Cinematographic Techniques

Yeah, hating the concept of Chekhov's Gun seems a bit odd considering how much of storytelling is reliant on set-up and pay-off, though I can understand being bored by more obvious examples like Bond gadgets. That's what makes "fists with your toes" a good one - it's brought up in such an offhand manner, is more or less brushed off when McClane tries exactly one pair of dead terrorist shoes decides not to bother trying any other pairs, then half the movie goes by before "shoot the glass" happens.

I think the thread title needs to be changed as "cinematographic" refers specifically to camera techniques (it combines "cinema" and "photography"). Likewise, I think "suspense" is already the name we have for the "rubber band technique".

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Heh. Well I have very little knowledge of techniques in cinematography, or in any other facet of film making.

I did like your "Chekov's gun" discussion, and how valuable it is. I think that Hitchcock was a master at that principle among other things. Very little superfluous points or props were shown in his films, and he was very clever at taking his audiences on the path that they needed to be for his narratives.

Another quote of his that I like is, "If you verbally explain something rather than visually show it, it's completely lost on the audience." He's so good in that regard, that much of his film work really didn't require dialogue.

I feel like there are some movies they explain things in dialogue rather than showing them is better though, isn't it? For example, in the movie Manhunter , but we never see this and it's only in dialogue.

Was this more effective, or should we have seen it in a visual flashback?

It's not meant to be a hard rule. Even if it was meant to be, people will defy it and experiment. One example doesn't define a standard just as one standard can't define all examples. But you know that.

Oh yes, for sure thanks. As for James Bond, I've always enjoyed Q explaining the gadgets. That's why I was disappointed in The Spy Who Loved Me, where Bond goes to meet Q, and then it cuts away to something else, and then cuts back to Bond and Q, and Bond was just leaving and Q had already explained it all, but we didn't see it.

However, perhaps this is a good thing that they cut away from explaining the gadgets, because then they were all surprises later.

I get very excited when I see a movie that demonstrates an incredible grasp of cinematic principles and uses them or discards them freely in the pursuit of creative expression. The most obvious example off the top of my head is the movie Elephant by Gus Van Sant. There are incredibly long shots that overlap with other scenes from angles that should be impossible, but he does this by reenacting the scenes. If you look very carefully you can notice slight differences that tell you it's reenacted.

The movie Spotlight made use of camera positioning in a way that really excited me. I love it when it doesn't matter what a film is about, but it's exciting simply because of the cinematography.

then i suggest you any Gaspar Noé's movie. The guy doesn't even do a script he just start shooting and boy does he know how to use a camera. I warn you though the men is insane. His movies are hardcore violent so be carefull. He his most known for enter the void but he did other masterpiece. He his also know to be an important part of the new-new french wave set in the early 2000's

I can also suggest you my personnal favorite director: wong kar wai. Who just like gaspar Noé is known for having a very thin script and does most of the job on set with the camera. I don't know Gaspar Noé's DP (director of photography) but Wong Kar-wai's DP is the amazing Christopher Doyle an australien dude who studied in Hong Kong and is also the DP of another asian mastermind Edward Yang from taiwan ( i recommend yiyi from Edward yang) . So if I made you discover any movies fromthese 3 guys it will be mission accomplished.

I was actually disappointed with Enter the Void. What ruined it for me was all the shot of the soul moving between scenes. Other than that though, it was a very good movie. I guess I just got sick of the same transition happening over and over, and I couldn't picture the book of the dead actually being interpreted that way. I mean, as a world view, I think it's pretty weak to begin with, but if you're going to show it as if it's true then don't have the guy being warped all over the place just to watch his sister and friend. I'm sorry, but I think he should have taken it in one of two directions. Either focus on the sister and friend and show the dead guy occasionally, or focus on the dead guy and give a more profound afterlife experience that is more accurate to The Book of the Dead. Perhaps the problem was just in choosing that topic to begin with. It's almost impossible to do justice to something that profound, and I think he failed at what he set out to do.

Cinematography-wise it had a lot of interesting shots and transitions if you exclude the floating across the city aspects of the transitions, but just in terms of when and where he ends and starts scenes it was really fascinating.

Have you seen Angst (1985)? Gaspar Noe said he watched it 40 times, it's listed as one of his top 5 favorite films on rottentomatoes.com, and it heavily influenced him. It uses point of view shots that were way ahead of it's time. I've never watched anything 40 times. I've probably watched Star Wars 25-30 times. That's the most I've watched anything. I've seen Angst 3-4 times. It tortured my soul. I don't want to hype it up too much or spoil anything, but it's a must see. I felt like I had been waiting my whole life to see it.

I just looked it up on IMDB and Benoît Debie was the director of cinematography for Enter the Void, he also did Irreversible. I really need to get around to seeing Irreversible... And by the look of things he's worked on a lot of really interesting movies. He also worked on Spring Breakers, and I do think the cinematography was really good in Spring Breakers.

Wong Kar-Wai is a legend, obviously. I have Fallen Angels and 2046. I love Fallen Angels, but I haven't gotten around to watching more of his films yet. I can't really think of anything pertaining to the cinematography. I don't remember anything specifically about the cinematography. I just remember the characters and the story. That's what stood out to me most about his movies. The way he crafts characters and the stories of their lives is incredible. While cinema is an extremely visual medium of art, I do believe that writing is the most important aspect of it. Though cinematography would seem to be the most important aspect, because the name seems to imply it, it's actually not. Cinematography is more on the surface, but writing is deeper beneath the surface. It's hard even to conceptualize because a movie can be made without a script. In that sense, "writing" isn't the script itself necessarily, but it's what the movie says. Because words are just the names of ideas, the essence of writing is not the words themselves, but the ideas. In that sense it is the ideas that the movie communicates to the viewer that are the most important part of any work of cinema, or of any work of art period. I think that is why Andrei Tarkovsky said that the best filmmakers are poets.

Recently I listened to William Friedkin talk about filmmaking and his style of guerrilla cinematography and improvised dialogue is really inspiring. He uses a script, but then tells his actors not to say what the script says, but to get into the character and speak naturally. That way he gets an incredible level of realism. When he directs his actors he tells them, "Walk here, say something to her, then walk over there, pause for a minute, then turn around and say something." He doesn't tell them what to say, and he caters to actors individually. He also tells his cinematographer not to cut. To keep the camera rolling because sometimes the best things that happen are unintended and even after the scene should be over. That way he at least has the footage and can decide what to do with it in the editing room.

I'm going to watch Yi Yi now. It's one of those movies that's been on my list for ages, and you gave me the impulse so I'm just going to watch it now.

Besides Enter the Void, Fallen Angels, and 2046, what movies would you recommend from Gaspar Noe and Wong Kar-Wai?

Edit: Oh, I also wanted to talk about Werner Herzog. When he filmed Aguirre the Wrath of God he went into the jungle with a film crew with barely any script. There are all these crazy shots of people walking through the jungle, and going down rapids on rafts with armor and muskets. It made me think that the crew could have been killed while filming it. Werner Herzog has a habbit of capturing mind blowing things on camera. In Woyzeck there's a scene where Klaus Kinski runs towards the camera through a field from off in the distance. Along the way he tramples much of the foliage with an emotionally intense performance. It's the kind of scene where if you make a mistake and have to re-shoot it, you would have to choose a new location or wait a long time for the plants to grow back. Kind of like when Tarkovsky burned down a house in The Sacrifice. The camera jammed and it took two weeks to rebuild the house.

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

I found everything you said really fascinating. First, even though I agree with the importance of the story/script, one just have to look at 12 angry mens or any tarentino movie and realise that words CAN make a movie but I still think that the visuals is one of the things that differ theater to movies. You just have to see a movie like the russian ark. It has no story and everything is in the image but it is still a viable movie.
Second, my favorite Wong Kar-wai movie is fallen angel because of the visuals. Wong Kar-wai, especially in the 90's, had a technique i've rarely seen of <<lagging>> during slowmotions.

This technique is seen in fallen angels, ITM4L, 2046 and others but is most present in chungking express. It was the first time I realised that movies could be artistic and not just entertainement. It was something I have never seen before and it seemed so different than anything else. Also, in fallen angel the very short lenses give a nice mood to the movie and in ITM4L the color and music make it so beautiful. So I strongly believe that wong kar-wai cinema is very visual.
For Gaspar Noé, i've never seen one of his movies because they are hardcore and I hate hardcore. I was afraid of toy story 2 until I was 12 so maybe I will not start by the Noé's movie. Even though I do not watch his movie, I knew him via a Utube channel that interview mostly french; but not just; directors. The <<show>> consist in directors in a video club that pick movies that were important for them. I will put the video but it is in french. Don't worry, I will list the movies he picked.

-prava d'orchestra (fellini)
-the towering inferno (John Guillermin) see 10x
-wake in fright ( ted kotcheff)
-La maman et la putain (jean Eustache)
-Le plein de super (Alain Cavalier)
-Seul contre tous (he filmed it in 6 weeks with a 3 page script)
-Vibroboy (jan kounen)
-La haine (matthieu kassowitz)
-Salň o le centoventi giornate di Sodoma (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
-Taxi driver
-2001 ( his personnal favorite)
-any dario argento movies
-4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days (Christian Mangu) his favorite horror movie of the last decade
-any Harmony Korine movie (dude who did springbreakers) it's his BFF

Thank you, that was a really nice thing to say.

I think you have good insight. I'm not saying that writing is the most important thing in all films. All you need to make a film is a camera. You don't need a script, and a movie doesn't have to tell a story or really say anything. Cinema can be abstract and just capture beauty without words or a message. Images communicate more than words, and a film is typically 60 images per second. So visually it's an incredibly powerful medium for art. But I just mean in general, most movies tell a story and have a script. Cinema is an extraordinary medium of art because it can encompass so many artistic mediums. Paintings, acting, music, theater, and countless other forms of art can be involved in making a movie. I can't think of any form of art that can encompass so many different mediums of art. But even a movie with no story where everything is just images and visual storytelling, it is still written. Before they go out with cameras they sit in rooms and write down ideas about what they want to film. The actual shooting of a movie can take weeks or months, but the writing process can take years. Can you shoot a great film with a terrible script? No, but you can tell a great story with terrible cinematography and lousy acting. On the surface everything can look beautiful, but if there is no substance deeper, then there will be nothing to inspire. Anyone can go and get an expensive camera, and pay talented experts in studios to polish up the visual presentation of a movie, but to capture something meaningful on camera, something truly moving, you have to first ask yourself why you are filming and what you are going to film. If the answers you find to those two questions aren't profound, then neither will your picture be profound. Because life itself is a spiritual experience, and nothing soulless can achieve true beauty.

And how many times have you heard, "The book was so much better than the movie." Take Lord of the Rings for example. The sets they built, the elaborate costumes, the high production value, and it pales in comparison to the books.

I vaguely recall hearing this slow motion discussed by other filmmakers. I think they said it had to do with reducing the frame rate. I'll try to watch Chungking Express soon, after Yi Yi. I got a little distracted with Jennifer Lawrence, and I need to catch up on some Westerns too.

I definitely agree that Wong Kar-Wai is very visual. He experiments with cinematography and that's always exciting to see. For me, realising that cinema was art was pretty gradual. I've always watched a lot of movies, ever since I was a kid. And I started getting interested in art gradually. I won awards for acting in a play and drawing when I was 14, and every year in high-school after that I continued entering regional art competitions and winning. I just loved drawing, but I don't think I had a clear concept of art until I was at least 19. Back then I wasn't drawing because I wanted to make art. I was just drawing because I wanted to draw. It wasn't very long ago that I started getting particularly interested in arthouse movies. Andrei Tarkovsky was the first great artistic filmmaker that made me want to pursue art films specifically. I struggled at first because I found a lot of artistic movies boring, but I could sense that there was something incredible that took time to learn to appreciate. I strove to find that, and with every art film I watched I could feel myself expanding. The first time a Marvel movie came out that I didn't watch was very exciting. Gradually my enjoyment of those kinds of movies was diminishing. I would often watch them anyway hoping they would be entertaining even though I knew they were going to be terrible. And I was disappointed so many times, but kept going back. Finally I was able to say to myself, "I'm done with them. I'm just not going to watch the next one." And I really had to fight the urge to watch it. But it felt like getting over a hurdle. I felt finally free from that garbage. It's a great relief to no longer be tempted to watch these terrible new Hollywood movies that keep coming out, like the recent Star Wars movies. When I watched Tarkovsky's Stalker, the first of his movies I saw, I had never been so captivated by opening credits before. While the opening credits were coming up there was such a fascinating scene unfolding in the background. Before that I'd always been bored by the opening credits. Like some sweeping landscape from a helicopter view of nothing exceptionally beautiful, just some trees and a lake, or a town, or something boring and bland. When I was a kid we would always fast forward through the opening credits (VHS back then). Now, the older I get, the more I learn, and the more I watch movies that push boundaries and expand my mind, the more and more excited I get about cinema. It's a never ending journey of excitement, growth, and exploration. I can't wait to discover what's next.

Someday I would like to make a truly great masterpiece of art that will be remembered after I'm gone. But art alone is not profound enough to devote myself entirely to. I can live with never creating a great artistic masterpiece, but I can't live without being devoted to something infinitely greater. Great art can only be great by pointing towards something greater. When another person sees art that reflects that, then they feel inspired. Without that, it can never be great art. Most people settle for entertainment, and I guess I can't blame them. But it is sad.


By "hardcore" I assume you're referring to sex and nudity? Or are you also referring to horror and violence?



Thanks for listing them. It was hard to follow everything. I put English subtitles on, and I can understand a little French, but he talked so fast I missed a lot of what he was saying. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days sounded really interesting. I have La Haine, but haven't watched it yet. I'm a big fan of Salo, that movie is brutal and Pasollini is a cinematic wizard. I don't know how I feel about The Towering Inferno. I keep hearing about it, but it also doesn't really look like a great movie. I dunno, I may get around to watching it someday, but it's not high on my list and more movies get added faster than I can watch them. So movies like that just get pushed down and down until I forget about them completely. I'm also not a fan of Dario Argento. That whole sort of school of Italian horror movies would be great if they had better acting. The only Dario Argento movies I liked were Deep Red and Two Evil Eyes.

I was happy to hear Noe praise Spring Breakers. It's funny to me that it's thought of as a controversial movie because some people think it's great and other people don't like it. Whenever I hear great filmmakers like Noe talk about it, it's always praised.

I love it when actors and filmmakers do this kind of thing, where they just discuss films they like or go into a movie store and talk about movies off the shelf.

Have you seen any of Yasujiro Ozu's films? Tokyo Story really captivated me with the way the camera was positioned looking down hallways while characters walked in and out of the shot.

im sorry I had to crop some of your quote otherwiswe it will take all the page . It was again really, REALLY intresting. Thank you very much for your insight. I've never watched any Noé movies because I heard they were superviolent. That was what I meant by gore. Second, if you are intrested in directors picking movies they're is 31 video on that youtube channel. Some of them are even in english like the one with edward norton or danny boyle. Theyre is also the closet picks by criterionchannel that last for 3-4 minutes top.






and for your question about ozu is yes even though I've not yet watched tokyo story I saw Good morning and I absolutly loved it. It's less revolutionary than tokyo story but the mood is amazing and the two brothers are so good at acting.

You should make your own version. Just get your phone and grab random movies that you have at home and say little tid bits about them. Of the clips you posted I liked Barry Jenkins the most. That guy has great taste in cinema. I'm not crazy about Edward Norton though. I loved Gaspar Noe's tidbits. Edward Nortan tends to say the same thing about every movie, and will often repeat himself three times. He just doesn't have vocabulary. He's always saying, "This movie is the best Noire of it's time, or of the last 30 years, or the best Modern Noire." It's always, "The best Noire of _____." Barry Jenkins is basically me every time I go into a video store. I say to myself, "I'm going to buy one movie." Then I see something else amazing on the shelf, "Oh Fanny and Alexander, how can I not buy that?" And like two or three hundred dollars later I'm like, "I need to go... I have to just leave. This is embarrassing..." I so badly wanted to buy that Casavettes collection, but I already had spent like a third of my pay check. I may buy it if I see it again. Man, now I want to like put a pile of movies on my bed and upload a really mediocre unedited video off my crappy phone just saying whatever comes to mind about random movies I pull up.

you should

Lol, well I started, but I'm having some technical issues.

visual storytelling 101


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ozu

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the next thing i want to talk about (later today) is the koulechov effect. Before I start I want to know if you guys have heard of it and if yes should i change topic then?

There is also the concept of visual metaphor, some more obvious than others. I will use an example in a film by a director that was previously mentioned, Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love.



This one is fairly obvious, so it should work well as an example. The shadows create the look of prison bars, which would hint at the couple being trapped by either their actions previously in the film or perhaps their current situation in life. The meaning of this same visual prison metaphor can change depending on the film. Here is another somewhat similar example from one of my favorite film noir, Out of the Past:



This is where she gets him! Jane Greer's Kathie Moffat is one of my favorite femme fatale characters, and certainly one of the most ruthless. Note the net, which is set up in a web-like fashion behind her. She seduces the main character here, trapping him forever in a situation he will never escape. Her name, Moffat, is a play on words for Little Ms. Muffet, from the nursery rhyme. Along came a spider, indeed.

Lastly, here is a third example that is a bit different in its concept, this time indicating a rebirth of a main character, as she floats in a fetal position in a womb-like environment with an umbilical cord visual. This one is almost too obvious, but it still worked in the context of the film.



All of those are fairly obvious and easy to spot. There are plenty of other examples, some more subtle than others, Keep an eye out for stuff like this! It only serves to enrich the visual storytelling of films.

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