Month: April 2017

Reading: Cinematography Robby Muller

Posted on by admin

Linda Van Deursen & Marietta De Vries (2013) Cinematography Robby Muller. Zurich: JRP Ringier

I discovered Deursen & De Vries’ book Cinematography Robby Muller while browsing through Ashley Lauryssen’s OCA blog. Organised thematically, the book collects together hundreds of shots from fourteen films Muller worked on during his career with directors such as Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch, Peter Bogdanovich and Lars von Trier.

Rather than analysing and discussing the techniques Muller used within individual films, the authors present a series of film stills, organised around several key themes found in Muller’s cinematic practice; such as filming road movies; filming in natural light; filming at different times of the day; filming lens flare. Most of the stills are accompanied by captions, in which some of the directors and technicians Muller worked with offer a brief comment on the images, providing a pithy insight into the way in which he worked.

The book contains stills from fourteen films on which Robby Muller worked as cinematographer, of which only Paris, Texas (dir.  Wim Wenders) and Down By Law (dir.  Jim Jarmusch) are familiar to me.

Alice in den Stadten (1974)
Falsche Bewegung(1975)
Im Lauf Der Zeit(1976)
Der Amerikanische Freund (1977)
Die Linkshandige Frau (1978)
Saint Jack (1979)
Repo Man (1984)
Paris, Texas (1984)
Down By Law (1986)
Barfly (1987)
Mystery Train (1989)
Dead Man (1995)
Breaking the Waves (1996)
Dancer in the Dark (2000)

What struck me about the film stills is the way in which Muller uses light to convey a mood. His ability to use both natural and artificial light in a way that appears so natural to the location. This is summarised nicely in the caption to the stills from Saint Jack (1979), in which Theo Bierkens, the best boy on the film, says ‘He always looked carefully at what a location had to offer and enhanced that. Not in a dogmatic way, but more intuitive’ (Duersen & Vries, p.89).

Together, these film stills are a wonderful resource on the creative practice of a cinematographer who is passionate about light, how it works and how it falls within a scene. It’s the kind of book I can browse through, look at a single shot or a series of shots, and see exactly what Muller saw when his eye was to the viewfinder. It’s a book I shall be returning to again for advice and inspiration when lighting my own moving images.

References

Van Deursen, L., & De Vries, M. (2013) Cinematography Robby Muller. Zurich: JRP Ringier

Exercises in visualising subjective POV

Posted on by admin

Brief:

Imagine the situations described below. Place yourself in the scene; don’t think about what is there objectively, but what you would see if you were there.

  • You are talking to someone in a shop
  • You are knocking on a door
  • You are a soldier in enemy territory

I began by making brief notes outlining what I could ‘see’ at various points within each of the three scenarios. Then, for each of the scenes, I imagined a series of frames, sketched basic impressions of what I ‘saw’, and annotated the pictures detailing what was included, what was excluded, and why I had made those choices.

 

 

 

 

 

 
Logbook 1 – 12/4/17

 

You are talking to someone in a shop

The person is facing you talking in an animated way, using their hands.

 

Knocking on a door

You knock on the door. You wait. The door is opened.

 

You are a soldier in enemy territory

You see ahead of you a group of enemy soldiers. A sudden sound behind you causes you to glance round.

 

The exercises became more demanding as I worked through the three tasks. The first task, a scene in which I was talking to someone in a shop, was fairly straightforward and required only three frames to tell the story. Extending on from this, the second task required five frames to tell present the scenario of knocking on a door and waiting for it to open. The third task required considerably more images to present the scenario of a soldier in enemy territory in which, due to the introduction of a ‘complication’, a sudden sound taking my ‘gaze’ away from the enemy soldiers within the scene.

This was a very useful series of exercises. It demonstrated how, when adopting a subjective point-of-view, the camera can become a ‘character’ in a moving image. In addition to showing how to use storyboards to help visualise a subjective point-of-view, it highlighted the importance of carefully considering what should be included in and left out of each frame, and why; the things I deliberately choose not to ‘see’ within the frame, and why; and whether or not the viewer would be aware they were there. All of which shows how it is possible to manipulate the way in which the story within a moving image is told through a careful and considered use of framing.

 

Reading: Video Art

Posted on by admin

Video Art

‘The story of video art embraces all the significant art ideas and forms of recent times – Abstract, Conceptual, Minimal, Performance and Pop art, photography, and digital art. The story also departs from art-historical categories into a new domain, that of the technological, which has its own referents and language’ (Rush, 2007, p8).

An all embracing art form

  • multiple ways of constructing a history of the medium of video art
  • history of video art so far concerns three generations of artists
  • video artists ‘spontaneously adopted a massive communications medium for their own purposes, turning an implement of commerce…into a material for art’ (Rush, 2007, p.8)
  • two difficulties for critics: (1) the language used for video art is borrowed from film; (2) there are no convenient ‘themes’ or ‘schools’ of artists to help organise critical discussion

Blurring the boundaries

  • video art emerged when boundaries between traditional art forms were becoming blurred
  • painting, performance, dance, music, film, writing, sculpture combined in single works of art
  • early video art emerged from or reacted to post-Abstract Expressionism
  • the physical and the conceptual were linked from the start in video art – remain linked today
  • performance – principle material in the medium

A hybrid art form

  • video used in combination with film, computer art, graphics, animation, virtual reality, all types of digital applications
  • video is rarely the ‘pure’ medium of a work – more often a mix
  • is video art obsolete?
  • ‘We live in a time when ideas – and not specific media – are central to artists’ (Rush, p.11)

Key points for me

There are no obvious ‘themes’ or ‘schools’ of video artists. Today’s video artists are interested in the manipulation of time and breaking the boundaries between the material used and the medium of its creation. I don’t know how I plan to use what I have learned here. Though I do have one question: how do you create something new through the medium of video in a world so saturated with moving images?

 

Rush, M. (2007) Video Art London: Thames & Hudson

Exercise: Building a story – Take 2

Posted on by admin

As in my previous attempt at this exercise, I found a picture of a scene, identified several frames and put them together in a sequence to create a new story. This time my canvas was ‘Triangular’ (1962), a black & white photograph by Chinese photographer Fan Ho. I found this picture interesting for its use of high contrast lighting and the intriguing dark-clothed figure standing with his back to the viewer, lit by sunlight streaming into the subway from the street above.

Before selecting the frames for the story, I cropped the picture down, creating a new master shot that further emphasised the standing man in the background and the lower half of a walking man in the foreground.

I selected three frames, of three figures rendered in different degrees of light and tone. Then added captions to each image to help tell the story.


Fig. 1. Fan Ho (1962)

 

Frames

1. The Standing Man
2. The Sunlit Man
3. The Hidden Man

 

 

 

 

 

 

Captions

1.

The Standing Man
steps serenely, upward
into the morning crowds

2.

The Sunlit Man is in
no hurry to catch the
eastbound train across town

3.

From a distance, the
Hidden Man watches as
people pass by like spirits.

 

This was a very satisfying exercise to do. Where the frames in the previous attempt at this exercise appeared looser, a little disconnected, and even slightly surveillance camera in style, the frames in this attempt are tighter, connected and more cinematic, and there is a stronger sense of character and place.

This time I looked for a way to incorporate shot size into the selection when framing the images. Frame 1 is a medium shot (MS); Frame 2 is a medium shot (MS); Frame 3 is a wide shot (WS).

What this exercise has shown me is that the connection between how you convey information, meaning, feeling, ideas within a frame and your choice of shot size can have a strong impact on the way in which an audience views a moving image.

So, how can I use this to plan for the future? By asking which shot size works best for each frame, as well as thinking about conveying information, meaning, feeling and ideas, when making my own moving images.

And how can I use this to plan new learning experiences? By looking at how other moving image practitioners and cinematographers use framing to portray information, meaning, feeling and ideas within their work; by experimenting with ideas using the same exercise through moving images; and by using this exercise as a follow up to exercises 7 & 10 on developing ideas.

 

List of Illustrations

Figure 1. ‘Triangular’ (1962) Fan Ho