Interesting. Thanks for sharing.
That’s a very reductive view of the purpose and meaning of visual composition.
The same shot or edit can have entirely different meanings depending on its surrounding context.
You shouldn’t think of a shot as being a tool to pull out as a shortcut to achieving a certain effect. Instead, use your intuition. Picture how the shot feels and think about whether it conveys the feel that you are going for.
But most of what she wrote is fundamentally true and helpful, so stop nagging.
I read a quote from Polanski who said that showing characters moving across the frame from left to right is sign of power because in the west, we read from left to right. Conversely, showing characters move from right to left gives the psychological effect of resistence. Not sure how true this is but it’s an interesting idea.
Another example is pretty well known – Hitchcock following the characters feet as a sign of impending doom. It’s easy to dismiss these reductive ideas but coming from masters of technique like Polanski and Hitchcock, there is some truth to this and if you are an aspiring filmmaker, you need to know what approach will have what effect on your audience.
I’m not really a believer in the whole “handheld is more realistic” line of thinking which seems to permeate contemporary cinema these days but I will say that every decision you make as a director is important and will give you a different result. As the cliche goes, there are no small decisions as a director. And there are basic rules and definitions that audiences have come to define for certain shots and approaches. This doesn’t mean you can’t break them – in fact, you should – but you should know what they are. Shooting a character from a low angle implies authority while shooting a character from a high angle shows weakness. This is very basic, filmmaking 101 type stuff and should only be applied in a very general sense. But if you know these fundementals than that can help you in devising alternatives while still getting the same psychological effect.
I can think of a delayed cut. If you show a person in distress or grief for longer than neccessary to transport the information, it mostly makes the audience feel uneasily because they are put in a voyeur position when they feel that it is inappropriate to watch any longer.
My teacher told me if your character is on the right side of the fram and he is looking on the left, it makes the audience feel incomfortable… (take the exampke he gave us : Kissing scene in the hotel in Vertigo).
If the character turns his back to the camera, you get a incomfortable audience too.
Good thread.
I tend to agree with this: The same shot or edit can have entirely different meanings depending on its surrounding context.
A friend of mine, after finishing his debut feature, commented on a particular scene in which he filmed, from downward angles, two characters talking on a couch, saying, “If I had the chance to do the film over again, I would never shoot this scene like this.” When I asked him why, he said something to the effect that anytime one shoots people from above their heads, it implies a certain superiority of the director over his characters, and since he didn’t feel that he was “above” his characters or their dilemmas, it would be disingenuous of him to consciously shoot them from downward angles. (His movie was made in roughly a week, amidst strained conditions, so he didn’t have time to contemplate each shot and its supposed implications.)
While I can appreciate this approach, personally I reject this sort of “shot psychology.” When I film someone’s face, for instance, I’m mostly interested in finding a good angle to bring out the uniqueness of its bone structure. If I like the way the light hits a person’s skin from a certain angle, and the composition looks nice—assuming I’m trying to make an agreeable film—whether the camera is placed above or below her is of very little consequence. Similarly, if I spontaneously film garbage men taking out the trash from my third story window, to me, it doesn’t mean that I’m looking down on them in any way but literally.
Gabriel Land:
The Power of the Center A Study of Composition in the Visual Arts
About the Author
Rudolf Arnheim is Professor Emeritus of the Psychology of Art at Harvard University.
This is a piss-poor description at amazon:
Using a wealth of examples, Arnheim considers the factors that determine the overall organization of visual form in works of painting, sculpture, and architecture.
Basically Arnheim explains visual thinking :how the psychological values in the frame can be built to transmit meaning to the viewer.
There is documentary on the making of Mouchette showing Bresson arguing with his DP – read the book first and you will recognize Bresson is trying to explain to his DP what you find in Arnheim’s concept of visual thinking.
Most of the “rules of thumb” mentioned above (and all rules are “meant to be broken”) are explained in Louis Giannetti’s book Understanding Movies (any edition). Robert W’s recommendation of Arnheim would also be valuable. One of the most complete analyses of the psychological and perceptual aspects of film technique is in Herbert Zettl, Sight-Sound-Motion: Applied Media Aesthetics (it may even be TOO deep for a beginning filmmaker, because it covers elements like the physics of light, color, and volume, among many other topics). If you insist on using the Web, rather than actually reading a book, some basic info on film style (and its psychological effects on viewers) can be found at http://classes.yale.edu/film-analysis. It has several illustrative clips.
The power of left-to-right movement vs. right-to-left has been known by artists and psychologists for centuries, so Roman Polanski didn’t invent it. Screen right is generally more powerful even in static shots, which is why talk show hosts ALWAYS position themselves on screen right.
However, I agree with Chris Evans (and, no, he’s not nagging) who said, “The same shot or edit can have entirely different meanings depending on its surrounding context.” A classic example of this comes from Citizen Kane. Generally speaking, a low angle looking up at someone conveys a sense of power and authority (that’s why judges are up on benches). Yet in Kane there are several shots that look up at Welles and we see the ceiling in the frame, suggesting that his possessions are weighing him down and overpowering his life. It’s a mixed message: yes, he’s a powerful man but that power also stultifies and imprisons him.
So, most of the generalizations Gabriel cited at the beginning of this thread are just that: generalizations. There are MANY counterexamples for every rule of thumb noted, and often those counterexamples are the most creative instances of film expression. Dissolves, for instance, do NOT always convey the passage of time (except in very old movies) and cuts do not always imply immediacy (see 8 1/2, for example). The “language” of the cinema is constantly being developed and it won’t go much further if filmmakers stick to formulaic approaches to techniques.
…it won’t go much further if filmmakers stick to formulaic approaches to techniques.
If I wanted to get out of the film 101 box, I would talk to other artists about visual thinking – an architect, a sculpture, or conceptual artist who communicates visually.
If one were a woman trying to separate themselves from the pack, one might want to focus in on the different way men and woman process visual information.
just a thought….
Some interesting points here. I think the fact film is a moving, time-based art is getting a little forgotten though. It’s kind of like us discussing which notes of music have which kind of psychological effect on the listener – isn’t it much more about what was played before and will be after? – the rhythm too? I agree entirely with Chris Evans that one’s intuition should be the guiding force behind a film’s direction, and perhaps more importantly, its editing. Not to say intuition shouldn’t be educated and informed (I liked the Polanski and Hitchcock refs), but that education and information should be kept distrustfully at the back as very loose reference points in each directorial decision.
I watched Let The Right One In recently and was astonished at how emotionally charged a lot of the two-shots were when I was expecting cuts to extra close up; and then there is the scene in There Will Be Blood when Daniel Plainview’s ‘son’ returns from being abandoned to an institution – an extreme long shot shot across the pipeline and meadow that carried more emotive clout I’m sure than any extra close up could have. Am guessing great directors/DoPs feel rather than know how to get the most from a shot.
Where does intuition come from?
Understanding the basic the rules and then knowing how to break the rules is one way to get started.
Breaking the rules (pushing limitations) is one way to the “C” word (creativity).
True true, it’s easy for me to throw around words like artistic intuition when I’ve never made a film! :)
Frank,
I understand what you are saying, but the one thing that bothers me is not that the ‘language is changing’ but that way too many don’t know the basics any more to begin with.
Television in particular started the slide with news shooting, where cinematic rules didn’t matter as long as the shot was gotten (I shoot TV and have done some 16mm as well.) There were/are reasons: live events, lack of time; TV was/is mostly about getting images to show to support the voice-over.
MTV made anything work at any time, shot-wise, and this has only increased both in ‘reality’ shows and dramas.
So, for me the issue is more that you get more and more video hopefuls who try to do drama who will throw in shots because they are ‘cool’ as opposed to knowing exactly what that shot does for the audience, or because they simply don’t know any better.
This affects the mood, the audience response, the whole project.
The “Kane” example is good. Welles fully knew the contradiction of “below plus ceiling” because he knew what each element meant. He wasn’t just throwing it in. He knew the language, the basic shots.
The film “Atonement” has a scene in France. The film itself is awful, and then there is suddenly this enormous, very complicated beach scene where the British expeditionary force is evacuated. Many many extras, endless Steadicam-ing and craning, very expensive, difficult and time consuming. And completely out of touch with the rest of the film. To add insult to injury, the director, when asked why he went for this monster shot, he said: “I just wanted to show that I could do it”……..gee….
My point is still: if you don’t know the basics, how do you know when you are experimenting? How do you even know what experimentation means? The same applies to any other art form.
I actually started with an image that every one liked and I didn’t. After radically cropping it, I felt better about it.
I had the epiphany that there was something going on in the process that I didn’t know. That started a search that lead to Arnheim. Once I knew the rules, a could compose based on a combination of analysis and intuition.
I used Bresson as an example because I had dissonance towards a couple of his films and I didn’t know why until I saw the documentary – I realized that his framing was like watching a series of stills, which bothered me.
Combining your example, an extreme long shot shot across the pipeline and what Frank pointed out about how context changes things is articulated thus: the center-of-influence is put in a power relationship with its surroundings.
See Plainview (the center-of-influence) in a power relationship with the source of his power (oil).
Claus: Believe me, I fully realize that beginning film students are not aware of “the basics” and I do my best to educate them with readings and filmic examples. When I said that the language of cinema is changing, I also realized that it is not always changing for the better. Overdone Shakycam scenes, out of focus imagery, constant violations of the “180-degree rule” of shot continuity, “show-off” shots that are “cool” or “to show that I could do it” are now all part of the (bad) grammar of student filmmaking — and some professional films.
Interestingly, the innovator Orson Welles was once asked what he did to prepare for his first feature film. He replied, “I studied the masters: John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.” He learned “the rules of the game” before trying to break them.
Robert – “See Plainview (the center-of-influence) in a power relationship with the source of his power (oil).” As I was typing about this scene it occurred to me that the oil pipeline might have lent to the emotional surge of the shot – by what it symbolised, like you say – but wasn’t sure – it felt more about father, son, guilt and hurt. Am still not entirely sure – but am damn curious. I think I’ll get a copy of the Arnheim book too – you’ve certainly piqued my curiosity, thanks.
(incidentally – how do you do italics on here?)
italics _ _
bold * *
place something between to those
I don’t remember the scene, but the visual allegory is telling us that the kid is not as necessary to Plainview. Someone will come a long and say: well, it is already established by the narrative
but there is the gestalt: two elements (words and image) coalesce to transmit the message more powerfully – add music and the sensation is enhanced
Christian Metz was wrong. Cinema is not a language with arbitrary, static signifiers like a written language. So assigning meanings to shot types is largely fruitless. Read any of David Bordwell’s excellent analyses for a more wholistic treatment of cinematic language.
The only psychological effect is not being exposed to different shot types. It’s when a director, producer or company believes that a type of shot is needed for a certain emotion that film as an art fails. Think about it, this is essentially how shitty movies get made, based on the presumption of “well it works there, it has to work here.” Nothing is the same unless it’s an exact copy, which is why the Tarantino shit makes me laugh. As technical knowledge to convey a point these terms are effective but to believe that “close-up” defines emotion is just wrong. A film maker that gives you a close-up because it’s that time in the movie to be sad doesn’t understand or respect his work.
The art in the film is breaking down the elements and building them back up from scratch given their surroundings. If you’re telling two stories that are very similar and both good films it’s possible that they will have similar outcomes but you would never mistake one for the other. This subtlety of the artist is not something that can be learned. It can be faked and it can fake the fakers but it never fools those who understand. It’s hard not to make it out to be an exclusively club but it really is. Some people can recite PI to 900 digits, some can convey an environment to others, that’s just the way it is.
I deal everyday with understanding vs understanding to understand. I’m not sure if this is the road to enlightenment or it means I’m already doomed but I keep thinking because I’m trying to find the truest medium for my mind, not the truest art for the medium.
Gringo Tex is absolutely right. In fact, the best that Christian Metz could say was that cinema was “LIKE a language,” not that it was actually the equivalent of written or verbal language. It’s more like a “poetic” or aesthetic “language” without a real grammar or syntax, and certainly not a dictionary, which is what some of the initial posts seemed to indicate.
Almost every shot in every single film is UNIQUE (unless you’re Gus van Sant remaking Hitchcock’s Psycho shot for shot, and even there there’s color and different costumes and voices, etc.), whereas many utterances in a verbal language have been said countless times before (“Hello. How are you?” “Call me Ishmael” :-) ).
Nonetheless, without rules of thumb and experience, films could end up being pure gibberish or pure experimentation. If one wants to communicate with an audience, however, to a certain extent you need to follow (or at least acknowledge) some codes and conventions. Even James Joyce famously said that he had spent a full day on two sentences in Ulysses. He was asked if he was looking for le mot juste and he said, “No, I have the words. It’s the order of the words that I’m struggling with.” Here are the 2 sentences: “Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh obscurely, he mutely craved to adore.” Even though the syntax is rather “artsy” and poetic, most of us get the gist of this, particularly within the context: Leopold Bloom observing (and being aroused by) a girl’s knickers on the beach.
Likewise, most of the great cinematic innovators, even in the avant-garde, used SOME of the traditional codes to communicate with viewers. We may remember the unusual scenes in Godard’s films (the 360-degree pan around the barnyard in Weekend), but J-P also used conventional close-ups, two-shots, reverse angles, eyeline matches, the 180-degree rule, crosscutting, background music (sometimes in counterpoint to the images), and most of the regular arsenal of “weapons” that were used by D. W. Griffith.
In film, if you strung random images together, very few people would be able to make sense of it. A true anecdote: One of my colleagues at a nameless university told filmmaking students to steal footage (or outtakes) from their classmates’ editing bins (back in the day when editing was done with actual film) and splice it together at random to make an “avant-garde” film. You can imagine what the results were like. (Although 1-2 creative types did the assignment but did not edit in random fashion but tried to create links between the different images or to create an editing rhythm that would coincide with the selected music track. These films were semi-intelligible.)
The point is that because cinema is LIKE a language, but NOT an actual language, every image is unique but meaning is somewhat dependent on prior codes and conventions, so it’s best to know the “rules” (and the exceptions and subtleties of those rules) and the consequences of breaking them before actually bending or breaking them.
Delancey’s point is well taken — “A film maker that gives you a close-up because it’s that time in the movie to be sad doesn’t respect you, he respects his bank account.”
I’d go even further. Using such cliches may not even help one’s bank account because box-office success is not always dependent on following the formula (who wants to see the same movie over and over again?). It’s a balancing act between tradition (As Chaplin said, “Long shot for Comedy; Close-up for Tragedy”) and innovation (As Godard said, “Every film should have a beginning, middle, and end — but not in THAT order”). In fact, sometimes pulling the camera back brings on tears, rather than the cut to a close-up (i.e., the ending of The Way We Were).
Haha, funny you should go there Frank. Before I read your post I edited mine trying to express what you put very eloquently.
…aesthetic “language” without a real grammar or syntax, and certainly not a dictionary, which is what some of the initial posts seemed to indicate.
none of this conflicts with Arnheim’s gestalt awareness – as your “avant-garde” example seems to show
Almost every shot in every single film is UNIQUE…
Also, in the neurobiological sense that every perception is an act of creation and therefore unique
Cinema is a combination of things, language, music and visual. Visual processing is not a language operation and occurs in a separate part of the brain.
visual perception takes the world in directly, language only refers to the other senses
I appreciate everyone’s replies, and the books that were recommended I will put on my wish list.
Of course I agree that rules are bullshit. I am an anarchist after all.
However I am a market anarchist, and I believe that the consumer makes the rules. This brings me to watch-ability. If you put together a film with no close ups, you are going to threaten the watch-ability of your film. You may come out with something ‘experimental’ or disorientating to the audience, a psychedelic trip or ego death type experience, but you will probably not result in something satisfying for the audience, and if you do, it will be by accident rather than deft orchestration.
Someone brought up music. Yes the rhythm, tonal characteristics, bass or treble, etc all effect what the listener perceives. But that doesn’t change, for instance, that an orchestration in the minor key will ALWAYS have more sadness, darkness, and epic feel to it than an orchestration in major.
Likewise, I challenge anyone here to find an example of an intense, brooding, tormented protagonist/hero in any film that was conveyed better in a long shot than in a close up. The close up is THE BEST way to convey inner emotion, simply because of the eyes. As babies we all bond with our mothers through eye contact. Lovers gaze into each others eyes. Fighters stare each other down in intimidation. It’s ALL in the eyes. Find me an example in film that contradicts this or is an exception to this.
There a number of variables, always, and there are a number of ways to break the rules. But an experimental film is different from a film that is epic, one that captivates a lot of people. Film people remember experimental films. Everyone remembers The Matrix.
You know it’s funny that you mention the Matrix because I was going to use that as an example of how a new idea can be just as much a gimmick as something that seems standard like the close up.
“Of course I agree that rules are bullshit. I am an anarchist after all.”
I think you’re coming to a presumptuous conclusion based on the constraints you assign to the conversation with that statement. I don’t think anyone here is explicitly saying “rules are bullshit.” I can’t speak for anyone else but believing that there are rules to be broken in nature and humanity to me is just as bad as making a film from a filmmakers handbook. Looking outside of yourself is the foundation of any good filmmaking. That sounds trite or cliche now but if you think about it it’s something filmmakers rarely do. Being on the “right” side of an idea, issue, person, concept, government implies that there is a “wrong” and the fact that there is a direct opposite of your opinion means that it can’t be fact. It can’t be fact if one person in the world doesn’t agree with the truth you’re presenting, even if they’re lying and know they are when they say it, you can never prove otherwise. This goes for your major/minor example too. If someone WAS able to create a sad, dark, epic feel with the major key, perhaps you will never be able to hear it. You understand your meaning for sad, dark, epic and its relation to the combination of notes we call the major key. What’s true for you in fact is no more a fact than what someone might say to the contrary. The idea behind this is not that these concepts don’t APPEAR true but it’s important not to reject them.
This is all subjective for personal “growth” which is mainly trying to play gymnastics with your brain. There is no real benefit of thinking a different way but it might get you excited about how things can be viewed so differently. From experience most of the people I know who want to be writers but can’t are those who can’t appreciate the thrill of thinking like a different person, instead of thinking like yourself and creating story around that.“bullshit, anarchist, market, watch-ability” All of these words aren’t your words. They’re words that are concrete facts that are only as true to the definition they’re given. I doubt you are or define those words any more than those words define you. Don’t limit your perception of the world for conversational convenience.
“Film people remember experimental films. Everyone remembers The Matrix.” Yes, and for the rest of your life your conscious will remember The Matrix and it won’t let you forget it.
Sorry, that was a bit crude of me, but I believe it.
But this thread seems to be leading to the question of how renowned filmmakers, towards the end of their careers, seem to often degenerate into making crap? Of course “crap” is subjective—but is it that they are too disenchanted with their audience to want to continue making films for them anymore and instead make very personal stuff in attempts to reconcile the latent questions in their quickly withering lives? (I guess I’m defining great auteurs in this context, then, as individuals who made films that were very personal, yet translated to the audience as well—among being works of creative genius).
‘“bullshit, anarchist, market, watch-ability” All of these words aren’t your words. They’re words that are concrete facts that are only as true to the definition they’re given. I doubt you are or define those words any more than those words define you. Don’t limit your perception of the world for conversational convenience.’
I agree, words only have meaning we give them, or definitions we submit to or agree to. For instance, I do not have to breathe air. There is no rule that I must breathe air. Air doesn’t even exist unless I allow it to exist, unless I give the letters a, i, and r meaning, unless I associate a definition to the sound of of their phonetic pronunciation.
What I meant by ‘rules are bullshit’ is that a rule is only a rule if the individual agrees to it. No one has the legitimate authority to force a film maker to use a close up to convey intense, inner emotion. There is no governance but self governance, thus, the only rules that aren’t bullshit are the ones one creates for them self.
As far as ‘conversational convenience’, that’s the point of language. We are all goal oriented protagonists. Our goals being the sustenance of our selves, of our egos, of survival. Conversation takes different forms, IE small talk, banter, or what’s called functional dialog. I made my original post simply as an appeal to open up a line of functional dialog with people who are as interested in film as I with the explicit goal of gaining insight and knowledge that will aid me in making better films next time I dust off an HVX.
“Yes, and for the rest of your life your conscious will remember The Matrix and it won’t let you forget it.”
That is the nature of the Matrix. It is always there. Without it there would be no life. That is a rule. Break it and you simply reload the Matrix.
landgabriel
As an aspiring film maker, I am interested in how different angles and shot types effect what the audience feels.
Examples:
As we all know, the close up is for the most intimate, emotional moments, because it gets the audience right up in the actor’s eyes, which are ‘a window to the soul’ (allegedly) On a side note, I read that Sean Penn expressed his opinion that the film ‘Che’ was perhaps the first oscar worthy film that didn’t rely on the close up. If for no other reason, I want to see Che to see what Penn was talking about.
If the camera angle is more to the side of an actor, it weakens the actor. It is a cardinal rule of body language that facing someone directly is more powerful than at an angle, to the side.
Dissolves, of course, imply the passage of time. Cuts imply immediacy.
Hand held and steadicam shots give the audience the feeling they are watching for a first person POV. Almost like a POV shot. While shots on sticks tend to imply more of a third person POV.
Anyways, if anyone can add their input or point me in the direction of a site that picks apart each shot type and details it’s psychological effect on the audience, I would appreciate it.