People of a certain age (and certain hue) look back on old high school yearbook pictures with mixed feelings. Chances are, the more melanin you had, the less likely you would show up as anything more attractive than a smudge, a muddy smirk — or worse, a lurking presence — as you hovered in the back row of the chess club photo. Part of the problem is that racism was built into film processing. Until the 1990s, professional film developers compared the skin tones in photographs against a universal guide known as “Shirley cards” which helped them figure out the right mix of chemicals to process a photo properly. The Shirleys were always white and demure.
Read: Elder - these are a selection of short interviews with directors. Please read this and pay attention to the detail and depth- and personal content in the questions and answers in these interviews. These are a model for you to use in your writing about a director. I recommend the book too- it will be placed on reserve for your class, in case you are interested in any of the directors in this book- posted below
Table of Contents from Robert K Elder, The Film that Changed my Life. 30 Directors on their ephiphanies in the dark On reserve at the library
The auteur theory of cinema proposes that directors have styles and they should be recognized as artists much as we might identify the style of a painter or musician. For this project, we run with that idea.
This page features a series of works by students in RTD365A and clips from films by professionals that highlight aspects of their particular aesthetic focus.
Student film and below inspirational director Michel Gondry
bonus content! Michel Gondry film with David Cross as a turd
TErry Gilliam (12 Monkeys, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Three pairs of images from the film experiment carried out by the Russian psychologist Lev Kuleshov around 1920. Kuleshov discovered that audiences interpreted the actor's expression (the right of each pair, and all identical) in relation to the image it was paired with (left of each pair). The actor was perceived as hungry, sad, romantically intrigued, etc., depending on what was edited together with the actor. Kuleshov's results significantly influenced the development of montage theory.
Wherein two unrelated shots are connected in order to create a meaning, or to provide subjective motivation to a character.
SOVIET OR DIALECTICAL MONTAGE (Sergei Eisenstein)
CONTINUITY MONTAGE (DW Griffith)
Theory of montage:
Putting together shots to make a more interesting visual language.
Montage = assembly of shots
End of WWI
Russia impoverished and
after the end of WWI 160 million people
Film means of mass communication
pre-revolutionary cinema was a capitalist cinema- filmmakers were driven out
New cinema committee was created as well as a new film school
founded in 1919.
The world's first film school.
Newsreels were to be used to support the new regime- agitation and propaganda = agitprop
people also wanted to study film
Lev Kuleshov- was pre-revolutionary filmmaker who shot newsreels during the long civil war
He was allowed to set up his own workshop with students to study film.
INTOLERANCE- movie by DW Griffith was made in 1916 and was fascinating to the Russians who deconstructed the editing style and the shots themselves in order to understand film language.
Kuleshov Effect- alternating shots of the identical expressionless face between three other shots reveals that the shot of different objects will impact the way the audience interprets the
the meaning of film emerges not only from spatial composition but also
through the order or arrangement of the shots
CREATIVE GEOGRAPHY (viewer constructs geography themselves as they are guided by the arrangement of shots)
Film transcends space and time-= film is born in the edit
MONTAGE- from French verb monter = assemble
Sergei Eisenstein was a student at the school; considered a peer with Griffith who developed continuity and theatrical impact. Eisenstein used an intellectual approach to build ideas.
"Battleship Potemkin" the film was pure propaganda DIALECTICAL CINEMA--> Thesis--> antithesis --> Synthesis
(Marxist dialectic) image of state--> image of people rising up --> suppression by state
Suppression by the state --> helplessness (shot of vulnerable) --> brutal oppression
kinds of MONTAGE
METRIC MONTAGE (duration of cut)
RHYTHMIC MONTAGE
TONAL MONTAGE
OVERTONAL MONTAGE (how sequences play against each other)
IDEOLOGICAL MONTAGE (expresses abstract ideas by posing relationships)
(in Potemkin- the lions, priests and soldiers)
DW Griffith made films starting in 1908. Although we know him best for the racist film Birth of a Nation (1915), he had already developed many of the strategies about how to shoot and cut in order to create a realistic world. Some of the things he developed include the 180 degree rule and matching eyelines.
This was famous at the time for seeming real but being a total fake. "Holzman, an earnest young Godard-hound, decides to film his life in order to understand it—and only succeeds in ruining it. As a voyeur, a gentle intruder into other people’s lives, he can’t understand that the filming makes his subjects feel self-conscious, or that “reality” is altered by the presence of his camera and his tape recorder and his lavalier mike, which he calls his “friends.”" From IFC website
The zebra pattern is a guide for choosing the right brightness in a shot.
Learn where the Zebra button is on the HDR AX2000
When you select the zebra ON, the brightness level appears on the screen. It will not be recorded.
There should be some lines in your scene for it to be bright enough to record.
Lines in the brightest areas, say on the face, is a good indicator.
You can set the threshold of the Zebras to 70% or 100% or other values. The lower the number, the less sensitive they are-- useful for different complexions.. A lower value is better for people with darker complexions. Start by exposing at 70%
In the below image, it shows the lightest part of the scene, the sky.
If there are lines everywhere, or on more than half of the image, your scene is probably overexposed. Close down the IRIS, or change your aperture to AUTO.
Zebras covering the entire face means there is not enough shadow to show depth in the face.
Here's a good exposure. the IRE (zebra values) is set on 70%