In addition to matters of dialogue, you will, of course, want to get the actors “on their feet.” You will show them the movements you have planned for them and the movements you have planned for the camera. This is a good time for you to check those camera moves, by the way. (Don’t be afraid to do the stereotypic thing of holding your fingers as if they were a movie frame and viewing through them. Let people laugh!) You will find that certain moves bother some of the actors. They won’t seem real to them. Listen carefully. If the moves do bother them, there may be a good psychological reason. It may be that to move two lovers away from each other works for your camera, but is stupid for them. Don’t get caught by your ego or your weeks of preparation. That’s what rehearsals are for. On the other hand, if you think the move is important—that it shows the tension between the two lovers—then keep it and explain why to your actors. Rehearsals are also good times to establish your relationship with them. Later on, during shooting, you may have to use shorthand and forget some of the niceties; whatever personal relationships were established during rehearsals will come in handy.
None of this will be possible if you’re just having a reading, and you’ll miss a lot of important things. The sad fact is, in film and television, that rehearsing is a “bonus,” which must seem strange to theater people, because rehearsals are crucial to them—so crucial that it’s inconceivable how we can get along without them. (Looking at all the things you can accomplish with rehearsals, it’s often inconceivable to me, too.) And, of course, you shouldn’t have to get along without them. But very often you aren’t given the time to have them, no matter how hard you fight.
TIME OUT
What is it about, if not the script and the actors? The producer’s answer may be that actors in Hollywood have long ago gotten used to working on scripts, coming on to the set, and “just doing it.” You answer that this accounts for a lot of the junk coming out of the film industry. He says, “Sure, but what about the good stuff?” And you think to yourself, “Yes, what about the good stuff? How does anyone manage to get a good film without rehearsal?” And the answer probably is good scripts, directors who pay attention to detail, and actors who have gotten used to the system, who work on scripts by themselves, knowing they’ll have to come to the set and “do it.” In fact, film acting is different from stage acting, and good actors know that there are many things to adapt to: the fact that they will have to repeat a line or a scene endlessly within the space of a few hours; that they don’t “project” their voices to the thirteenth row center, but only as far as the microphone hanging over their head; that gestures and movement have to be held down; and that rehearsals are a bonus, not a given. Strangely, many actors have, indeed, learned how to “deliver” under these circumstances. Not that they’re not grateful for a bona fide rehearsal, but they can still act without them.
For you, of course, it’s another matter. You’re a director of actors, not just shots, and you want and need your rehearsal so that you can make the film the way you want it to be. Period. Nothing makes up for real rehearsals.
TIME IN
SPECIAL EFFECTS AND PROPS
Some years ago, I needed a couple of dead ducks. They were to be carried at the waist of a hunter and figured in a close-up in which they would be swinging madly as the hunter ran. The prop man came to me a week before the shoot and told me that only domestic ducks were available without sending to England, so I suggested that he look for a bird that was available here and could be made to look like a duck. The day of the shoot, he asked me out to the garage of the house where we were on location and showed me the three “ducks” he had prepared. They were painted with makeup and feathers and looked like ducks to me. I didn’t even want to know what they had been in their previous incarnations—or where he had gotten them!
This prop man was wonderful. Nothing called for in the script escaped his attention. Were the plants going to be the right height? Don’t count on it. He’d have some “lifts” just in case. Did the rifle for the hunter have the right bore? Did I want him to shoot on camera? Then he’d have to get special shells that wouldn’t be too loud for the microphone but that would give enough kick so the actor playing the hunter would look right. And so on. And this wasn’t a difficult film, “prop-wise.”
Property men and women used to be responsible for such “simple” special effects as bullets hitting into a doorframe around a gun-fighter’s head, or water draining out of a glass just sitting on a table. Today, with films such as The Matrix, or the almost commonplace morphing of body parts, major special effects are handled off the set, in postproduction, using computers. What can we say about such things here? Be prepared. Think ahead. If getting the right location is inherently important to your film, then realizing that a special effect or prop has to be invented or rigged up is doubly so. You wouldn’t have included it in your script if it wasn’t. From making a dog look like a wolf to blowing up the Taj Mahal to having a cigarette lighter that looks like a gun, prop and special effects people are crucial. But your preparedness and your care in alerting them are equally so. We all like to think of directing as having to do with shots and actors. Fine, that’s the glamour end of it. It also has to do with all the things we’ve talked about in this chapter, which add up to lots of hard work, diligence, talking to craftspeople, and looking ahead, and nowhere is that more important than having the thoughtfulness to look for prop pitfalls and alerting the right people. In the budget in chapter 2, the property person was brought on early (look at the number of days). That’s no accident. Being prepared for even the simplest shoot requires lots and lots of technical preparation.
What you have done up to now is extremely useful. You have conceived a film, from script through look. You have met with your team, and you have rehearsed with actors—we hope. But your many tasks, which have proceeded simultaneously, have only begun. What about the shots—the building blocks on which your film is actually filmed? In the next chapter, we take a close look at them.
11 If not a rehearsal, you may at least get a reading—a quasi-rehearsal kind of thing in which the producer, the associate producer, the continuity person, and you sit around and give the actors a chance to run through the lines of the whole script. Your continuity person “puts a watch to it” to get times; you listen for pace and rhythm; and you all try to make the most of it.
6
Getting Ready (III): Shots and Setups
We come now to what many directors think of as the primary role of the craft—the shots. When I quoted Bruce Beresford earlier in this book, there was little doubt that he considered how the shots were planned to be a crucial part of the directorial art. I have spent a lot of time on other matters because I believe them to be equally important; but, certainly, what shots you are using, and how you will cut them together, is a huge part of directing.
In chapter 4, we discussed shots as part of an overall look, but now we need to get down to the nitty-gritty of how to plan them. You will be planning shots at the same time that you are addressing other issues. Because books are linear things, we must take each aspect as if it were performed in chronological order. The planning of shots and setups occurs at all stages of the production. “Setup” is the industry term for every time you move your camera and “set it up” somewhere else. It’s a very important concept in filmmaking; its importance lies in a number of areas: (1) How many setups you need to make your film, that is, how many times you need to move your camera in order to get the number of shots you’ve planned; (2) How you plan your setups so as to spend the maximum amount of time shooting and the minimum moving your camera; and (3) How many setups a good crew can get in a day. The last is a kind of question a production manager will ask, but you can see how important it is to your work.
THE SHOTS
How many shots do you need? What are they? This is not the same question we asked in chapter 4, where our goal was to visualize the film. This is a much more mundane, much more technical matter, and yet i
t is important, because it impinges on the look of your film in a very direct way.
To some extent, this business takes us back to very elementary matters: the grammar of film. How are we to get from shot A to shot B? How many shots are needed to cut together a sequence?
The basic sequence of shots that everyone learns is: wide shot, medium shot, close shot. In general, any sequence can be cut together if there are as many shots as there are people. In other words, a scene with two people requires two shots. (This doesn’t quite work when you get down to a single person, because you can’t “cut together” a single shot, but otherwise it makes sense.) As you get up to a larger number of actors, say, five, you can actually cut together a scene with as few as three shots—a wide shot of all five, then a two-shot and a three-shot. Having said that, we really have said very little. What’s possible is not necessarily attractive or creative. Are your shots matched? That is, do they bear some resemblance to each other? Look at this sequence: a close shot of one actor; next, a medium or wide shot of an actress; then back to the close shot of the first actor. This gives a certain impression that you may not intend to convey, namely, that the first character is more important than the second. So, if you’re going to shoot a close shot and a medium one, you will want to shoot medium shots and close shots of both actors, giving a minimum of four shots for two people. And if you add ECUs, then that’s six shots. And, if you think it’s necessary, how about an “establishing” shot of some sort— seven. Or, possibly, two over-the-shoulder shots—now we’re up to eight. There could be more, and often are! How many do you need?
This question refers us back to chapter 4 and what it is you’re trying to convey, and how complex you need to be to do it. But you must think through not only the final shots you want to have in your film, but also the shots you need to shoot in order to be able to make choices about editing when the whole thing comes down to the editing room. In other words, a beginning director will think that he or she wants to have a tracking shot of two lovers, ending in a close shot on the man, and, so, will shoot such a shot. In the editing room, however, the editor wants to “intercut” a shot of the woman. And the editor may also want a shot of the two of them, without the move. If the director has been so sure of what he or she wants that the other shots haven’t been made, then the option isn’t there. (This is called, “cutting in the camera.”) Few directors are that certain of themselves, but many still don’t take these shots—they forget, they don’t think about it, they . . . ? So, you won’t let that happen. You will write down all the shots, and you will keep in mind the basic “grammar” lessons and give yourself options in the editing room. But not too many options. Which brings us back to the basic question, How many shots do you need? Let’s try another approach.
“Matched” pair of over-the-shoulder shots.
“Matched” close-ups
You have a limited amount of time on the set. You can’t spend all day shooting the same scene over and over again. To take eight or ten different shots of a short scene, with all the fluffs and problems with camera moves, would probably tire your actors beyond repair and weary your producer’s patience. What you actually do shoot will be a compromise between giving yourself all the options you might want in the cutting room, and skimping. The number of shots is not the only problem; variety is another, and also height, angle, and size.
Let’s go back to our two lovers. They are seated on a couch, not quite certain whether or not to go to the bedroom in the background. In order to accentuate the bedroom, we need to see it, but if we shoot from a low angle at the lovers, the couch back will cut off the door to the bedroom—the enticement will be lost to the audience. So this wide shot, which includes the couch, the two lovers, and the door to the bedroom in the background must be from a fairly high angle. Then, if you wish, and you have a dolly or crane to help you, the camera can lower as it pushes in on the two-shot of the two lovers. This so-called combination shot gives you, in one “setup,” two needed shots: a wide or “cover” shot and a medium two-shot. The two-shot, from a lower angle, is a little more romantic than if you shot down on the lovers; however, were they lying on the bed, a high two-shot, looking down at them, might be quite effective.
Next, you will probably want some kind of individual shots of the two, to be able to cut back and forth between them as they talk of their feelings and prepare for the move to the bedroom. Will these be two single shots or two over-the-shoulder shots? What considerations come up? You can’t get extremely “tight” (that is, close) using over-the-shoulder shots because you have to keep a piece of the shoulder of the person in the foreground in the shot. If you want to have a passionate tight shot, you will probably want to make it two tight singles. On the other hand, if you are more interested in the continuing relationship between these two people, two over-the-shoulders might do. If the scene is very short, you could even “play” it in the medium two-shot you came to from the high “cover” shot that opened the scene, but that would mean you would have no way of cutting into the scene if there’s a line flub and no way of changing the pace or timing of the scene in the editing room (because there are no other shots to go to). So, in this case, your compromise could easily be the high shot, moving into a medium two-shot, followed by two over-the-shoulder shots or two singles. Three shots in all.
What about when the lovers do get up and go into the bedroom? How do you cover that? Again, there are many choices. You could move the camera around until it shoots from the doorway of the bedroom itself, seeing them on the couch in the background (this is often called a “reverse” shot) and then, when they arise and come toward the bedroom, they will be coming to camera, getting bigger and bigger until they pass under (over? by?) the camera and the shot ends (to be continued in the bedroom). You could shoot from the same high shot you started with, allowing them to go into the background, keeping them in sight all the way into the bedroom and to the bed, but keeping them small in the shot so as to be a little more “discreet.” You could also track the camera with them as they get up and move into the bedroom, paying strict attention to the passionate looks and murmurs you couldn’t (realistically) hear from either of the other two shots. Or, finally, you could hold onto the couch in the medium shot, letting them go out of the frame entirely, and wait for the bedroom door to “click” closed offscreen. Whichever of these choices you make, it is obvious that you must have in mind the eventual effect of the different shots, the effect you want to create, the time it will take to make each shot, how many options you want to give yourself in the cutting room and, yes, how many options the editor and producer will want in the cutting room.
But it is not just any old option you want in the final edit. Some shots just won’t cut together. When we talk of different size shots, different angles, and different heights, we are talking about “grammar” again. Just as is true of the English language, film language has rules of its own. Some of those rules are made to be broken by innovators, but some are certainly made to be kept by beginners. For instance, I have made reference to “cover” shots, and I have suggested that these are wide shots. They are more than that; they are shots used to “cover” yourself, shots that allow something to go wrong and everything to come out all right in the end. What is it that goes wrong? Very often, it is the inability to get two shots to cut together the way you want them to. This can be for a wide variety of reasons, but let’s take just two of them.
GRAMMAR
Generally, you cannot cut together two shots of the same person if the shots are the same size. Two single shots or two medium shots of the same person from the same height and angle don’t go together in the cutting room without getting what we call a “jump cut,”12 whereas a medium shot cuts very nicely to a close shot. This grammatical problem is solved by using two or three different shots, usually a wide one, a medium one, and a close one, and cutting them together. In beginning film classes, I tell students that the best way to make sure that shots cut together is t
o change not only the size of the shot, but the angle as well. In the early days of film, directors took their wide shot, their medium shot, and their close shot (when they took the latter at all) from the same height and angle—usually straight on. Not in today’s’ films, where the wide shot may be from a high or low angle, the medium shots from raked angles, and the close shots from more varied angles. This new approach solves not only the problem of grammar (eliminating jump cuts and providing a smooth, varied series of shots), but helps eliminate problems of mismatching as well.
MISMATCHING
When the same scene or series of lines is played over and over again in different size shots, actors, directors, continuity people, and camera people can make mistakes, which often take the form of mismatches. A hat that was taken off on one line in the medium shot is taken off on a different line in the close-up. A person walks or moves an arm earlier in the wide shot than in the medium shot. The angle of the head is up here, down there. You don’t notice this in most films, precisely because the changing size and angle of the various shots throw your attention off the mismatch and onto the action. So, one of the reasons for the variety of angle, height, and size of shots is to eliminate the mismatches that may have occurred when you came to them in the cutting room.
Directing for Film and Television Page 13