Figure 8.49
Figure 8.50
His surprised face when he discovers that Keating is well aware of the situation and actually approves it is the first step toward the most dramatic resolution, the conflict with the institution.
Now we enter act three.
Act 3
And now the magic happens. Next time we get into the classroom is through the lenses of a camera that places us right in the middle of the action, while we follow the trash bin moving from hand to hand around the class and we land right in front of Keating addressing the class (Figures 8.51 to 8.55).
Figure 8.51
Figure 8.52
Figure 8.53
Figure 8.54
Figure 8.55
The following setup places us in a lower angle, lower then the eye level of the other students but right in the middle of all of them, so that when Professor Keating invites them to “huddle up,” we are right there with them (Figures 8.56 to 8.60).
Figure 8.56
Figure 8.57
Figure 8.58
Figure 8.59
Figure 8.60
He is sharing a secret and we want to hear it. In a few seconds, in the most important beat of the scene, our desire to be closer is satisfied and now we are going to be in the front row, right among our classmates listening to the final, inspiring words that will change their lives, and maybe ours, forever (Figures 8.61 to 8.66).
Figure 8.61
Figure 8.62
Figure 8.63
Figure 8.64
Figure 8.65
Figure 8.66
The reason is simple. We are not a spectator placed in the neutral position, the divider between teacher and students of the early shots. Now we are the students, we are part of his class and Professor Keating’s speech goes beyond the fourth wall.
The camera looks down on him, exactly how the other students are looking at him. His passionate address to the class and how the other students react happens right in our face, as if we were right there with them. This is the power of this amazing scene, masterfully written and directed, which has inspired millions of people around the world1.
The series of camera shots have transformed us from spectator to active characters in this “powerful play” that is life.
Because the question that Professor Keating is asking is not only for his students, it’s for each and every one of us. It’s the question that, after this long journey of sensorial exploration, I want you to think long and hard about before you answer: What will your verse be?
* * *
1 And if you are not sure about it, do some research on YouTube or Facebook and look what happened to the world when Robin Williams died. Search the words “Oh Captain, my captain” and if you were like me, watching this movie when you were between sixteen and twenty years old, I bet you are already choking up.
9.
Conclusion
Although the concept behind this book was clear in my mind early on, it was critical for me to be sure that I was working with more than just a fancy title.
Just as you took your journey reading these pages, I took mine while I was writing them and now I’d like to share with you two unexpected discoveries I made along the way.
The first one is about experiencing movies.
How to Experience Movies
One of my goals has been to help you learn how to experience life in a way that will aid your storytelling skills. Similarly, I hope that you have learned how to experience movies in a different way.
By now, you should be able to dissect scenes, shots, and acting beats to figure out how they work together. You can apply the methods I collected and analyzed for you about the Dead Poets Society scene in the Case Study chapter to any scene from any movie you like.
This is the beauty of it: another level of fun is awaiting you. Watching a scene to discover how and why it works adds another layer of appreciation.
You might think that I have ruined your ability to simply enjoy movies. On the contrary; I hope that I have added to your experience. One of my students recently told me that he couldn’t watch movies anymore without paying attention to many technical details, robbing him of a filmgoer’s simple pleasures. After analyzing the movies that he was watching we realized that it wasn’t his new approach; rather, the problem was that he was watching bad movies. Bad movies can’t pull him into the story and enable him to suspend his disbelief. With his senses very alert, he was noticing many more things that were wrong.
That’s why I suggest you follow the six steps of movie experiences:
Step 1: The Popcorn Experience
Watch the movie for the first time, possibly in a theater. Sit down, enjoy the trailers and the popcorn. The taste of the butter, the softness of the seat, the elbow of the stranger at your side, these are all part of the experience. Watch it and enjoy it. Let it pass through you and feel all the emotions. If it’s a good movie, you’ll store the memorable moments in your mind; if it’s a bad one, hopefully you’ll forget it soon.
Step 2: The Roger Ebert Experience
Go back to the movie or the scene you’d like to analyze, and take out your pen and notepad. Lean forward; it’s time to focus. Watch the scene and pay attention to what happened in the moments you remember, the ones you felt the most. Write down the time, the frame size, and the event for each.
Step 3: Play with Senses, Part 1 — No Sound
When one sense is turned off, other senses are heightened. While watching movies, this means that without sound it’s easier to notice nuances in performance, editing cuts, and even little mistakes (continuity errors). While you are in this mode, watch the scene at least twice. The first time, you’ll be surprised by the new discoveries; the second time, you’ll be able to keep a record of them all.
Step 4: Play with Senses, Part 2 — No Video
Now block out the images, but keep the sound on. The sound and music become another layer of storytelling hints and nuances that your overwhelming sense of sight was preventing you from taking in. Try to pay attention to how sound is also queued to affect your brain. In particular notice if the sound and music have been used to support or contrast the visual.
Step 5: Shot by Shot, Design the Blocking Diagram and Camera Setups
You should be familiar enough with this scene to be able to design the floorplan with the main props and furniture, the position and movement of the characters, and the position and movement of the camera. (As described in a previous chapter, the software Shot Designer http://www.hollywoodcamerawork.com/sd_index.html) can simplify and speed up your process quite a bit.) In particular for the camera setups, note the use of different shots from the same setup. Often, during the editing, we cut back and forth between a series of setups. For us it doesn’t matter how many times the footage from a certain setup is used; what matters is whether it comes from a common setup. A scene might have one hundred cuts but only two setups.
Step 6: Identify the Beats
For the last step you’ll need the support of the original script or a transcription of the scene’s dialogue. Then, start to notice which kind of shots were used to cover a certain part of the dialogue and, every time the coverage changes, ask yourself if it changed to merely follow the action, or did the change highlight an event? A beat? Remember the analysis that was done for the scene from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.
Following these six steps will allow you to reserve your first viewing of a movie for the full emotional experience. Then, switch hats and, in subsequent viewings, use your tools to learn from it.
Love at First Sight: The Importance of Opening Scenes
The second thing that surprised me while I was writing this book is the importance of the first few minutes of every movie. It is literally like falling in love at first sight.
While I was doing my
research I watched all the movies I wanted to reference from the beginning. It wasn’t the most time-effective approach but it was the richest and most emotional.
After comparing many opening scenes, I realized that there are different strategies a director can decide to use.
The range goes from “where the movie poster left you, the movie starts” to “a metaphorical exploration of the theme of the movie.”
Let’s start with a beginning that we are already familiar with — that Hitchcock masterpiece Rear Window.
The opening scene is absolutely astonishing, especially considering the technology that he had at his disposal at that time.
This is a classic example of what I call an “explicit” opening sequence.
The title of the movie is Rear Window and the very first thing that we see is… a rear window. No much subtext there.
It’s one of the best ways to pull the audience in, reinforcing what they know already by the title, the poster, and the log line of the movie. Show what it’s about: it’s about the title, of course. And if you paid attention to what I wrote in Chapter 2 about touch, you should know how rich the next few minutes are, where we are introduced to our protagonist and his world.
And if you think that this is an old way to introduce a story, look at the other movie we dealt with in Chapter 2: Back to the Future. A movie about time travel and the first things that we see are clocks, lots of them.
Again, with one shot, the director reveals so much information about the story and its characters.
Many other memorable movies begin with explicit opening sequences: Jaws starts with the point of view of the shark and Duel with the point of view of the car (Steven Spielberg always felt that the two of them were, basically, the same movie). But my ultimate favorite, the one most on the nose, is Star Wars. First thing you see are the stars, then the war. Simple and brilliant.
Other movies have opening shots and sequences that are more complex. Instead of showing us exactly what the title says, they are more abstract.
A good example is City of God, where the director created a metaphor for the rest of the movie through the point of view of the chicken.
As my editing teacher and mentor, Danny Green, told me once, this director was able to make us believe that a chicken can think.
The opening shot and sound establish a feeling (fear) but then the samba kicks in and the little story of the relentless chicken becomes a metaphor for the tone of the story that we are going to watch.
At the other extreme of the spectrum are those movies where the opening shot is a pure metaphorical representation of the film that follows. A masterful example of this one is The Godfather.
Starting with the words “I love America” on black, the opening immediately establishes the tone of the drama. The gigantic face charged with emotions… the screen slowly gets smaller and smaller revealing that the real giant of the scene is actually the godfather. A person who, with a gesture of his hand, can make things happen. A pure metaphor of what the Godfather trilogy is about: power.
Now, as you can see, it’s very important, as director and storyteller, to pay extreme attention to the first few frames of a movie. They are crucial to pull the audience in.
When you are thinking about your own opening scene, use the Director’s Checklist to finalize what really matters and see if the best way to go would be an explicit opening scene or a metaphorical one.
After this “sensorial journey” I hope that you’ll feel more comfortable in developing the skills and the creative approach that a director must have.
A director’s senses must be always alert, must always be at your disposal so that you can notice things in life that others might not. By now you should know more about yourself and the things that you care about, the story you really want to tell.
If you have followed the steps and the assignments, you definitely should be ready to move forward and be a powerful storyteller because your approach is going to be grounded in the truth of our perception of day-to-day life. After all, we are telling stories that are one big lie (sets instead of real places, lenses that capture a portion of the reality, actors instead of real people, etc.), but the goal is to go to the core of universal truths.
Remember: What you’ve learned is not static, what you’ve done and experienced is not over; being a director, a storyteller, is an ongoing process, is a 24/7 job, is a journey.
Good luck, and “May the Force be with you. Always.”
Appendix A
Movie References
Ran (1985) (Greenwich Film Productions)
The Matrix (1999) (Warner Bros.)
Rear Window (1977) (Paramount Pictures)
Back to the Future (1985) (Universal Pictures)
Nine (2009) (The Weinstein Company)
Avatar (2009) (20th Century Fox)
Jaws (1975) (Zanuck/Brown Productions)
Star Wars IV: A New Hope (1977) (LucasFilm Ltd)
The Big Chill (1983) (Columbia Pictures)
The Abyss (1989) (20th Century Fox)
Atonement (2007) (Universal Pictures)
City of God (2002) (O2 Films)
Saving Private Ryan (1998) (DreamWorks SKG)
Blade Runner (1982) (The Ladd Company)
The Godfather (1972) (Paramount Pictures)
The Usual Suspects (1995) (PolyGram Filmed Entertainment)
Dead Poets Society (1989) (Touchstone Pictures)
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) (C-2 Pictures)
Se7en (1995) (Cecchi Gori Pictures)
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) (Color Force)
Munich (2005) (DreamWorks SKG)
Alien (1979) (Brandywine Productions)
Shanghai Express (1932) (Paramount Pictures)
Desire (1936) (Paramount Pictures)
Friday Night Lights (2006) (Imagine Television)
Children of Men (2006) (Universal Pictures)
Appendix B
Book References
Directing Feature Films by Mark Travis (Michael Wiese Productions, Second Edition)
The Visual Story by Bruce Block (Focal Press, Second Edition)
Kazan on Directing by Elia Kazan (Vintage)
John Badham on Directing by John Badham (Michael Wiese Productions)
Making Movies by Sidney Lumet (Alfred A. Knopf)
Directing Actors by Judith Weston (Michael Wiese Productions)
Making a Good Script Great by Linda Seger (Silman-James Press)
The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Storytellers & Screenwriters by Christopher Vogler (Michael Wiese Productions)
Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman (Warner Books)
Making a Good Script Great by Linda Seger (Silman-James Press)
The Art of Plotting: How to Add Emotion, Excitement, and Depth to Your Writing by Linda J. Cowgill (Back Stage Books)
Writing Short Films: Structure and Content for Screenwriters by Linda J. Cowgill (Lone Eagle Publishing)
If It’s Purple Someone Is Going to Die: The Power of Color in Visual Storytelling by Patti Bellantoni (Focal Press)
Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder (Michael Wiese Productions)
About the Author
Simone Bartesaghi’s background is in economics. He has an MBA from one of the most ancient universities in the world (University of Pisa, Italy). He had been a quality management consultant for ten years. But all of this belongs to the past. In 2004 Simone decided to pursue his childhood dream: to become a filmmaker.
A kind of late wake-up call (Simone was thirty-two at that time) came in the form of a special prize he won with a short movie called Believer. The prize was the prestigious Milan International Film Festival Scholarship for the one-year, full-immersion filmmaking program at the Los Angeles Film School.
When Simone landed with his wife in Los Angeles on October 15, 2004, their plan was to consider the following twelve months as an amazing opportunity to experience a beloved foreign country.
The challenges of a new language and a new way of living were already overwhelming, but when Simone started to receive the recognition of his peers and the attention of his teachers, they knew they had to face bigger decisions. They knew that to start all over was going to be tough. With determination, strength, unity, and passion they embarked on a personal and professional journey.
Ten years later, so much has been accomplished. Simone doesn’t dream about making movies anymore, he is a professional filmmaker, awarded in several international festivals both as a screenwriter and as a director.
The economics background and the creative instinct have been merged in the skills that Simone uses daily. As a director he develops new projects with his production company, SIBA MEDIA LLC, and as adjunct professor at Santa Monica College he teaches filmmaking both for the Degree and the Community Education programs.
www.sibamedia.com
[email protected]
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