Are There Any Absolutes in Filmmaking?
Until the early 1960s it was thought that there were correct ways of shooting , then the New Wave changed everything. Most rules of a “correct” way of shooting were just the result of years of mainstream films made in a certain way and not born out of any rational process.
Breathless was the film that introduced most of those changes- jump cuts, talking to the camera,
the breaking of the of the 180degree axis of action etc are all present in it. It was not as if any of those hings were not present in narrative film before but they were used from then on more frequently..After the 60s most filmmakers returned to the traditional way of shooting.
Another thing to consider is the culture of the filmmakers,. Ozu films looked very weird to people outside Japan.
Absolutely not.
The ‘Correct’ ways of shooting are more ‘Safest’ ways of shooting.
If you shoot those ways, you don’t have to be as good to make the film effective.
If you’re really good at shooting, you can achieve better results doing it other ways.
The idea of classical Hollywood continuity editing was to preserve a sense of spatial and temporary continuity so that the audience does not become disorientated . . . but there are, of course, many ways to shoot a scene without rendering it incoherent.
“right” and “wrong” imply value judgments, and I don’t think that’s a good way to think about things. As Matt suggests, “coherent” and “incoherent” seem like better terms to me, as long as it’s understood that “incoherent” does not mean “wrong” or “bad”. I’m imagining a samurai swordfight scene. You could shoot it all in a static longshot as Hou Hsiao-Hsien might, which would be perfectly coherent, and would seem distant and ‘objective’. Or you could intercut rapidly between the two combatants as most Hollywood films would, which could still be coherent but might be more viscerally exciting. Or you could intercut rapidly between extreme closeups of the hands and blades of the two fighters. That might be completely incoherent from a narrative point of view (you might not be able to tell what’s happening) but might be particularly effective in the right context. Among an infinitude of other possibilities of course.
Right, I mean “coherent” not as a value judgement, but in the sense that something is “coherent” if the viewer can tell whats going on. Of course, as Flip points out, there are times when it’s appropriate for a scene to be not entirely spatially and/or temporally coherent (see the Tony Scott clip I posted in the other thread, for example, where the intent is to express confusion, fear, threats from all sides, etc.).
There aren’t.
Yes, films are composed of images.
Even ^that, I think is debatable depending on how you define “image”
Jarman’s Blue:
The filmmaker David Gatten has a a pair of works called What the Water Said, Nos. 1-3 and What the Water Said, Nos. 4–6 which he made by putting unexposed 16mm film into a crab trap and lowering into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina for a time. There’s an image of sorts etched onto the film by the water and the things in it, but it’s not a photographic image in the normal sense.
Or Walter Ruttman’s “Weekend”, which is a ‘film’ made using only the soundtrack.
And of course there are ‘absolutes’ in film – they just aren’t of the type that Jazz was talking about. But there are factual absolutes – if you film stuff with the lights out, you’ll get a dark image, for example.
The only absolute may be the Box Office….
Regarding the matter of there being no absolutes and no value judgments:
A wise fellow once said that, while it’s certainly possible (and maybe entertaining)
for two people to hit a ball back and forth with rackets, it might be difficult to convince observers
anyone is actually playing tennis if there is no net or no lines.
Granted, a motion picture is not a sporting contest or an athletic event, but there are surely some parameters
that we can recognize and require.
Put another way, there must be a reason that any scene involving white middle-class characters
dancing to and singing a classic Motown track
(while simultaneously doing some household chore or preparing a meal) NEVER works.
If we could articulate why, would we have an absolute concerning scripts or scenarios?
I bit off more than I can chew with this thread. For example, Dr. said, Granted, a motion picture is not a sporting contest or an athletic event, but there are surely some parameters
that we can recognize and require. That seems right to me—but I have no idea where to begin or how to talk about this.
And…
Put another way, there must be a reason that any scene involving white middle-class characters
dancing to and singing a classic Motown track
(while simultaneously doing some household chore or preparing a meal) NEVER works.
I disagree with this, as I love that scene (and those moments in the kitchen)! :(
Yes, it all begins with an idea.
What that idea is is different for everyone.
I’m wondering if by specifiying the situation and the objectives of the filmmaker, we could identify paramaters or rules that are close to absolutes. For example, if you wanted to shoot a dance sequence and you wanted viewers to have the easiest time enjoying the dance, you would shoot the film in “X” fashion. What do you all think?
It would depend on the nature of the dance:
Jazz, I’d shoot a dance sequence like America in west side story
Jazzaloha
While expressing my dissatisfaction with the filming of action sequences in Breaking News, Matt half-jokingly made the comment that I’m too used to another approach. A part of me wanted to go so far as saying that there are certain rules and principles that filmmakers must follow when filming an action sequence—in this case, allowing viewers to see both combatants clearly to make sense of the action as well as “savor” it. (I could say the same thing about a dance sequence.) To be clear, I don’t know if I really believe if this is a hard-and-fast rule, and I suspect that my preference is just that, a preference. Or am I wrong? Are there hard-and-fast rules about filmmaking? I’m thinking mainly of the “right” and “wrong” ways of shooting certain types of scenes, but I guess it could apply to other aspects of filmmaking.