The Point of Film

The novel version of The Bridges of Madison County carries the best description of the purpose of photography and cinematography that I've ever read. But ironically that very description led me to ponder a question I don't have an answer to.

I’ve never seen the film version of The Bridges of Madison County, but I’m reading the novel for Genre Fiction. This may seem off-topic, by the way, but bear with me...all will become clear.



There is one point in the novel when the protagonist, Kincaid, is talking about his profession, that of photo-journalism:

She’d noticed he’d said ‘making’ pictures. “You make pictures, not take them?”

“Yes. At least, that’s how I think of it. That’s the difference between Sunday snap shooters and someone who does it for a living. When I’m finished with that bridge we saw today, it won’t look quite like you expect. I’ll have made it into something of my own, by means of lens choice, or camera angle, or general composition, and most likely by some combination of all of those.”

That’s the best description of the purpose of being a cameraman that I’ve ever seen, be it a stills photographer or a film cameraman, or any other person who uses a lens.

Which brings me to my second point: I can’t see such a passage of dialogue ever making it into a film adaptation, unless it’s in some way core to the film’s purpose. It’s too ephemeral.

So what is the point of a film adaptation, except to provide a story? In which case, why not just write one’s own story? This is not a pointless musing – one possibility among my script ideas was an adaptation of a published short story.

Any suggestions? What does a film adaptation of a written work bring to the ‘table’ apart from obliterating any mental images the reader has? In which case, isn’t it a prop for the imaginatively deficient media consumer? Hardly a ringing endorsement for an art form, is it?

Feedback On Doorways

Feedback from Mike our tutor, together with some initial thoughts, including the danger of not looking carefully at the background, and finding it unexpectedly intruding into our story.

Our group has feedback from Mike (our tutor), and I thought it might be interesting to share it with you together with commentary -- not because I want to argue with Mike or to score points, but because his feedback may well change how you watch the video (or indeed, reinforce how you already feel) and my comments back will -hopefully- explain how we ended up in that situation in the first place, and maybe how we prevent a recurrence.

For example, it never occured to us that the Beatle shot might look as if Dan is morphing into a fifth member of the group. It was just a poster on the wall, a rather innocent looking poster...now watch the film again... and we'll look more carefully at background walls, etcetera in future. Unless we actually want to create an effect, it may be that we'll default to blank walls wherever possible.

Mike commented that we needed some tension if Dan and Greg are actually robbing something, and asked what shots would have created this. The answer is that while I knocked on the door once, we should really have repeated the knock --perhaps more urgently—and then cut to Dan or Greg’s face and showed some fear to raise the tension.

Mike commented that the story opens with an office scene, then there's dialogue, then Dan comes through the door. None of this immediately signposts the story. Where is the door from? Does a new viewer know that the dialogue has just happened and that the robbery is ‘now’ and this is now a flashback?

The answer in short, is no. Greater clarity is needed. I know that Mike doesn't like captions like 'ten minutes later,' etc, but in this case if we were to use just one caption, it would be just as the voiceover argument kicks in.

Mike commented that the garden scene looks great but how might it be interpreted? The music said ‘creepy’ the light said ‘Police’? The music changes to more of a ‘police action theme’ and Dan hangs around in the garden for 50 seconds.

He’s right – we collectively fell in love with the scene, whereas we should have cut 30 seconds from the film. I'd never even thought of a blue light signifying police. I feel as if there are great chunks of film symbolism that I'm missing at the moment!

Mike said that the cut transition back is not obvious. We needed to establish the ‘device’ to make the story understandable to the audience, within the logic of the film. We see a ‘footfall’ then you cut to a CU of Dan’s face for the ‘realisation’ beat. ("Careful there’s a laugh here, possibly unintentional, when it looks like he’s joined the Beatles! We need to be aware here that 3 minutes into the film we don’t want to take the audience ‘out’ of the film.")

Oh Gawd, we never even thought that it might be taken that way...just goes to show what unintentional consequences come out of being too close to the film.

Mike said that the scenes in the SU needed better planning. It was very static and since the coverage is all quite wide the actors’ performance seemed rather stop/start.

Unfortunately that was all the footage we had. That scene was the first shooting that we did, and if we’d had our time over I’d probably have suggested that we shot it again. Hey ho; one always has 20/20 vision with hindsight.

The city centre scene is confusing initially since [the narrative] cut to an empty frame and Dan and Greg walk into shot. Don’t they need to step in? The previous 2 transitions the foot fell into shot. "It’s your device but you need to be consistent with it to aid audience comprehension."

He’s right. If you look at the step in on the street scene it’s different from the others.

Mike asked, "Why use the caption ‘The next day’. Why not straightaway? Maybe because Dan has a jacket on now? Maybe because they have swapped positions? Either way it weakens the cut. If you had a close up and then cut to the wide it’s unlikely anyone would have noticed."

The caption was to show that time had elapsed to have the idea. I’d never thought of that particular shot transition.

Mike commented, "If Olivia and Teagan were playing ‘maltesers’ in the same position as the fantasy, you could have visually made the same point without the lines “I’m so glad you saved me the other night.” This is really ‘on-the-nose’ dialogue, narration. "

Good point. For the rest, again it was the first afternoon’s shooting. It shows how much one can learn in just two days.

Mike commented that in the office scene Greg disappears and Dan says “ Greg, Where are you?” Mike notes that it’s a small office, and asked how we might have shown the “where are you Greg beat” without dialogue?

Panned around the office, of course. Easy to say now.

Mike concluded with "The film is a good group effort and a positive start of the module."

Nice to know, and the group have tried to learn as much as possible from the outing.

Doorways Now Online

Finishing off the films at last and moving onto new ideas for scripts for the next film.

This morning's lecture covered two main areas. The first was finishing off Doorways, our short film. The mark doesn't count towards the overall assessment, and Mike admitted that he'd marked us hard, but I must admit that 58% is a frustrating mark, just short of a 2:1 -- but better than I'd feared.



There were a lot of positives to come out of the feedback, which I hope to be able to post on the blog. But in the meantime, here's the actual film:

I've also posted links to the other two films made by our group, Choices(2) and Exit.

The second part involved us floating ideas for the next film. Of the five of us in our group, every member had at least one good idea, so it will be fascinating to see how these ideas develop.

Miscellaneous Friday Post

Should I blog about Let The Right One In here --or elsewhere? Meanwhile, I've learned a few more things about filming this week, especially the role of producer and paperwork.

Last night's core lecture, a screening of the original Swedish version of Let the Right One In, throws up an interesting dilemma. Do I discuss it here? This is -after all-- a blog about film-making. But it was a core lecture, and I'm keeping a journal so I'll do that.

But here's a link to the trailer:


Meanwhile, I've learned a few more things about filming this week.

One of them is that the next time I fill in a PasC (Project as Completed) form, I need to do it on my own machine, rather than one of the uni ones. It's a summary that takes about half an hour to an hour to complete, with lots of detailed information. It's mandatory for completion. And I lost the damned thing, through saving it into the editing suite in error.

On the subject of paperwork which I'm now starting to link inextricably with film-making, the last couple of weeks have taught me a lot about the role of producer, about how hard it is to complete (seemingly-)tedious documentation when the cast and crew are in full creative flow. No wonder the great studio bosses were all complete bastards. But it's hard to say, "Hold on, let me tick this one off the list before you go onto the next shot."

Another learning was that we need to allow more time next time for each scene. And to road-test the next film as a screening.

Next time, I'll finally move onto scripts.

Watching Choices

We watched seven different vesrions of Choices, five of which kept the name. We changed our version's name to Doorways. Modesty aside, I thought that ours was about the third best, behind one called Exit, and Team Awesome's Choices. But there were learnings to come from all of them.

Yesterday we watched screenings of the seven different short films made using Abi Green's script Choices.

With stunning lack of originality, five of the films were called Choices; only two of the groups actually changed the title. The first group called theirs Exit, while we changed ours to Doorways.

We opened with Exit, which was one of the best films, largely because they dispensed with much of the admittedly clunky plot devices, and concentrated instead on exploring the emotional effects of finding oneself able to jaunt. (I've deliberately used [the pictured] Bester's term for teleportation, because it carries within it the emotional consequences) Exit was also very well edited, used a whole load of locations, and was comparatively under-acted compared to later offerings. Against that, the ending was a little murky -- I got the impression that there was some kind of emotional equilibrium achieved, but I'm not sure exactly what the girl had to do with it.

Almost as good was Team Awesome's (So modest!) Choices. The acting was better than most -- the killer apart-- although the default reliance on swearing rather weakened it. The denouement was well worked out and was probably the best and most positive outcome. My only criticism of that was it should simply have ended when Dan and Olivia appeared, rather than the 15 or 20 seconds of Greg afterwards, which was unnecessary, and rather weakened the effect.

There was also an intermittently funny comedy version which unfortunately misfired badly at times. Parts of it were hilarious, parts of it not so.

And then there was ours, which yes, did spend too long on the night scene but had superb end credits, both courtesy of Jaeeun, who did a brilliant job, and Teagan. No one commented on the music, but I thought ours worked well, and the actors generally managed not to overact or swear. There were valid comments that it was unclear whose voice the v/o belonged to.

There were three others that weren't so good, but I'd rather accentuate the positives, and pass over the others. What came out of it was that we all needed someone to take a look at the next film we make prior to screening, to ensure that we've explained plot points adequately, and that we all need to exert stronger control over the cast -- although I thought we worked ours fairly well.

Hopefully at some point we will be able to post links, so people outside the class can take a look.

You Should Be Dancing...

Christmas is coming, time to show one of the very best ads of the year, even though I can't quite put my finger on what it is that makes such a very good film - be it characterization, music, or just...fun.



It's Christmas, a time for (self-)indulgence. After all I've been faithfully linking to short student films all term -- now it's time for some me-time...and this is a short film...even if it's shorter than usual and has about a million times the budget of most of the films I've profiled this term.



Purely as an ad, the M&S campaign is brilliant, and shows what can be done if one has almost unlimited resources. But more than that, on a personal level I can't help but smile when this comes on the tv. And last night I tracked the ad down in it's entirety....





I'm still trying to work out why it's such a good ad. Part of it is the nostalgia that any track from the summer of 76 evokes, let alone a landmark disco track; part of it is the embedded conflict between Peter Kay's character and Twiggy. Part of it is the sheer fun that everyone seems to be having.

Time and Motion

Throughout November I kept notes on the number of hours that I worked each day, and what I was spending that time on. Unsurprisingly, Making A Film took up a lot of time. What surprised me was how much time two of my subjects took up.

As I've mentioned both here and on my main blog and at Suite101, throughout November I kept detailed notes on the number of hours that I worked each day, and what I work I was spending that time on.

The shortest day I worked was a three and a half hour day, when I was ill. That was almost entirely taken up with reading and networking, which can be done from bed. Four of the six longest days were -unsurprisingly- Mondays, when I'm in uni from nine until four or six o'clock.

The baseline is that of the two hundred and forty hours that I worked, ninety-six were spent solely on university work, plus the twenty-eight hours of reading. I counted this journal separately from blogging, since it's for a specific purpose.

Excluding reading, a whopping 43% of my uni hours are spent on this subject, for what is 33% of my marks. Including reading, it drops to a third, which is about right...except that we are supposed to read for this subject as well. Perhaps I should shave off the reading for this subject? No. I thought not; it's sub-divided enough already.

It isn't just me that feels that Making A Film is a colossal time-sink. Almost every one of my group has expressed similar sentiments this term. (And like me, they were probably most forcibly expressed when we were cold, tired, or otherwise stressed)

There is a alternative view to this. The two subjects which take up most of my time -this and Feature Journalism account for almost two-thirds of my uni time- are the two that I'm least familiar with. I can dash off a thousand words of fiction for Core or Genre in a little over a day. But I'm familiar with them.

So maybe it's appropriate that this and Journalism are time sinks, since if I don't spend most of my time on them, I won't learn.