Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Monday, November 12, 2012
The Long Follow and Zoom in Cinema
THE LONG FOLLOW AKA THE TRACKING SHOT
We’re going to start our presentation of the long
follow AKA tracking shot by briefly exploring the montage. Today we typically
categorize the montage as a filmic trope used to carry an audience rapidly
through time. But for Sergei Eisenstein in the early 20th century it
was a way of defining cinema. In his collection of essays, “Film Form,” he
unpacks his theory of montage and argues for certain guiding principles that he
thinks underpin good film editing. He begins by using the example of the
Japanese hieroglyph to draw a parallel:
"The copulation of two hieroglyphs of the
simplest series is to be regarded not as their sum, but as their product...
from separate hieroglyphs has been fused- the ideogram. By the
combination of two ‘depictables’ is achieved the representation of something
that is graphically undepictable” (Eisenstein, 30).
He gives examples…
A dog + mouth = to scream
A knife + heart = sorrow…
“But this is-montage,” he proclaims, “yes, it is
exactly what we do in the cinema, combining shots that are depictive, single in
meaning, neutral in content – into intellectual contexts and series”
(Eisenstein, 30).
Eisenstein is suggesting that cinema IS, at its core,
montage; an artistic medium predicated upon the juxtaposition or “collision” of
images.
So why is this a relevant preface to the long follow?
Well, the very idea of the long follow is somewhat
antithetical to that of the montage. Using one, continuous shot the filmmaker
can achieve Eisenstein’s “ideogram” without joining together separate,
independent images. Complex and novel ideas can be generated without the use of
editing, without the use of “collision.” Additionally, the long follow
presents the viewer with an experience of time that is much closer to that of
their everyday existence. Tracking shots offer narrative information that
happens in “real time,” and as result brings a greater level of realism and
immediacy to the events transpiring within the frame. What the tracking shot
loses in intellectualism (by Eisenstein’s standards) it gains in realism.
Eisenstein quotes the famous German poet Goethe: “In
nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with
something else which is before it, beside it, under it, and over it” (Goethe,
45).
Ironically, it is the tracking shot, not the montage,
that ends up becoming the best tool that cinema has to actually achieve this
idea, to recreate the world in a way that authentically reflects humanities
experience of space and time. Yes, the mind itself is a kind of editor,
constantly editing together seemingly disparate parts to construct a subjective
narrative, but the visceral experience of…walking through a kitchen, for
example, is much more akin to a tracking shot than a montage sequence.
The mind does not consciously register the equation: sink
+ stove + smell = kitchen. The mental edits are imperceptible; we experience
the kitchen as a cohesive and seamless hole. A good tracking shot should have
the same seamless quality.
So, what is a long follow/tracking shot?
Los Angeles Times writer Jake Coyle describes it this
way: " In a medium predicated on storytelling through the
juxtaposition of images, the long tracking shot is the cinematic equivalent of
a no-hitter in baseball: rare, untouched and very difficult to pull off."
Conceptually it’s pretty simple. The camera follows a
character or an object as it moves through space. Typically the camera is
mounted on a camera dolly, a wheeled platform that is pushed on rails while in pursuit of the character or
object.
(the technology gets
simpler as filmmaking evolves but we’ll get to that in a bit).
One of the first films to free cinema from the
“static gaze” was CAMBIRIA (1914), a silent movie from the early years of Italian cinema, directed by Giovanni Pastrone and shot in Turin.
By “static gaze” we mean a non-moving tripod shot in
which the camera simply plays the witness, never moving through or engaging
with the cinema space.
Martin Scorcese (whose film Goodfellas we will examine shortly) makes the claim that Pastrone invented the “epic” movie and was the first to frequently use tracking shots, and thus deserves credit for many of the innovations often attributed to D.W. Grifith and Cecille B. Demille (both legendary filmmakers of the 20th century).
Most discussions of
tracking shots usually begin with Orson Welles though. Specifically with his
film noir crime thriller TOUCH OF EVIL (1958, shot by Russell Metty, who also
shot Kubrick's SPARTACUS).
The film opens with a three-minute, twenty-second tracking shot widely considered by critics as one of the greatest in cinematic history. On the U.S. - Mexican border a man plants a time bomb in a car. A different man
and his wife enter the vehicle and make a slow journey through town to the U.S.
border. Newlyweds Miguel "Mike" Vargas (Charlton Heston) and Susie (Janet Leigh) pass the car several times
on foot. The car crosses the border, then explodes, killing the occupants.
Orson Welles, Touch of Evil (crane shot, 1958) - cinematographer Russell Metty
The shot was achieved by using a camera crane, which typically
looks something like this…
This is a more modern version of the crane...
Orson Welles’ was already known
for revolutionizing film techniques (most notably with Citizen Kane), so it’s
no wonder that he was one of the first directors to unlock the real potential
of the moving camera. One of his big cinematic achievements in CITIZEN KANE was
to advance the fluidity and realism of cinema though the use of deep focus, in
which the foreground, middle ground, and background are all visually available
simultaneously.
CITIZEN KANE (1941) Directed by Orson Welles and shot by Gregg Toland
FLASH FORWARD to 1975 when cameraman Garret Brown
invents the steadicam, or as he had hoped to call it, the “Brown Stabilizer.” Brown had test screenings of what his new invention good do and the word quickly spread through Hollywood, catching the attention of high profile directors.
Brown and Kubrick on the set of THE SHINING
The invention of the steadicam really unlocks the
potential of the long follow/tracking shot. After 75 it’s everywhere.
It looks like this…
The benefit of the Steadicam is that it combines the
stabilized image of a conventional tripod mount with the fluid motion of a
dolly shot and the flexibility of hand-held camera work. While smoothly
following the operator's broad movements, the Steadicam's armature absorbs any
jerks, bumps, and shakes.
The monitor substitutes for the camera's viewfinder, since
the range of motion of the camera relative to the operator makes the camera's
own viewfinder practically unusable.
The first film in which the steadicam plays a major
role in production is BOUND FOR GLORY (1976), which chronicles the life of folk
singer Woody Gutherie (played by David Carradine).
BOUNDS FOR GLORY (1976), directed by Hash Alby
The film was shot by cinematographer Haskell Wexler
(also known for ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST), who ended up winning the Oscar for
Best Cinematography that year. He did not thank Brown in his acceptance speech.
Brown is also credited with inventing the Skycam (for
football games), Divecam (Olympic diving, and Mobycam (for underwater Olympic
swimmers.
GOODFELLAS
Another granddaddy of the long tracking shot is Ray Liotta
and Lorraine Bracco’s walk through the Copacabana in Scorcese’s “Goodfellas”
(Shot by Michael Ballhaus – also shot Gangs of NY). It’s a good example of a
tracking shot that isn’t just a masturbatory maneuver by a director who wants
flex his muscles, but a really meaningful decision, a shot that serves the
purpose of the narrative and its themes.
GOODFELLAS (1990) Directed by Martin Scorcese and shot by Michal Ballhuas
Shot analysis: Because we only see the back of Lorraine’s (Liotta’s wife)
head, the shot ends up functioning as her POV. It puts the audience in her mind
as she is systematically swept off her feet by the temptation of the gangster
lifestyle. The shot has a really hypnotic effect, which is not accidental.
Scorcese was quoted saying that the shot is “his [liotta’s] seduction of her [Lorraine]
and it's also the gangster lifestyle seducing him." The Copacaban turns
into a maze that Liotta and Lorraine walk deeper and deeper into, so far that
they will ultimately be unable to escape. And because cocaine is so prevalent
in the film, the shot, which has a really manic, hyper feel to it, reflects
that psychological state as well. It took them eight takes to get it right.
CHILDREN OF MEN
CHILDREN OF MEN (2007). Directed by Alfonso Cuaron and shot by Emanuel Lubezki
The next film we want to explore is CHILDREN OF MEN (2007),
directed by Alfonso Cuaron and shot by Emanuel Lubezki (perhaps the most sought
after cinematographer in the world right now. He shoots all of Terrence
Malick’s films). The film has 16 shots that are longer than 45 seconds. The
three most impressive ones run at about 1 1/2 minutes, 4 minutes, and 8
minutes. Like Scorcese, Cuaron chooses these shots not for egotistical reason,
but because they serve the purpose of the narrative.
In a recent interview cinematographer Emanuel Lubezki said
this about his work in CHILDREN OF MEN: “By not cutting…and by keeping the
camera rolling in real time, we thought that you would not feel betrayed by our
cuts… we’re not pushing you to see something specific but letting you feel
everything at the same time.”
In The Language of New Media, Manovich argues that through
digital technology cinema has come full circle to once again become a form of
animation. The idea is that because the stage at which a film really comes to
fruition is now in post production, the need for the original footage to be of
a high quality is greatly reduced. If you look at the dailies of major motion
pictures now, much of the footage is total crap. But this is intentional as the
filmmakers have a sense of what it will ultimately look like in post with the
aid of animation, color correction, and CGI.
Steven Soderbergh (director of SEX LIES AND VIDEOTAPE,
TRAFFIC, ERIN BROCKOVICH, OCEAN’S ELEVEN) has express frustration with this
development in film production. “The reason they no longer work that way is
because it means making choices, real choices, and sticking to them…that's not
what people do now. They want all the options they can get in the editing room,
so the skill and craftsmanship that goes into actual production is profoundly
less.”
The authentic tracking shot, like in CHILDREN OF MEN, is
proof that there are still some filmmakers out there who want to capture scenes
that stand alone as artistic achievements, scenes that don’t necessarily need
post production to be impressive.
CHILDREN OF MEN Featurette
One final point: Another director who is now known for
impressively long tracking shots is Joe Wright (PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, ATONEMENT,
HANNA). He’s specifically know for a 5 ½ minute tracking shot in ATONEMENT that follows
the main character through a war camp on a beach. He pointed out something very
interesting about tracking shots:
In an interview with LA Times, Wright said, "For the
actors, they really enjoy [tracking shots] because you're in a situation where there's a fourth
wall created…there's no area on the set they have to imagine; it's all in front
of them."
The “fourth wall” was originally used to describe the
imaginary "wall" at the front of the stage in a traditional
three-walled theater,
through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play; it’s
essentially the imaginary boundary between any fictional work and its audience,
which in film is the camera. But in a tracking shot, that invisible was is no
longer static, which allows the actors to forget that it’s even there and interact in a 360 degree environment.
New York Times author Steven Johnson had this to say about the Long Zoom:
"Most eras have distinct “ways of seeing” that end up defining the period in retrospect: the fixed perspective of Renaissance art, the scattered collages of Cubism, the rapid-fire cuts introduced by MTV and the channel-surfing of the 80’s. Our own defining view is what you might call the long zoom: the satellites tracking in on license-plate numbers in the spy movies; the Google maps in which a few clicks take you from a view of an entire region to the roof of your house; the opening shot in “Fight Club” that pulls out from Edward Norton’s synapses all the way to his quivering face as he stares into the muzzle of a revolver... And this is not just a way of seeing but also a way of thinking: moving conceptually from the scale of DNA to the scale of personality all the way up to social movements and politics — and back again."
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Comics
This panel from the conclusion of the graphic novel Watchmen depicts many elements described in Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics.
The use of sequential images, specifically in the final two frames, emphasizes the brutality of murder and coldness experienced by the character Dr. Manhattan. The lack of dialogue brings a stark silence to the scene. The lack of any kind of reaction panel from Dr. Manhattan following the murder further emphasizes this. McCloud brings up the concept of closure in his book, being the "phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole" (McCloud, pg. 63). Even if author Alan Moore does not expressly state it within the panels, readers of Watchmen are able to infer quite a bit from this scene as Dr. Manhattan's loss of humanity reaches fruition as he kills his once-friend.
With the vibrant use of color within the panels, artist Dave Gibbons and colorist John Higgins are able to express synaesthetics, being the expression of senses visually represented on the page. We can see the repulsive texture of red-haired Rorschach's face, the watery tears dripping down his face as he prepares for his doom. The change in color as Dr. Manhattan liquifies his body displays the splendor of his superpowers. The powdery snowfall gives the reader a sense of the harsh cold environment. And lastly, the pile of blood left in Rorschach's wake emphasizes the savagery of his death.
Sontag - Photography
This weekend while I was at a concert in LA, I couldn't help but be aggravated by fifteen people holding smartphones above their heads and obscuring my view...
Given I am a hypocrite in this matter, as photographing of events is often my favorite method of remembering them. Susan Sontag addresses this very phenomenon in On Photography, "After the event has ended, the picture will still exist, conferring on the event a kind of immortality (and importance) it would never otherwise have enjoyed (Sontag, 11).
Sontag is dead-on in this assertion, as the modern human relies extensively on social media and photography for self-reflection. An event without photographs may fall beneath the cracks when compared to another that is well documented. But in some ways the act of photographing, and being in that state of "non-intervention" that Sontag describes, removes one from the very event they are experiencing. I will unfortunately have to halt my wild dancing at a concert in order to snap the perfect shot. I recall those filming the concert on the phones appearing motionless amidst the chaos of the crowd. Is it better to truly experience an event, or have the proof to validate it subsequently?
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