Sound in the Cinema
‘A quiet passage can create almost unbearable tension, while an abrupt silence in a noisy passage can jolt us’ (Bordwell, 2017).
Sound offers the filmmaker plenty of possibilities. The filmmaker judges which sounds to use based on how they suit the film’s overall form and how they shape the viewer’s experience of the film.
We tend to think of sound as an accompaniment to the moving image. This assumption enables sound engineers to create a story world without the viewer noticing.
Sound is a powerful film technique, in that 'it engages a distinct sense mode’ (p.264).
Eisenstein – “synchronisation of senses” – ‘making a single rhythm or expressive quality bind together image and sound’ (p.264).
‘If a sound and image occur at the same moment, they tend to be perceived as one event’ (p.265)
Sound can ‘actively shape how we understand image’ (p.265).
The viewer will construe the image depending on the sound.
‘Sound summons up an unseen space’ (p.265).
Sound guides our eye and mind.
Three examples:
Letter from Siberia (1957) dir. Chris Marker
- Demonstrates the power of sound to alter our understanding of what is on screen.
- Marker shows the same footage three times, each time the footage is accompanied by a different sound track – first affirmative, second critical, third a mix of praise and criticism.
- The viewer will construe the same images differently, depending on the voice-over commentary.
- Shows how sound ‘can steer our attention within the image’ (p.265).
Blow-Out (1981) dir. Brian de Palma
- ‘exploits the guiding function of sound’ (p.265).
- Sound reveals a clue – Jack studies his DIY film made from magazine photos; synchronises his sound tape with the image track; when the two play together, the blowout sound matches a flash from the bushes near a fence post.
- The flash was visible in the replayed footage, but it needed the sound track to make Jack and the viewer notice it.
Babel (2006) dir. Alejandro Inarritu
- When the deaf teenager enters the disco, the club music is about to climax.
- Instead of subjective sound, we get subjective silence.
- This sharply dramatises the teenager’s isolation from what is happening around her.
‘Sound gives a new value to sound’ (p.265).
Bordwell, D. (2017) Film Art: An Introduction 11th edition New York: McGraw Hill
Screening: ‘Agnes Varda: Gleaning Truths’, a retrospective at the Irish Film Institute, Dublin, 8th – 19th September 2018
‘Although a key figure of the French New Wave, Agnès Varda’s importance has been eclipsed somewhat by the legacies of her male contemporaries, Godard and Truffaut et al., and it is only recently that her status as a pioneering figure is being reclaimed – last year she was awarded an Honorary Oscar for her contribution to cinema’ Irish Film Institute (2018).
I attended two of the six films screened at the Agnes Varda retrospective at the Irish Film Institute this month, ‘La Pointe Courte’ (1955) and ‘One Sings, The Other Doesn’t’ (1977). Neither of which I have seen before.
‘La Pointe Courte’ is set in a Mediterranean fishing village, and chronicles the complex relationship of a young married couple, played by Philippe Noiret and Sylvia Monfort. A native of the area, the man tries to understand his Paris-born wife’s feelings of dissatisfaction and isolation.
‘One Sings, The Other Doesn’t’ tells the story of two women, Pomme (Valérie Mairesse) and Suzanne (Thérèse Liotard), who form a close bond when Pomme helps Suzanne secure an illegal abortion. Varda explores their contrasting yet parallel lives over the years – Suzanne runs a family planning centre while Pomme sings with a campaigning, feminist folk group.
The full programme of films included:
‘La Pointe Court’ (1955)
‘Cleo from 5 to 7’ (1962)
‘Le Bonheur’ (1965)
‘One Sings, The Other Doesn’t’ (1977)
‘Vagabond’ (1985)
‘The Gleaners and I’ (2000)
‘La Pointe Courte’ (1955)
Black & White, 86 minutes
‘La Pointe Courte’ seems to set a precedent for what we find in the New Wave films of Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Goddard and Alain Resnais a fews later. Particularly in her working outside the mainstream film industry, shooting on location, and mixing professional and non-professional actors.
The film’s dual structure is comprised of two disparate, alternating narrative strands, which appear to have no connection with each other, other than the two stories take place in the same location: the young married couple wandering the fields, canals and beaches, talking about their troubled relationship; and the fisherman attempting to evade the coastal patrols, while life goes on as normal in the village. This disconnection is further emphasised by Varda’s filming style. With the detached theatrical acting style of Sylvia Montfort and Phillipe Noiret on the one hand and the ordinary, naturalistic acting style of the villagers on the other.
For me, what makes this film so exciting to see, is its stunning visual style. It reminds me of the photographs of Eugene Atget, Robert Doisneau and Henri Cartier-Bresson. She seems to catch the reality of the setting and its unique strangeness. From the opening shot as the camera roams through the village, probing shadowy corners and drifting through interior spaces, to the documentary-like shots of the village that appear to have little to do with the actual narrative, but everything to do with conveying a sense of the location. The result is a film that portrays a wonderfully vivid sense of place.
‘One Sings, The Other Doesn’t’ (1977)
Colour, 120 minutes
A very different film to ‘La Pointe Courte’ in theme and style, ‘One Sings, The Other Doesn’t’ follows the trajectories of two female friends in the context of women’s struggle for the legalisation of contraception and abortion. Uses two women with contrasting temperaments to evoke different approaches to the struggle. Pauline is a young activist with an upbeat personality. Suzanne is a melancholy single mother who finds herself pregnant again. When the film starts in 1962, Pauline is a teenager, wanders into an art gallery run by photographer Jerome, and discovers that his partner is her former neighbour Suzanne. Pauline agrees to help Suzanne get an abortion by tricking her parents into giving her money. Suzanne finds her way in the world running a family planning centre. Pauline renames herself ‘Pomme’ and travels France as part of a feminist consciousness raising folk group.
The action jumps to 1972, to an abortion rights demonstration in Paris. It’s clear that this is not simply a fiction film. Varda also uses a documentary style, bringing specific moments alive with an air of spontaneity – as in the faces of women waiting for abortions in Amsterdam or the apparently real crowds gathered around the touring folk band. Turning the film from what could easily become a women’s buddy movie into a film that actively engagements with the contemporary struggle for abortion rights. The film ends in 1976, with signs pointing to a hopeful future.
Certain filmmakers jump out for their innovation and creative vision. For me, these two films by Agnes Varda are a great find. Seeing them on screen, as they were intended to be viewed, was a wonderful experience and I am very drawn to the way she sees and thinks about the world.
List of references
Irish Film Institute (2018) Agnes Varda: Gleaning Truths At: https://ifi.ie/agnes-varda-gleaning-truths/ (Accessed on 8 September 2018)
‘Samsara’ (2012) dir. Ron Fricke
Samsara is a Sanskrit word used in eastern religions to denote the endless cycle of life, death and rebirth. Filmed in twenty five countries over five years, visiting sacred sites, disaster zones, industrial sites, cities and natural wonders, the film fuses together the ancient and the modern. There is no dialogue. There is no text. It is not a documentary in the traditional sense. Instead, the viewer is encouraged to draw their own interpretation from the flow of images and music.
The film adopts a circular structure, bookended between scenes of a group of monks forming and erasing a powder representation of the ‘wheel of life’, an emblem of the ‘transcience of the phenomenal world’ (Bitel, 2012). Between these scenes is a kaleidoscope of oppositions, such as nature and culture, spirituality and materiality, wealth and poverty, war and peace.
There is a noticeable absence of people in many of the film’s opening scenes. For example, in the fields of temples there is no one in sight; the empty expanses of desert; the sand filled rooms of an abandoned house in the desert; the derelict, storm damaged lounge, bedroom, supermarket, library and classroom in an abandoned town; the empty cathedral.
The film becomes more populated as it moves on. Such as the office employees, the African women, the tattooed man with a baby, the two spectacled employees, pole dancers, a geisha. Where people are present, the picture is not always a rosy one, such as the teenagers scavenging in a rubbish dump, men quarrying for yellow rock, the family at a funeral, men standing proudly with their guns. These images of materiality, poverty and war, of people in disparate parts of the world, are contained within the bookend images of the monks forming and erasing the ‘wheel of life’, reinforcing the idea of birth, death and rebirth, and giving a sense of hope in an otherwise bleak picture of the planet.
However, I think it is important to ‘read’ the film in much the same way you would read a poem. As a meditation on nature and humanity. The images flowing through a series of associations, like the imagery within a poem.
A.O. Scott (2012) describes the film’s structure as ‘like that of a poem or a sonata, a complex tissue of rhymes and motifs’. Like a poem, with its ‘complex tissue’ of rhyme and images, it’s only when you get to the end of the film that you have a sense of the full picture. Then, when it’s just within your grasp, you go back to the beginning and ‘re-read’ it again, maybe several times more, in order to get the most out of it.
Scott (2012) makes another very interesting point about the film. Referring to Susan Sontag’s plea for ‘an ecology of images’ (Sontag, 1979), he suggests that Samsara ‘presents a visual argument for slow looking, for careful meditative attention to what is seen.’ I like the idea of ‘slow looking’ and the need to pay ‘careful meditative attention’ to what is seen through the viewfinder.
References
Bitel, A., 2012 ‘Samsara’. Sight and Sound Number 22 Issue 9, page 110.
Samsara 2012 Directed by Ron Fricke [DVD]
Scott, A.O. 2012 ‘Around the World in 99 Minutes and Zero Words’ In: The New York Times At: https://nyti.ms/P54fr2 [Accessed on 15 June 2018]
Sontag, S. 1979 On Photography London: Penguin Books, page 180
Colour & Story
"A sunny, hopeful yellow. An introspective turquoise. An arresting, violent red. When you see a color in a film, what you see is no accident — filmmakers carefully compose each frame and make color decisions that affect your experience of watching." (Kate Torgovnick May, 2017)
Following on from earlier research into the use of colour in films, I discovered an article by Kate Torgovnick May, in which she identifies four ways a filmmaker uses colour to deepen the narrative of their films:
- Colour simplifies complex stories
- Colour makes the audience feel
- Colour shows a character’s journey
- Colour communicates a film’s ideas
Colour simplifies complex stories
- Using different tones can help the viewer follow stories that jump between characters and locations.
- Different tones can signal different time periods in films with multiple story-lines.
Colour makes the audience feel
In discussing the impact colour can have upon the way in which an audience feels when watching a film, Torgovnick May refers to the work of Danielle Feinberg, a director of photography at Pixar. Some of the key points that I found interesting are:
- Lighting and colour are the backbone of emotion.
- Colour can be used to hint at a character’s emotion (e.g. dull and grey to convey depression).
- For each film, Pixar creates a ‘colour script’ that maps out the colour hues for each scene, so they fit together in the overall story arc. The aim being to make key moments feel appropriately vibrant or sombre.
- Colour amplifies important moments within a film.
Colour shows a character’s journey
- Colour can be used to show the evolution of a character. If the story is broken up into distinct parts, a different colour can be used for each part to indicate the way in which the character is changing at key moments within the film (e.g. childhood, teenage years, adult).
Colour communicate’s a film’s ideas
- Colour reveals a film’s meaning.
- For example, the repetition of a specific colour is often associated with an idea. When the colour changes, the concept has changed.
I found these I ideas very helpful, because it shows that the use of colour within a film plays a vital role in the filmmaker’s storytelling. It can be manipulated to highlight a character’s emotions, amplify key moments within a film, or reveal the ideas within a film.
I like the idea of using the repetition of a specific colour to communicate a particular idea.
I also like the idea of creating a ‘colour script’ for mapping out the hues for each scene.
References
Torgovnik May, K. 2017 ‘How color helps a movie tell its story’ In: Ted At: https://ideas.ted.com/how-color-helps-a-movie-tell-its-story/[Accessed on 31 May 2018]
Challenging the Hollywood 'model'
The Hollywood ‘model’, the tried and tested template for writing screenplays, builds its stories around a series of major turning-points leading up to an inevitable all-or-nothing climax.
To me, this seems a contrived a way of writing a screenplay. So, I was delighted to stumble across a recent article by Robert McKee on the rising trend of one-act films, in which he notices ‘a drift toward minimalism and a focus on inner conflict’ (McKee, 2018).
McKee refers to a number of recent films, two of which I have already seen: Lady Bird (2017) and Paterson (2016). In both cases, I was totally blown away by the storytelling. He also mentions a few films I have not heard about: A Fantastic Woman (2017), The Florida Project (2017) and Columbus (2017).
McKee asks: ‘if a writer wants to tell a full-length work in only one-act, the first problem is how to hook and hold interest for up to two hours while the film paints a portrait of silent inner conflict?’ He argues that stories of inner conflict, like those found in one-act films, ‘build around a life dilemma and end on the protagonist’s choice to change her mind in one direction or the other’ (McKee, 2018).
When watching these films, he suggests substituting the idea of ‘suspense’ with one of ‘discovery’. When I read this, it made perfect sense. Where the three-act structure builds up the suspense within a story through a series of jeopardies and the raising of stakes, all of which lead to a final climactic outcome, the one-act film follows a different pattern, based on ‘discoveries’.
I have always be fascinated by films that don’t follow conventional Hollywood formats; that allowed me to watch and discover, to encounter a world inhabited by people and things that are completely new to me.
McKee likens watching one-act films to picking up stones on a beach: ‘Full-length one-acts offer the pleasure of discovery, defined as the seeing, hearing, and vicarious living in a fascinating world filled with people, things, and more you’ve never known before. These fresh encounters pull the audience through the telling because each one delivers a new pleasure. Like picking up beautiful stones on a beach, we want more and more’ (McKee, 2018).
The dilemma for me is how to dramatise inner conflict and maintain the viewer’s interest in the story. The solution, McKee suggests, is in the creation of ‘fascinating, utterly original, vivid details’ (McKee, 2018).
It’s in the ‘vivid details’ that the viewer’s interest is hooked and held.
McKee’s descriptions of the details in the films shows how fundamental they are to the portraits of inner conflict rendered on screen.
A Fantastic Woman – ‘various passive/aggressive tactics used by the police and her dead lover’s family to humiliate her.’
Lady Bird – ‘the tactics she uses to give herself prestige are delightful: a new name, a phoney address, and verbal putdowns of her mother.’
Columbus – ‘the silent beauties and varieties of modernist architecture found in an unlikely place: Columbus, Indiana.’
The Florida Project – ‘the myriad ways she makes something out of nothing: the fun and adventure she creates while playing in a crumbling motel and the shrub lands that surround it.’
I was interested by some of the ideas in McKee’s article. Clearly, there are some valuable points here that I can draw upon in my own practice. However, I would question the idea of the one-act feature length screenplay.
For me, the ‘minimalist’ screenplay offers a way of telling stories that are genuine and more authentic; that are so much more in keeping with my own view of the role moving images play in expressing the human condition.
References
McKee, R. 2018 ‘The Rise of One-Act Films’ In: McKee Seminars 25 March 2018 [Blog] At: https://mckeestory.com/the-rise-of-one-act-films [Accessed on 4 May 2018]
Analysis of the Union Station shoot-out in 'The Untouchables'
The Union Station shoot-out scene in The Untouchables (1987) is probably the most stand-out scene within the movie.
The scene shows the main protagonists Ness and Stone finding Al Capone’s book-keeper Walter Payne guarded by several gangsters. A gunfight breaks out on the lobby steps, resulting in the gangsters being killed and Payne being captured.
The action begins with Ness turning and seeing one of the gangsters drawing a machine gun. He shoots and kills the gangster. At the same time, the woman beside him lets go of her pram, which sets off one cinema’s most effective gunfight scenes. What follows is very carefully choreographed.
Ness identifies a second gangster drawing a gun from beneath his coat, takes aim, shoots and kills him. While, at the same time, Ness’s partner Stone runs through an upper floor of the station towards the steps, Ness accidentally brushes against the pram, sending it down the steps, and we see the baby reacting as the pram moves through the frame.
A third gangster, standing beside the crouching Payne, has also drawn a gun and is shooting at Ness, who shoots back wounding him, drops his shotgun and draws a handgun from inside his coat. As the same time, a fourth gangster at the foot of the stairs aims a machine gun at Ness, but is shot from above by Stone. Simultaneous with this action, the mother reaches out after the pram, which continues rolling down the steps.
Ness sees the pram and runs after it down the steps. At the same time, the wounded gangster shoots at Ness, killing a bystander and a sailor in the cross-fire, and Ness is confronted by a fifth gangster standing beside a pillar at the foot of the steps. Again, simultaneous with this action, we see the pram rolling down the steps and the baby’s reaction as the pram moves through the frame.
Ness is now under fire from two directions and trying the save the pram and baby. A second sailor gets killed in the crossfire while trying to stop the pram. Ness runs out of ammunition. The pram continues rolling down the steps. Stone runs towards the steps, throws Ness a gun and slides along the floor, just in time to catch the pram as it reaches the bottom step.
Ness shoots and kills the fifth gangster, and the scene ends with Ness leaning over the pram looking at the baby and Stone lying on the floor beneath the pram, while aiming his gun at the last gangster.
The sequence, which lasts for 2 minutes 15 seconds and contains 105 edits, uses slow motion to help increase the perception of duration within the scene, over-lap shots and shows simultaneous events happening to the various characters within the scene. As a result, an otherwise short event has been stretched out and lengthened for dramatic purposes.
I think there are a number of reasons why this sequence is so effective in expanding time.
Slow motion – Time has been manipulated as a result of filming at a higher frame rate. Increasing the frame rate from 24 fps to 48 fps, for instance, would double the screen time in which the action takes place. As a result, we experience every movement in more detail, both actions and reactions.
Over-lapping shots – We are also drawn into the action as a result of over-lap shots. For example, shots 1, 3 & 5 of the gangster watching Ness and the woman approach the top of the steps are over-lapped with shots 2 & 4 of Ness and the woman walking towards the top of the steps. These over-laps continue as the action at the tops of the steps unfolds, with shots 6 & 8 of Ness taking aim at and shooting the gangster over-lapping with shots 7 & 9 of the gangster getting shot.
Simultaneous events – The pram is the magic ingredient in the sequence. Ness’s accidental brush against the pram’s handle sets in motion a parallel line of action to the gun fight. Now, not only are we wondering how Ness will cope with the gangsters, but we are also left wondering what will happen to the baby in the pram. These two simultaneous events are carefully woven together, so that the gun fight follows the pram’s path down the steps. So we are now rooting for the survival of both Ness and the baby. For example, shots 14, 21 & 23 of one the gangsters at the top of the steps over-lapped with shots 15, 18, 20 & 22 of Ness are all over-lapped with shots 16, 17 & 19 of the pram rolling down the steps.
Shot sizes – Most of the shots within the sequence are Medium Close Up and Close Up, such as Ness taking aim, a gangster getting shot, the woman reaching out after the pram, and the baby in the pram. These shot sizes help direct the viewer’s attention to specific key areas of the action. There are also a few wide shots, which help the viewer maintain a sense of the geography within the location and locate the physical relationships of the characters as they move through the scene. For example, shot 24, halfway down the steps looking up at the action; and shot 93 at the foot of the steps as Stone makes a dive for the pram.
I particularly like the way in which the Union Station sequence refers to the ‘Odessa Steps’ sequence in Eisenstein’s ‘Battleship Potempkin’. This is particularly clear in the way it uses shots of a baby in a pram and reaction shots of different characters to engage the viewer with the unfolding action.
Reverse-engineering the Union Station shoot-out in this way has been an eye-opener for me. It’s a great way of seeing how a sequence like this has been put together, both in terms of framing and editing.
Inspired by a master, I send a (video) postcard from a beach in County Mayo
Logbook 3, pages 219-220
Inspired by Jonas Mekas and the video postcards he occasionally posts on his website jonasmekas.com/diary, I recently found myself discarding the complexity of the Super 35mm digital cinema camera (+ peripherals) for the simplicity of the pocket-sized iPhone. So, how did this happen?
Flashback: Last weekend…On a beach in County Mayo. I raised my iPhone, framed up a simple landscape shot, pressed record, and let it run for 60 seconds – One frame. One size. One shot. One minute.
Part in homage to Jonas Mekas, part an act of personal ‘note-taking’, I recorded a moment in time. I was so transfixed by the sheer beauty of the place, that I loosely framed the view around the rule of thirds and let the smartphone do its job, capturing the light, the colour, the movement, the line, pattern, shape and texture of the view before me. Nothing more; nothing less. There is nothing creatively or technically extraordinary about the recording. Yet, when I look back at it, I realise that what I have captured is just as valid as any other type of filmmaking.
Screening: Experimental moving image works at IMMA
‘Unlikely Correspondence’ – IMMA Screening & Talk / Irish Artist Experimental Film – Saturday 16 September 2017 / IMMA
‘In conjunction with the exhibition Vivienne Dick, 93% STARDUST at IMMA, Alice Butler, film programmer and co-curator of AEMI, presents a talk and screening of artist and experimental moving image works by contemporary Irish artists who are foregrounding new ways to work independently, redefining the limits and potentials of cinema across a range of formats. Butler’s talk will refer to and explore the history and development of artist moving image practice in Ireland.’
I thought I would jot down my thoughts around an epiphany I had recently about my direction as a moving image maker. I have been voraciously reading books and watching films by and about many experimental filmmakers and video artists (most notably Jonas Mekas, Vivienne Dick & Doug Aitken). It has been wonderful to discover so much amazing work by so many moving image practitioners from around the world, none of whom I had heard about before starting this course. Over the summer, for instance, reading through Michael Rush’s Video Art (2003) I discovered a whole world of moving image practice that was so powerful and stimulating I still can’t stop looking back at the book for another fix of art.
Last month my wife and I went to a screening and talk about contemporary Irish experimental film artists. Fractured, confused and non-the-wiser; frustrated; disappointed; in free-fall…all of the above. I just couldn’t connect with the films. They weren’t easy, nor were they particularly enjoyable. And perhaps that’s the point. Art isn’t meant to be easy. Nor does it have to be likeable in order to get something out of it that’s of value in your own life and work. Anyway, I’ve had time to think and let the dust settle for a while, so here are a few thoughts on where I think I may be heading in my own work as a moving image practitioner.
It was strange and unexpected, but the strongest feeling that came over me that evening as I came away from the event at the Irish Museum for Modern Art was knowing that my own calling as a moving image practitioner was very clearly heading towards that of making narrative films. What form these narrative films will take is unknown. But one thing is for sure, they will capture a story. I love people. And I love the way in which the stories we tell can bring people to life. Whatever the narrative form. Fact or fiction. I simply love experiencing a story unfold on screen. Not those simple, poorly thought out stories masquerading as narrative films. But the well wrought works of art that feed the imagination and mind with images and ideas that resonate in some way long after the film has finished. The type of films that engage me; that demand I contribute something of myself in return. If you know what I mean.
I like the ideas Alice Butler talked about – the correspondences between historical reality and fiction, and between art and nature, and the notion of ‘the talk’ and the ‘role of the expert’ in artistic expression. But, even now, a few weeks on from the screening, I still feel frustrated and disappointed in the works I saw that evening. Even at an abstract level, I couldn’t connect with them in the same way I could a painting by Rothko or Klee, for example. For In which the artist ‘speaks’; the viewer ‘replies’.
That disappointment has nothing to do with the works themselves. They were works of video art; well made. The frustration and disappointment was very much within myself, in my own personal response to those works; or, more accurately, my surprising lack of response to them. But that’s not the point here. What really fascinated (and surprised!) me during the event was the clarity, the absolute clarity, with which I saw myself as a moving image maker, wide awake and craving; moving towards narrative form.
References
Michael Rush (2007) Video Art London: Thames & Hudson
Filming in Black & White
Filming in black-and-white is something I am very keen to try. So I have carried out some research into various approaches adopted by several cinematographers. The main issue identified by these cinematographers is the need for creating separation and depth in a black-and-white shot.
Conrad Hall, best known for his work on films such as Cool Hand Luke (1967), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), American Beauty (1999) and Road to Perdition (2002):
‘Black-and-white only concerns itself with the grey scale from white to black. And separation has to do with depth and using these values against one another creates depth. You have to understand that you want to create depth to get reality…You don’t want things to blend into one another. So you have to create separation and depth’ (Schaefer & Salvato, 2013:156).
Hungarian cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs, best known for his work on Easy Rider (1969), Paper Moon (1972), New York, New York (1977) and Ghostbusters (1984):
‘Black-and-white is difficult because you have the grey tonalities from black to white and you have to create an image which includes depth and separation. In color a brown head will separate from a beige wall naturally but in black-and-white they may run together. You must create a lot of simple compositional elements in black-and-white… The lighting creates everything: the tone, images, texture and mood. It is so important that those elements are harmoniously put together in order to serve the visual impact’ (Schaefer & Salvato, 2013:192).
Gordon Willis, best known for his work on Francis Ford Coppolla’s The Godfather series, many of Woody Allen’s early films including Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1977), A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (1982) Broadway Danny Rose (1984) and The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), and Alan Pakula’s All the President’s Men (1976):
‘When you’re shooting in black-and-white, all you’re dealing with is values so…you do have to separate an actor from a wall. Whereas if you’re in color and you have an actor and a colored wall, then you get automatic separation’ (Schaefer & Salvato, 2013:306).
What’s clear from this is the need to create a sense of depth that helps to separate the actor from the background. This can be achieved by creating ‘simple compositional elements’ within the frame that will work in black and white.
John Alton expands upon the idea to create depth and separation when shooting in black-and-white in his book Painting With Light(2013).
Logbook 3, pages 215-216
Logbook 3, pages 217-218
Alton’s definition of the perfect black and white picture as a combination of a foreground in which each surface has a different brightness and a background of a different tone is helpful.
References
Alton, J. (2013) Writing With Light. Berkeley: University of California.
Schaefer & Salvato (2013) Masters of Light: Conversations with Cinematographers. Berkeley: University of California.
Reading: Interview with cinematographer Jose Luis Alcaine
Jose Luis Alcaine has over 100 film credits, including ‘El Sur’ (1983) dir. Victor Erice, and ‘Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown’ (1989) dir. Pedro Almodovar.
Key points for me
A film has a life of its own. Rather than being over prescriptive and forcing predefined, rigid ideas upon a film, it’s important to collaborate with the creative team with which you are working, to be open to ideas as and when they happen during the filming process. One of my aims is to work towards making films that show a story unfolding through time and in which we see lives being lived.
Watching a film is a very personal experience. Although we may be surrounded by many people in a cinema, it is on a one-to-one basis that a film communicates the most. Often the films I have enjoyed the most are those in which I feel as though I have actively experienced the story. I don’t like being spoon-fed. Photography plays a major role in how the viewer experiences a film. As our attention is mainly on the characters and how they respond to each other, lighting the actor’s face and capturing the subtlety of their gaze is crucial to good filmmaking.
List of references
Murillo, M. (2018) ‘The Light We Live In’ In: Film Comment 54 (4) pp.16-17.