“I would have been more successful if I’d left movies immediately, stayed in the theatre, gone into politics, written, anything. I’ve wasted a greater part of my life looking for money and trying to get along, trying to make my work from this terribly expensive paintbox which is a movie. And I’ve spent too much energy on things that have nothing to do with making a movie. It’s about two percent movie-making and ninety-eight percent hustling. It’s no way to spend a life.” -Orson Welles
The cost of Movies pushed the industry towards more control: star system, clear story arcs, spectacle. Little room to fail. The Hollywood Studio System defined the new system of storytelling – The Classical Hollywood Style (David Bordwell).
Evolution of the Moving Image Camera:
Black Maria, Thomas Edison’s studio – 1893
Cinematograph,1892
Mitchell Standard Model A 35 mm, 1920s
Paillard Bolex, 16mm, 1960s
Sony DV-2400 Video Rover, 1970s
Sony DCR-VX1000 (first prosumer digital video camcorder) 1990s
iPhone > smartphone – 2007
GoPro (Hero) 2006
Sony Cyber-shot RX0 II, 4k = 3840 × 2160 resolution, 2018
What Does Smaller Cameras mean for Cinema Arts?
same “language”: camera movement, position, editing…
Cinema = Frame>Shot>Scene>Sequence>Act – shaping the experience of space, time and movement.
Night Fishing by Park Chan-wook and Park Chan-kyong
Make a 30-60 second video essay about any subject. Draw on various techniques from course modules. Use text and/or voice-over, clips from other videos or games, your own footage, graphics, still images. A video essay may also include personal anecdotes and have a unique style. Although there are video essays without language, please include some written text and/or voice over.
Making a Video Essay: A film essay grows out of a process where the image and text come together. It could start with an image that you notice or capture with your camera. Or it could start with a few sentences. You gather image and text and weave them together to find your subject.
What is your central idea or argument? Write it down in one sentence. Or try to capture media related to your idea.
What form will it take? Voiceover, text with image, pure audio/visual sequence without language?
Write a very rough draft. Be loose and exploratory in thoughts. This is not a school “essay.”
Storyboard ideas from rough draft.
Collect media with YouTube downloads and/or go out with your camera. (cite sources for the post and in the credits)
Assemble clips in timeline for visual evidence.
Rewrite rough draft for chosen clips.
Edit a rough cut of images, sound and text.
Lay first track of voice-over. (Premiere’s audio tracks have a record button for laying audio directly)
Job/Hobby Profile Assignment (10%): Rough Cut Due in two weeks
no more than 2 minutes
In this assignment, you will do a 1-2 minute profile of a person at their job or doing their hobby, like gardening or painting. What does this person do at their job or hobby? What is the activity? How often do they do it? What experience are they getting? What experience did they need before getting the job or starting on the hobby? If the person works at home, how do they manage home life and their work? How might you tie the job or hobby to larger questions about work or creative activity?
The two areas of focus in this assignment are 1) moving with the camera and 2) conducting an interview, but you should of course pay attention to continuity, montage and framing. So choose a subject that does not spend the day sitting in front of a computer, even though most jobs do include some of this.
First, have a pre-interview discussion with your subject. Find out some things about them and their job.
Prepare a story outline, interview questions and a basic shot list for visual evidence.
Then set up a time/place with your subject and conduct a sit-down interview at a good location (related to work/hobby) for lighting and sound recording.
After the interview, get the visual evidence you need by following the person at work or, even better, as they work on a particular project. Continue to ask questions while following the subject with the camera. You may find that the answers are more interesting than in the sit-down interview.
Interview (A roll) + Visual Evidence (B roll)
Prep/Research:
talk to subject without camera, find the story
use interview to support, not replace, visual evidence
Plan the Story:
make an outline of the story: hook, intro, complication, climax, resolution
make a shot list for the visual evidence
make a list of questions for the interviewee. remember, no simple yes/no questions
Camera Setup:
find a good location with decent visuals, good lighting for the subject and minimal or no background noise
use a tripod or keep is still if you have the camera on a monopod
change camera angle/zoom between questions for shot variety, but keep to standard medium shot (leave enough head room)
follow rule of thirds for framing (leave some space on the side interviewee is angled)
pay attention to the background (give a sense of place)
Mic Setup:
get external mic close to the subject. three feet is ideal (or aim directional mic)
find a good key light to fall at an angle on the subject’s face. near a window or lamp, for example. try to avoid overhead of fluorescent lighting
With a basic DIY light set up, have a Key Light and Fill Light at a slightly higher angle than the subject. And then, if you have another light, use it for the Background Light. See Lighting on the Fly
never shoot a subject in front of a window!
“bounce” lighting off the walls for fill and backlighting, or use reflectors
start with getting full name (perhaps spelling) and other relevant info (position, title, job)
let people talk. keep silent for a few moments after a question has been answered. when you are silent, interviewees will fill the void with something perhaps more authentic
Visual Evidence (B roll):
do not direct actions, follow and anticipate
don’t move the camera off the talking subject when they are showing/pointing to something. you can get the shot later
look for visual evidence at location of interview, capture “telling” details
vary the camera angles and positions: long, medium, close-up, over-shoulder, close on hands, cutaways, establishing shots
ask questions while shooting visual evidence
listen and be attentive to your subject
Covering an Event/Action:
Cover what you can of an event and always look for opportunities for continuity cuts.
Move around the subject(s) and vary your camera framing: tight (CU), medium and wide (establishing).
For covering processes -like somebody making something- think of five shot variations for each sequence:
A closeup on the hands of a subject – showing WHAT is happening
A closeup on the face – WHO is doing it
A wide shot – WHERE its happening
An over the shoulder shot (OTS) – linking together the previous three concepts
An unusual, or side/low shot – providing story-specific context
Previous Student Job Profiles:
In-class assignment: VMMC Haunting
Moving the Camera
Static Camera (locked-off) :
-staging and blocking talent
-dynamic framing and editing
Moving Camera:
-handheld, panning, tracking, etc.
-the long take
-planned vs. spontaneous (handheld)
Pan, Tilt:
– unnatural, motivate the move
– start frame (10 sec.) , movement, end frame (10 secs)
– plan shot, practice with tripod head or monopod swivel
Dolly/Tracking:
– skateboards, cars, bicycles and wheelchairs
– gopro attached to moving vehicals
Handheld (with monopod):
-swish pans
– wide angle, adjust focus
– tai chi movements ( from the center)
Steadicams:
– iphone smoothee, flowmotion, etc.
– DIY – hang a weight
Blair Witch Project, 1999, Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez
plot = “the arrangement of the incidents” into a whole
drama vs. narration / show vs. tell (mimesis)
unity of action (cause and effect chain)
complex plot: reversal and recognition
tragedy arouses pity and fear and then purges them (catharsis)
Continuity as Narration:
His Girl Friday, 1940 – directed by Howard Hawks
Continuity determined by character quirks: gestures, glances, reactions…
Documentaries and Narrative Continuity
Humphrey Jennings and Stewart McAllister’s ‘Listen to Britain’ – Illusions of Continuity
Cinema Narration:
The Lunch Date is a 1989 American short films directed by Adam Davidson.
– selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
-won Short Film Palme d’Or in 1990 Cannes Film Festival.
-won an Academy Award in 1991 for Best Short Subject.
A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture—often with the aim of conveying a particular phenomenon, theme, or meaning represented by the meme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices, that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.
Proponents theorize that memes are a viral phenomenon that may evolve by natural selection in a manner analogous to that of biological evolution. Memes do this through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance, each of which influences a meme’s reproductive success. Memes spread through the behavior that they generate in their hosts.
“YouTube personality Kevin Nalty (known as Nalts) recalls on his blog: “A few years ago, a video could be considered ‘viral’ if it hit a million views”, but says as of 2011, only “if it gets more than 5 million views in a 3–7 day period” can it be considered “viral”.”
“YouTube takes a 45% cut and sometimes the YouTuber also has Multi Channel Network representing who also takes around 45%. So the YouTuber, who gets on average 600k+ views a week, will end up with around $1-3k a week from CPMs [cost per thousand impressions – technically, “cost per mille”]” – Chasing their Star on YouTube
DisneyCollectorBR earns $1.4 and $21.9 million each year
Google Analytics of “Greg Hanson a Collage Artist”
Cinema and Big Data > Netflix
What Netflix tracks:
When you pause, rewind, or fast forward
What day you watch content (Netflix has found people watch TV shows during the week and movies during the weekend.)
The date you watch
What time you watch content
Where you watch (zip code)
What device you use to watch (Do you like to use your tablet for TV shows and your Roku for movies? Do people access the Just for Kids feature more on their iPads, etc.?)
When you pause and leave content (and if you ever come back)
The ratings given (about 4 million per day)
Searches (about 3 million per day)
Browsing and scrolling behavior
Netflix also looks at data within movies. They take various “screen shots” to look at “in the moment” characteristics. Netflix has confirmed they know when the credits start rolling; but there’s far more to it than just that. Some have figured these characteristics may be the volume, colors, and scenery that help Netflix find out what users like.
ASSIGNMENT: Due Next Tuesday Hybrid Space (5%):
Create a 30-60 second video that explores a hybrid cinematic space: a screen space made of multiple layers of video, text, graphic imagery and/or image effects There are many techniques you can combine to create a hybrid space: compositing (layering of video tracks), green screen, video effects, spatial montage, etc. The only rule is you must incorporate the “indexicality” of video (your own or remixed from other sources).
database: a structured collection of data
nonlinear, multilinear, branching
encyclopedia, catalogs, index/search
HTML, Video Games – an interface to a database
narrative shell masks the algorithm of a game. the key to the game experience
databases < interface > algorithms
narrative = cause and effect chain, character, event
Database:
Peter Greenaway, The Falls
Interactive/Branching
Interactive Cinema
Kinoautomat (1967)
“At nine points during the film the action stops, and a moderator appears on stage to ask the audience to choose between two scenes; following an audience vote, the chosen scene is played.”
Hypertext > Hypermedia > Flash > Video Games > Transmedia
Using the hypervideo template 1 | demo or hypervideo template 2 | demo I provide, shoot some short loops (under 10 seconds each) that are connected as a multilinear narrative through hyperlinks. What can you do with such a structure? What kind of cinema narratives can you invent? You can create new html pages to add more video or use javascript/jQuery to change the videos dynamically. Make sure you keep the video file size low (under 400px width) and export to the aspect ratio you want to use. You can do this in the Premiere export settings.
where the editing follows a specific number of frames (based purely on the physical nature of time), cutting to the next shot no matter what is happening within the image. This montage is used to elicit the most basal and emotional of reactions in the audience.
2. Rhythmic
– includes cutting based on the action within the frame – such as match -on-action, creating visual continuity from edit to edit.
3. Tonal
– a tonal montage uses the emotional meaning of the shots—not just manipulating the temporal length of the cuts or its rhythmical characteristics—to elicit a reaction from the audience even more complex than from the metric or rhythmic montage. For example, a sleeping baby would emote calmness and relaxation; billowing sails and the calm before the storm.
4. Overtonal/Associational
-the overtonal montage is the cumulation of metric, rhythmic, and tonal montage to synthesize its effect on the audience for an even more abstract and complicated effect. This is the Eisenstein’s famous Odessa Steps sequence (revisited in the Untouchables).
5. Intellectual
uses shots which, combined, elicit an intellectual meaning. you put the idea together by the collision of shots.
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French Pre-War Montage
Coeur Fidèle (1923, Jean Epstein)
An Andalusian Dog, by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí – 1929 (tonal, rhythmic, false continuity)
Other Examples:
Requiem for a Dream, Aronofsky – metric, tonal
City of God – metric, tonal, rhythmic
Tree of Life, Terence Malick – overtonal/associational
-replications and loops
-digital degradation, errors and glitches
-nonlinear editing and chaos cinema
-random access of database
-malleable time, nested time, time shifting
Classical = linear cause and effect , illusion of 3D space, material invisible (theater)
Digital = nonlinearity, repetition (loop), manipulation of time and space, materiality foregrounded (device screen)
Information space (Interface) and Narrative Space (Immersive world)
Start to formulate an idea for the final project. Propose the idea to in person or as an email.
Final Project (30%)
rough cut due – last two weeks of class final cut due – last class
With consideration of the assignments, readings , screenings and class discussions, create a final project that explores/exploits at least one feature of “digital cinema”: looped video, glitched video, composited video, networked video, hyperlinked video, database video, etc. You may create a fictional, non-fictional or abstract project. However,the project must be made of video (moving digital images originally captured as video), incorporate cinema language (thoughtful continuity editing and/or montage) and you must engage with the class ideas in the conception of your project. Your grade we will be based on the quality and effort of your creative work as well as its conceptual foundation.
Some suggested ideas:
a mini documentary
a profile of a person, company, product or institution
a fictional short video
a video essay
a Youtube web series
a series of video loops
a work of hypercinema (HTML5)
a mashup or series of mashups,
an experimental video that creates a hybrid space with composting, spatial montage and other effects
mise en scene – world depicted/in front of the camera, faces, landscape, gesture, costume
framing – camera position and lens, moving camera
editing – continuity and montage, order, rhythm, syntax/grammar
sound – voice, music, effects, 3d space
Cinema Space > Storytelling
Continuity Editing: connecting shot to shot so that there is momentum in the narrative telling and a seamless narration of causally connected events. All edits are discontinuous. Story and character drive the editing and the sense of continuity.
EARLIEST FORMS
Eadweard Muybridge – motion studies (1878)
Thomas Edison – Kinetoscope, movement, sensational (1896)
“A shot of a whole battlefield would be incomprehensible because looking at real things, the human vision fastens itself upon a quick succession of small comprehensible incidents like a mosaic out of such detail- the director counterfeits the operation of the eye with his lens and varies the length of shots to avoid the hypnotic affect.” – Griffith
Continuity Editing (The Classical Hollywood Style)
objective camera, invisible editing, dramatic tension (desire and obstacle), cause and effect chains
INTER-FRAME NARRATIVE- editing
180 degree rule
Cut in
Match on Action
Parallel action
Motivated Pov shot
Eyeline match
Flashback
Multiple camera set ups
Close up
Extreme long shot/Establishing shot
Cross cutting, intercutting / Parallel Action
Visual Dramatic climax. Form=Content
INTRA-FRAME NARRATIVE-
production design
mise en scène: set /costume / acting/ facial expression/gesture
Download Youtube video – get Firefox Addon – 1-Click Youtube Downloader or use https://keepvid.pro/
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“Fake Continuity”
All edits are discontinuous. Editing is a trick of condensing and expanding illusions of space and time for story effects. Story effects are built from the juxtaposition of discontinuous units: Frame-Shot-Sequence-Act-Story.
Continuity editing creates the illusion of continuous space and time in a documentary and should be considered as an opportunity for making fluid connections and not as a set of strict rules never to be broken.
Cover what you can of an event and always look for opportunities for continuity cuts.
Move around the subject(s) (within 180 degrees) and vary your camera framing:tight (CU) , medium and wide (establishing).
Humphrey Jennings and Stewart McAllister’s ‘Listen to Britain’
Shoot and edit a short video that follows the principles of continuity to create the illusion of continuous space and time. Try to vary the angles and distances of your shots: establishing shot, medium-shot, close-up. Sound may be an element here, but please do not include talking, music or verbal explanations. We are working on visual explanations, depicting continuity of action. Here is an idea if you can’t come up with a mini-story:
Making or Doing Something: Document someone making something or doing some focused activity. The process may take 3-30 minutes, but the final video should be no more than 60 seconds. Document a single continuous action (making art, playing sports, cooking a meal, walking a dog) and edit it into a sequence that is between 30-60 seconds.
Post your Continuity Assignment with a Vimeo/Youtube embed (place the url on its own line) and write a short assessment of your video from the standpoint of framing and continuity editing. What works and what doesn’t work to tell the visual story?
Notes/Examples:
For covering processes -like somebody making something- think of five shot variations for each sequence:
Variety of camera positions and angles keeps the eyes busy and interested, evokes the space and psychology of characters. Maintaining a single angle or distance reinforces a point of view.
types of camera positions:
ELS – extreme long shot (landscape)
LS – long shot (full body)
MLS – medium long shot (from knees up)
M – medium (from waist up)
MCU – medium close-up (from chest/shoulders up)
CU – close-up (face)
ECU – extreme close-up (portion of face)
lens length:
wide angle = opens space, more distance, more inclusive
telephoto/zoom = collapses space, more intimate, separate from background.
types of camera angles:
high
low
canted/Dutch
types of subject compositions:
frontal
3/4 front
left/right profile
3/4 back – over the shoulder, POV
behind
profile two shot
direct to camera two shot
over the shoulder two shot
headroom, look room
subjective/objective styles
