Lubezki & Malick - a dogme

This is the series of parameters agreed by Terrence Malick and his DoP Emmanuel Lubezki for Tree of Life...

• Shoot in available natural light.
• Do not underexpose the negative. Keep true blacks.
• Preserve the latitude of the image.
• Seek maximum resolution and fine grain.
• Seek depth with deep focus and stop: "Compose in depth."
• Shoot in backlight for continuity and depth.
• Use negative fill to avoid light sandwiches (even sources on both sides)
• Shoot in crosslight only after dawn or before dusk; never front light.
• Avoid lens flares.
• Avoid white and primary colors in frame.
• Shoot with short focal length, hard lenses.
• No filters, except Polarizer.
• In the eye of the hurricane, shoot with steady handheld or Steadicam.
• Z-axis moves instead of pans and tilts.
• No zooming.
• Do some static tripod shots "in midst of our haste"
• Accept the exception to the dogma (a.k.a Article E) - Article E however does not apply underexposure of the negative.

Reflections on tutor report from Assignment Three

Interesting feedback on this.  I was pleased that Peter was quite critical about this assignment. I hope this means he feels that it has solid enough basis to be worth looking at very specific improvements which will help my later work.

The main comments were around the sound, specifically that the soundtrack does not reinforce the visuals enough.  The changes are too abrupt making the cuts seem amateur. I think I did intend for some of the tea-making sounds to seem unpleasant as I wanted to set the mood for the narrative but I seem to have gone too far.

Peter also commented that final conclusion is 'more than a little ambiguous'. I think this would normally be fine but the specific brief for this assignment was all about the implied meaning so this is a failure in that regard.  

Other people who watched the film did interpret it as the protagonist feeling suicidal and I had hoped that the note on the table would be a strong enough signifier but I can see now there could have been other connotations.

I really liked the suggestion that the actor breaking the frame was acceptable in this circumstance "so long as she is made to return, confinement is often a matter of trying unsuccessfully to escape" - this is a great way of taking forward my plan of cropping tightly and its justification.

I have tried to re-edit this and filmed myself in the role with some medium shots and more look room which was instructive but not really fit to be seen by anyone. I would love to have reshot the whole thing properly to allow myself more footage for a new edit but my actor selfishly sold her flat and moved to Australia!  

Given the time constraints in completing this course, I have made a decision to move on and practise the suggested improvements in other projects. 

My research has also continued on narrative structures and context. Barthes goes in to this in depth in his Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives essay in Image Music Text.  He looks at the language of narrative, levels of meaning, classes of units. He explains how drinking a whisky in and airport lounge "is an action which can act as a catalyser to the (cardinal) notation of waiting, but it is also, and simultaneously, the indice of a certain atmosphere (modernity, relaxation, reminiscence, etc). In other words, certain units can be mixed, giving a play pf possibilities in the narrative economy." 

Barthes, R., 1977. Image, Music, Text. London: Fontana.

I think I may need to read these essays several more times before I can really make sense of it all...

Understanding Movies by Louis Giannetti

Understanding Movies by Louis D. Giannetti (Tenth Edition), Pearson Education, 2005

I am amazed that this book is not on the essential reading list for the OCA Digital Production Course. I could not put it down and found it to be extremely useful.

It aims to help the reader understand "how TV and movies communicate and the complex network of language systems they use."  Each chapter has an overview and often a summary of questions we should ask when analysing a specific area.

It covers:

• Photography
• Mise-en-scene
• Movement
• Editing
• Sound
• Acting
• Drama
• Story
• Writing
• Ideology
• Critique

and the final chapter "Synthesis: Citizen Kane" is a summary of the main ideas all applied to a single movie.

It references hundreds of films and includes fascinating information as well as wide range of ideas, theories and opinions.

Visual Culture by Richard Howells and Joaquim Negreiros

Visual Culture by Richard Howells and Joaquim Negreiros (Second Edition), Polity Press 2012

I suspect I should really read this book every year whilst I am studying. There is a lot to take in and not all of it makes complete sense to my ageing brain... 

It provides an intro to analysis of visual culture, by seeking to increase visual literacy. "It does not aim to provide solutions to the meanings of specific visual texts, but instead to equip students with the means to discover for themselves what and how such texts communicate."

"A primer for the practice of looking."

The book tackles theories of visual analysis and aggregates a variety of approaches.

The first half provides strategies for the analysis of visual texts.

1. Looking at the content of a work of art - the practice of iconology
2. Looking at the form rather than the content of a visual text
3. The usefulness and limitations of art history in reading visual texts
4. Art interpretation via ideology; gender-based film study and sociological models for cultural texts
5. Semiotics
6. Hermeneutics

The authors call for "an interpretative and multilayered approach to the discover of meaning in visual texts.

The second half of the book moves from general theories to an analysis of specific media: 

7. Fine art
8. Photography
9. Film
10. Television
11. New media

Considering the breadth of the information and the complexity of some of these ideas, this book is quite palatable. It is well laid out with a summary at the beginning of each chapter to help with orientation. Each section ends with a 'Key Debate' topic and plenty of suggestions for further reading.

The Film chapter discusses the connections between film and reality, specifically focussing on time and space. It compares film with theatre and with the novel (with which it has much more in common). The authors then go on to break film down into basic grammatical units (the shot and the edit), showing how editing allows it to break loose from worldly constraints, contributing to its narrative complexity.  Film can move us from physical state to psychological insight instantly.

"...because it appears to free the viewer from the constraints of both time and space, which are so fundamental to the physical world, film at the same time appears to free us from reality altogether."

"Film is an artificial medium that goes to considerable lengths to conceal its own artifice."

"If we fail to notice the way in which real-life time and space have been left behind, the director's work has been professionally accomplished."

What may first appear to be the most realistic of media turns out to be the opposite. "We are drawn into a fantastically crafted construction and, while always intellectually cognizant of its artifice, we are still emotionally manipulated by its apparent realism."

"Among the pioneers of film semiotics are Christian Metz and Peter Wollen who argue that film communicated with three different types of sign: the icon, the index and the symbol."

"Where film particularly lends itself to Geertzian hermeneutics is in its narrative form. If cultural texts are stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, then explicitly narrative forms (which, like film, benefit from the added dimension of time) are likely to be especially rich in cultural meaning.  And because hermeneutics acknowledge ambiguity and layers of meaning beyond the literal, it is possible (for example) to interpret twentieth-century films about an alien invasion of the earth as metaphors (whether intended or not) for Western fears about communism and the former Soviet Union. The content and the meaning are never necessarily the same thing."

Marc Auge, French anthropologist created the terms 'espaces quelconques' to refer to homogeneous and anonymous spaces (such as airport terminals, metro stations) that rob people of their individuality.  Translates as 'any-space-whatever'. Gilles Deleuze sees these same places not as de-singularizing but as spaces whose apparently homogeneous universality opens them up to the emergence of all sorts of singularity.

Examples in Antonioni cinematography - "urban waste ground where buildings have been demolished, and rebuilding has not yet taken place, provide the sense of indetermination and openness that is central to the Deleuzian notion of 'any-space-whatever'. Just as the determined spaces of classical cinema allow for an ordered development of the narrative, the sense of indetermination conveyed by 'any-place-whatevers' contributes to put it in crisis, creating an instability that contaminates the identity of the characters and the rational coherence of the plot."

Understand Film Studies by Warren Buckland

Understand Film Studies by Warren Buckland, Hodder Education, 2010

A great little book as an intro to film studies - it provides a series of concepts to help filmgoers analyse artistic, technical and storytelling decisions.

It covers:

1. Aesthetics; formalism and realism
2. Structure: narrative and narration
3. Authorship: the director as auteur
4. Genres: defining the typical film
5. Non-fiction: five types of documentary
6. Reception: the art and profession of film reviewing

There are also some detailed analyses of specific techniques and scenes which are very instructive.  

Notes

Christian Metz: "The cinema is difficult to explain because it is easy to understand."

'Significant form' distinguishes good art from bad - where the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Stefan Sharff: "Significant form is the opposite of pedestrian rendition... Images for together so magnificently that they ascend to a higher level of visual meaning."  (Elements of Cinema)

Debate: Should women specialise in making feminist films?  Kathryn Bigelow argues that the job of a director is genderless.

Five categories of documentary (according to Bill Nichols): 

• expository
• observational 
• interactive
• reflexive
• performative

All in all a very good resource.  It helped give me the confidence to begin to critique films, something I would like to develop further.

Masters of Light by Dennis Schaefer and Larry Salvato

Masters of Light - Conversations with Contemporary Cinematographers by Dennis Schaefer and Larry Salvato, University of California Press, 1984

This book aims to explore the day-to-day working experience of a number of movie cinematographers.  It is a brilliant resource. Fascinating information conveyed via an interview style so easy to dip in and out of. 

This also really brings home how essential it is that the DoP is familiar with art generally, not just technical processes.  They talk about a "painterly use of light" (John Bailey) and that a cameraman "literally has to see as a child does" (Bill Butler).

I think I need to read this book again as I begin the Gesture & Meaning course...

Those featured are:

Nestor Almendros

John Alonzo

John Bailey

Bill Butler

Michael Chapman

Bill Fraker

Conrad Hall

Laszlo Kovacs

Owen Roizman

Vittorio Storaro

Mario Tosi

Haskell Wexler

Billy Williams

Gordon Willis

Vilmos Zsigmond

Tosi: "Cinematography is more than just making pretty pictures." A successful cinematographer is just as familiar with the history of the visual arts as he is with the light sensitivity of  film emulsion ...

The auteur theory is now in decline - filmmaking is a cooperative and collaborative effort by a team of artists, technicians and craftspeople.

The source of light should always be justified.

Almendros: "I believe in limitations and discipline."  "I start from realism. My way of lighting and seeing is realistic. I don't use imagination, I use research. Basically I show things as they are, with no distortion."

Alonzo: "The technology should not control the art."  "There's no such things as just flipping right into becoming a cameraman. For me it was the quality of what I could do plus being there at the right time and being tenacious about it."

Painting with Light by John Alton

Painting with Light by John Alton, University of California Press, 1995.

I found this book rather off-putting as it feels so dated (originally published in 1949). I also thought this was an odd quotation, from the author, to start with: "Life is short, but long enough to get what's coming to you.".  

Page 110: "Colored girls want to be white, and work hours to eliminate the kink in their hair, while their sisters are slaves of the latest tan style, and spend fortunes for their permanent waves." and "There's hardly a film nowadays without the feminine bedroom..." 

Chapter 12 is called DAY AND NIGHT, LADIES, WATCH YOUR LIGHT. I begins: "Every woman has the right to be as beautiful as she possibly can."  John thinks we should think more about using light as a 'beautifier'.  "Ladies' light is men's delight" apparently.  "Better light would make the girls look prettier, consequently feel happier."

"There are people who after the first drink take on a tired, sleepy, old look; these people should not drink, not even beer."

OCA: seriously - has no one written a decent book on lighting since this dude?

To be fair: there is a lot of good information about lighting techniques, theories around illumination etc and some inspiring ideas for creative lighting. Alton talks of black and white being colours and claims he can see in the dark.

Some of the equipment is obsolete now but the principles of what and why to illuminate stay relevant.  There is lots of detail about how to set up specific scenes such as around a fireplace; how to create effects such as summer moonlight or Autumn fog; different lighting approaches for varying shapes of human face... etc

Plus some great - and extensive - advice for anyone going on an ocean voyage!

One chapter is dedicated to the idea of a concert of light - a 'symphony of visual music'. Alton says that blacks, grays and whites in different densities constitute a similar scale to the one in music.


Notes

The more surfaces of an object that are visible, the better will be the picture.

The illusion of depth can be enhanced by separating foreground and background by lighting.

The spot which should appear most distant should be the lightest and vice versa to allow a progression from dark to light.

Lighting for quantity: sufficient exposure

Lighting for quality: 

1) orientation (to allow the audience to see where the story is taking place)
2) mood or feeling (season or time of day)
3) pictorial beauty/aesthetic pleasure and depth, perspective, 3D illusion

Do not try to illuminate large surfaces with sun reflectors, they never look natural.


Some other possible reads that may be a little more, er, modern...

Lighting for Digital Video and Television by John Jackman

Reflections-Twenty-One-Cinematographers-at-Work (a tad pricey!)

Cinematography-Theory-Practice by Blain Brown