiful imagery.
This emphasis on beauty is emphasised throughout the film through colour matching in the bamboo scenes where the costumes match the colours of bamboo hiding within the jungle, and the impressionist-like landscapes of trees and landscape in so many colours.
However, the scene that caught me the most is the closing scene where it snows contrasting the red of blood and the white of snow. The scene begins in true martial art fashion set on a field with the colourful tree jungle in the background. There are quick cuts to capture the speed of the fight. However, the true magic of this scene starts when it starts to snow, which is shown in the first picture in this blog. It is here where colour is used in complete contrast between the darkened sky and the colourful trees, where time-lapse photography is used to cover the scene in white showing a wide shot of the two men embedded within a world of snow. As they fight the camera captures in perfect focus blood flicking through the air and landing on the snow. Finally, there is another moment when Xiao stand up and throws her dagger through the air, where the camera follows it through the air cutting between shots of all the characters faces in a surreal-like fantasy. This surreal moment is created through the zooming/tracking camera movements and the strange out-of-this-world camera angles to emphasise the tragedy inherent in this moment.
What I learnt in terms of my own production is the extreme technical detail, where colour and depth-of-field create so much emotional weight to this film and carries so much meaning. Therefore I think in any production it is important to think about what colours you want to emphasise and how you are going to do this. In Doughnut we want to have a surreal-like moment in the second last scene when Bernard walks through the workplace after ‘killing’ Jonathan. We want to have flowing camera movement and in post-prod will speed up and slow down the movement. The emphasis will be on his red tie, and we will carry an emphasis on red throughout the film to carry the blood/jam theme throughout the script. I learnt that to really highlight red contrast it against white, therefore in costuming have Bernard wear a white shirt and because all the walls in the office are white it will be relatively easy to emphasise the red.
In our class yesterday as well as going through how a shoot should run we watched all our Lenny videos. It was impressive to see the difference between them all, and not in a bad way.
The first group’s Lenny was dramatic and went for an extremely emotional approach to the script. The cinematography was amazing with the still montage at the beginning highlighting the concrete harsh landscape. The cinematography was also very effective in terms of colour saturating the screen in dull shades of grey and diffused greens, browns, etc. The whole atmosphere was diffused. The drama was heightened by the building orchestral music and the cutting between Sharon and Lenny building up their confrontation and when they finally meet with the wideshot of Sharon running towards the collapsed Lenny to give the audience a full indication of this pivotal moment. The editing was effective and mostly used in terms of continuity editing, keeping the audience orientated and amongst the action. Overall for the first production I thought they effectively conveyed the script of Lenny keeping within the rules of production, such as obeying the 180 degree rule and knowing the camera very well in terms of exposure, focus and white balance. Out of all the films I thought this was the most technically professional.
The second Lenny used nearly the same location, but the feel was much different. It was highly saturated with a yellow glowing tinge, which Paul suggested was a white balance issue but anywho it was a very different feel. The shots were similar to the first with Lenny walking, Sharon’s shoes, the box, etc. However, it was slightly disorientating, which I didn’t notice till Paul told me explicitly so it wasn’t an extreme problem for me. The costuming was done well, with the high heels on Sharon as she struts in an amazing shot of her feet centered in the middle of the frame and the clicking of her high heels, which heightened the melodramatic style of the acting; Lenny in a suit and Sharon in a black dress. The dialogue sequence between Lenny and Sharon works really well with the cuts and doesn’t cross the line, using over-the-shoulder shots to create a sense of place and continuity that isn’t as present in the opening meeting sequences that were slightly disorientating.
Overall, both these films use similar things: music to heighten the emotional intensity, over-exaggerated acting and a large feeling of despair. However, they achieve these in different ways. The first one through the bleak, concrete setting emphasising the glowing red blood and the second one through the melodramatic heightened music and melodramatic acting.
In terms of our Lenny, i think it was highly different to the first two because it used rather extreme low and high angles, where at points we had the camera positioned on the ground. We also used a quite different setting. Even though ours wasn’t as polished as the others in terms of the audio I think we went a bit abstract. I wanted the main emphasis to be showing Lenny’s vulnerability, by 1. showing Sharon tower over him and 2. have really low angles of him, where the camera grounds itself within his subjectivity. Therefore I wanted to use extreme angles for this short exercise. Paul pointed out a few things that we could of improved on such as the exposure on Sharon’s face and having a reflection of Sharon in the mirror of the box, just to add something and make it better. Obviously, there are a few things we need to work at.
This reading was phenominal and gave me this fantastic understanding of the power of not only light, but colour in a truly philosophical and beautiful way. I now wish to watch every film mentioned in this reading, especially Little Buddha. What struck me most about this reading was Storaro’s amazing ability to articulate his greater philosophical outlook into lighting and colour, where while I was reading it I was imagining these amazing landscapes of colour and light. I will only discuss a few things in this blog post, but I truly plan to really look at colour and lighting in film from now on, because it is obvious through this reading that Storaro uses lighting and colour to convey so much more than is possible through the storyline.
It is this that I will start off with, which Storaro describes as a parallel story; that expresses ‘consciously, much more clearly what the story is about’ (pg. 256). Storaro is referring to the ability of light and colour to express more, well not necessarily more but compliment and expand upon the plot. Images of colour and light convey what the plot can’t the self-conscious feelings of the characters, without the use of a tacky inner-monologue. It expresses the tone of the scene. This is what Storaro expressed in terms of the relationship between the director and cinematographer, which helped me establish a tangible meaning of the roles of director and cinematographer and the hierachy between them. The director gives the cinematographer the style and the language. For example with our short film ‘Doughnut’ Eliza (our director) expressed that she wanted “bland colours. Very monochromatic- except for Bernard. He wears brown and has terrible, puke coloured ties.” This perhaps was not her job, as according to Storaro it is the cinematographer that turns the director’s words into images- ‘how the story can be represented in an emotional, symbolic, psychological and physical way’ (pg. 257). Eliza perhaps should have told Renee I want Bernard to be an outsider, that feels isolated from his office work space, in which Renee would think how can I represent this through visual language; through colour through light.
It is this visual language that I will now draw from as Storaro himself expresses cinematography in this way, in relation to language-
It’s like you’re using different punctuation and different adjectives to create a style out of a language to describe one part of the story you’re writing in relation to another part.
This basically responds to moods. You use one language to write in the mood of happiness and a different one to write in the mood of sadness. Storaro has an amazing understanding of this; different colours instill different moods, different lighting schemes suggest different moods. It is the combination of lighting, colour, set design, costume, etc. That creates this overarching mood that cannot be expressed more strongly than in the cinematic image. Storaro uses numerous examples through his work of how he has used the cinematic elements of colour and lighting to contrast different moods, different places, etc. Imbedding within the picture his own obsession with his work. For instance, in The Last Emperor Storaro places a different colour on the different stages of Pu Yi’s life. The beginning is saturated in warm colours depicting the ‘protective womb for him as well as a kind of prison’ (pg. 270). At the end of the film the colour scheme has changed to violet when he is an ordinary Chinese citizen. However, it does not stop here there is lighting also imbedding meaning into the images. In the Palace hwere he is shielded from the outside world he is not exposed to any daylight, and as the character himself delves into an internal conflict the lighting fights between light and shade.
These examples show the extent to which Storaro thinks about light and colour and the experience Storaro has in the field to be able to express the inner-workings of his visual mind directly onto the camera. This not only requires a detailed vision but an unwavering knowledge of the equipment to achieve the specific imagined effect, as Storaro says himself ‘the light is the primary thing’ (pg. 256). Once you have harnessed the emaculate skills to control the equipment you have the full ability to articulate your vision, whether it is elaborate like Storaro’s vision of balancing the elements of fire, wind, air and water into an enlightening white moment, or something much more simple such as making every red item within each frame stand out. Everyone has a vision it is about your ability to be able to articulate this through the camera, through the lens. This is the art of ‘writing with light.’
Reference:
Boorman, J. & Donahue, W. (eds.) Projections 6 : film-makers on film-making, (p. 254-280). London : Faber and Faber, 1996.
Image source:
therushmorefilmsociety 2009, vittorio1, image, http://therushmorefilmsociety.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/vittoro1.jpg
To be honest I found this short film incredibly creepy in terms of sound and production design in comparison to the plot of the film, which really played with my head in terms of genre. The feel of the film indicated horror/thriller, however the plot was quite innocent probably closer to a comedy than anything else. Therefore I felt the film was really playing with audience expectations. The music was deep, windy and chimey sounds, which lead to a monotonal deep hum when the image cuts to santa. The cinematography reflects this through the dark lighting scene, and the creaky opening of the door letting in yellow light, which is a great shot and yet one commonly seen and experienced in a horror film.
creaky door, typical of the horror film genre
The expressions on the little kids head reminded me of the little kid in The Shining- incredibly creepy and the father’s appearance with glasses and thin appearance to be quite bizaar. However, in saying this I did like it because I thought it built up a horror-like tension and then backfired it to disorientate audience expectations. I honestly thought something horrible was going to happen to this child. Yet, it didn’t. There was one amazing shot in this film where the camera tracks down the hallway in what looks like a track in zoom out effect which also works in disorientating the audience and looks amazing as it focuses in on the family in the dining room, where in restricting your view to only see through the doorway you don’t know what to expect at the end, which again heightens the suspense.
tracking zoom shot down a corridor of unexpected possibilities
Basically, what this film does is set up the mother and father as quite menacing through the music and the bizaar interaction at the beginning where there is a cut to the mother with this rather sinister smile on her face heightened by a shift in music to a faster paced darker piano sound.
sinister expectation
In fact what I think makes this film is the sound design, which heightens the film to convey all emotions on the mother and father as sinister. The last scene is quite lovely where the camera as I said previously does the track down the hallway and what is revealed is this happy family, with an obvious change in set design characteristics. The lighting is warmer and the costumes have changed into something much brighter such as the mother in a red dress. The feel in this scene is completely in contast to those previous.
happy bright family
In terms of exploring this film in terms of our own production of Doughnut I think it will be vitally important to have this mood shift as soon Bernard comes back into the office after killing Jonathan- things should be brighter, as things are better for Bernard. The beginning he is in this bleak environment: the lighting should be dull and everything should be monotonal, when he returns everything should be brighter to reflect his own mood of personal achievement. Therefore Son of Santa helped me think about how we can achieve a mood shift, making the audience aware visually of changes rather than through dialogue, which is done extraordinarily well in Son of Santa.
Reference:
shots from: Mann, T. Son of Santa , 2006
I flicked through the digital dossier in search of something I could examine in terms of cinematography and the readings I discussed in the previous post. I found great cinematography present in the surreal sequences in 9 Souls (Toshiaka Toyoda, 1993). The first sequence creates surreal cinematography through the contrast between the objects placed within the frame. This contrast is between the darkened mountainous landscape and the bright reddened lights that gleam from the ‘Lucky Hole’ night club (which is what I assume it is). It is obvious that the director wanted to make the appearance of this night club surreal and odd in terms of the location of where these men are fighting. Therefore in order to emphasise the contrast there needed to be something that would stand out in comparison to everything else, which is achieved strongly through the lighting constrast and also the technicality of the place. The landscape is primitive and scarce, where this night club has electric run lights that glow off the building. It stands as a beacon in this landscape. This is shown most explicitly in the wide shot of a long road in the centre of the frame leading back to the red lights gleaming off the night club in the distant centre of the frame. The group of men in white robes are in the distance as well, walking towards the lights. The rest of the frame is clad with a mountainous backdrop in the furthest horizon of the frame and grass surrounding the road. The sky is foggy and the frame, apart from the gleaming lights is cast in a gloomy darkened mist. All these elements of frame construction work to highlight the surreal quality of the club, as it is completely out of context. This wide shot is highlighting this all through the use of cinematic qualities, constructing this club as an important aspect of the story as it is prominant within the frame. As Dusan Muskavejev discusses in this week’s reading in film what is in the frame is all that exists when watching a film and what you chose to emphasise within that frame is highly important. The construction of this shot highlights all these points as by using the wide shot to capture the setting Toyoda is eluding to a larger landscape, where you assume if the frame was larger that the scarce mountainous landscape would spand for miles, and by using this sparce landscape it emphasises the absurdity of a brightly lit night club being present, therefore drawing audience attention to the surreal qualities of this club being there.
The next sequence continues on with surreal cinematography concurrent with the previous sequence I just examined. The surreal qualities are most prominant when the camera pans out and the woman and man kissing on the bench enter a dream-like sequence that strongly contrasts with the previous rather normal setting of a park bench. The shot comprises of a single car in the middle of the frame and not much else, however as the camera pans out again it shows a picturesque industrial harbour, with light blue water. However, more than the settings themself in creating a sense of the surreal is the panning out of the camera, which eludes to this world being out of this world. As the camera smoothly follows the car off screen and then seamlessly pans out to the junkyard harbour setting, complimented by the slow chimey, pianony music there is a sense that the character has left the world, even before the cut to the dead body covered in blood on the park bench. It is a lovely long-shot encapsulates beautifully the passing of the character through the central emphasis of the moving car leaving the screen and the panning back to the wideshot of the harbour. Scorsese in this week’s reading stated that he moulds his cinematography around capturing the best emotional intensity. This scene through the moving of the car out of the frame captures ever so subtely the bitter sweet sadness of this character dying.
In terms of our own productions (even though I am not cinematographer) it is apparent to think about what will capture the most emotional intensity, will it be the wide shot? close-up? What is the shot trying to say and how are we going to achieve that to the best of our abilities? Obviously we don’t have the cabilities to do a pan back into a crane shot, because we do not have access to a crane, so therefore there are limitations to the cinematography and more the types of camera movements we can achieve. However, I think it will be really important in terms of creating a certain setting the lighting that will be used, whether we want a darkened mysterious setting, or a bright setting, which is easily achievable.
