“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
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.
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
