Noise. We all were shocked the first time we listened to a recording of something we’d also heard firsthand, because we realized that the microphone was picking up all sorts of “background noise,” also called “ambient sound.” Airplanes, flies, birds, radiators, elevators, bed springs, you name it—it’s there and it’s distracting. A good mixer on the set will call your attention to these nasty noises, and you’d better decide then and there how you intend to handle them. Waiting until later, unless you’re unbearably pressed for time, is not a good idea. Can you get the microphone closer? Can you send an A.D. over to the man cutting wood next door (Where was he when you scouted the location?) and ask him to hold it for a few hours? Should you go ahead with a plan to dub in the voices later (expensive)? Or what? Discuss it with your team. They’ve been here before. But the decision and the responsibility is yours. Just remember to be sensitive and alert to noises of all kinds.
One solution is the “wild line.” This is the term used for the practice of recording an actor’s line (or lines) with the microphone close to the actor and no film rolling. Why? So that the editor will have the option of “laying in” the wild line in place of the noisy line recorded during the filming of the shot. This also requires, by the way, that you record “wild sound” of the background to lay in on another track so that the gaps cut out of the original track won’t be as noticeable. Tricky? Sure, but the wild line is a time-honored practice and a reasonable solution to the problem of microphone placement and noisy locations. (I used to work with a child actor who got softer and softer during a scene. Rather than do the scene over again, we had him read wild lines one at a time after the scene, which could be cut in during wide or medium shots— ” synched up” is the industry expression—and the practice saved us lots of time.) Wild sounds of birds, automobiles, and so forth can also be a great help when the sound effects editing is going on.
Nuance. The most important sound problem is also the most important opportunity. When a microphone gets hold of an actor or actress, it transforms the sound that you’ve heard during rehearsal into something else. These are not gross changes, but they are important ones. Take the time to listen to your actors on the headset during the first takes of a shoot. Your A.D. will wait. Is that what you wanted? If not, ask the mixer what to do. Be alert for changes. Generally, a sound person won’t want to exchange microphones during a shoot precisely because that will cause a different timbre in the sound, which will have to be corrected between takes or shots in the mix. But maybe something is wanted for one scene that a microphone change can accomplish. Or maybe a different microphone has to be used because of logistical problems (a shotgun, an RF, another kind?). Be aware of the differences that change will make, and then go ahead if you have to. But you’ll know what you’re listening for and what will happen when it gets transferred back to 16mm magnetic track in the editing room.
LIGHTING
Let’s talk about picture again. As the shoot progresses, you will find that all sorts of things are happening. For one thing, your D.P. will have put lights up and created effects that cause quite different results from what you anticipated. You will see images that are quite wonderful. And— most importantly—you will see opportunities that you hadn’t dreamed possible, ones you can convey to your D.P. Don’t shrink from doing so. If it costs too much or takes too much time, someone will tell you!
You will begin to see subtle uses of backlight and sidelight or, conversely, you will see opportunities for more creative lighting. Take these opportunities, but don’t be surprised at the time or trouble it takes. I remember shooting inside a house in November, when the wind began to blow. We didn’t hear the storm, because the house was well insulated, but we noticed that the light was moving back and forth, creating all sorts of moving shadows that we didn’t want. Outside the window, swaying like the Empire State Building in a tornado, was a large HMI on a scaffolding. On top of the scaffolding with the light, and holding on for dear life, was a young juicer, who had just started in the business. He had been sent up to “steady the light” but was being shaken about instead. It had taken a long time to get the lamp up there and the shot was important. Rather than wait for the wind to stop, however, I decided I’d add sound effects of wind blowing and shoot an exterior scene of trees shaking. Since the film was a mystery, with lots of odd things going on, this would work pretty well and allow us to keep on shooting. (If the film had been a romance or a comedy, I don’t know what we would have done.) You may have to be inventive to get around some of the problems caused by your lighting. And you may, sometimes, have to give up some imaginative lighting because it will take too long or be too costly.
LENSES
The shot doesn’t look the way you thought it would. You’d envisioned a tight shot through a misty morning, with the background out of focus, but when the D.P. tries to give you that—with a 105mm lens— the frame doesn’t take in enough of the subject matter. There is no room to move the camera back, so he or she “throws on” (don’t ask me why, but lenses are thrown on) a wider lens, say, a 55mm, and the focus isn’t what you wanted: the background is crystal clear, distracting the audience from the foreground actor. A number of questions may occur to you at this point.
You might question why the D.P. has to change lenses at all. Why can’t he just zoom to a different focal length? The answer is that zoom lenses are not the best lenses to use. First of all, “prime” lenses (so called because they are limited to a single focal length, but also implying “first-rate”) are generally faster (that is, they let in more light) and the glass is generally less distorting, so they give a sharper, “cleaner” picture. But there are other reasons to avoid using zoom lenses, even in documentary work, and it’s worth taking a few lines to discuss the issue.
When a camera is moved toward or away from an object, the amount the viewer sees, of both the object and the background, changes: if it gets very close we can’t see the full width of either of them. But the amount cut off the object and its background differs depending on how far away each is from camera. For instance if I move toward a man standing twenty feet from a building with ornate columns but only three feet from the camera (see drawings on the following page), I will get to the man and have a close shot of him without cutting off much of what’s behind him. If, on the other hand, he stands only three feet from the columns and I move toward him, I will still get a close-up of him but cut off a great deal of what’s to either side of and behind him. This change in “perspective” occurs simultaneously with the change in the size of shot. With a zoom lens, however, change in size of shot occasions no changes in perspective, since the camera itself isn’t varying its distance from either man or background. (It is the change in relative distance from different objects that causes variation in perspective.) This means that the way we (humans, not cameras) normally see the world—with changes in perspective as we approach two or three objects at different distances from each other and from us—is mirrored by a camera that moves and is not mirrored by a zoom lens.
A man stands between two columns. Let’s look at two camera positions.
In the first, with the camera at twelve feet from the man, we can get a fairly wide shot like this with a normal (50mm) lens.
If we move the camera closer, say, to four feet, using the same lens we get a medium shot of the man without the columns. (They “move aside!”).
If, on the other hand, we stay at twelve feet and use a zoom to get closer to the man, we also get a magnified view of the columns. The point is that sense of perspective (what happens when we physically move toward or away from objects) is lost with a zoom and retained with a physical camera move. With the zoom, the images simply get bigger, as if we were using a magnifying glass or an enlarger. When the camera actually moves, each change in perspective (from far to near) happens much as when we walk; with a zoom, things change the way they do if we simply moved closer to a photograph.
The result of all this? In my estimation, it
is that a zoom lens provides a strange, abstract, nonaesthetic move, while a camera on a dolly (or handheld) provides a “natural” move. The zoom lens is a godsend when you are shooting news or when you can’t avoid being in a tight spot and need to get a close shot of something fast. But it’s a pretty crude mechanism to use when you want to get closer to an actor or actress and make the background seem “right” in relationship to the character. Do it the right way: put your camera on a dolly, lay down tracks, and move camera, lens, and dolly toward or away from the actor. An exception to this “rule” is that a good camera person, using handheld movement and a zoom lens, can provide a partial change in perspective by zooming at the same time he or she is providing lateral— that is, sidewise—movement. Since the sidewise movement is making a change in perspective, the “flat” nature of the zoom is not quite as noticeable. It is a cheap, sometimes effective way of getting around financial difficulties involved with dollies, track, and man power.
Using a zoom lens can also get you into other sloppy habits. For instance, since the zoom provides only in-and-out movement, a director or D.P. may end up forgoing the wonderful world of sideway movement because the zoom doesn’t give it. Only a dolly can provide graceful, smooth, sidewise, forward, and backward movement. Use it.
A second question that could arise in the changing of lenses just described is, “Who cares?” Does the choice of lens make enough difference to bother with? Why not simply move the camera backward or forward to accommodate? One answer is that this is not always possible, but that begs the main question, to which a resounding yes must be given. The depth-of-field notion has to do with how much of a particular shot is in focus in front of, and behind, the object upon which your primary focus is fixed. The longer the lens, the less depth-of-field; the wider the lens, the more depth-of-field. Most people study depth-of-field in order to be sure to have things in focus, and you learn how to “stop down” (that is, use a higher f-stop, requiring more light) in order to achieve that greater focus.
But to have everything in focus all the time is very boring, and most directors and D.P.s purposely use long lenses, with less depth-of-field, to create “soft” backgrounds or foregrounds, with only a selected object in focus. In fact, control over focus is only one thing a variety of lenses can bring to a film, and you will probably have done a good deal of the preparation for this concept when you started thinking about how your film or videotape was going to look.
Now, however, back to our shot. The D.P. has changed from 105mm to 55mm lens, and it’s no longer a matter of thinking about the picture—you can see it. What difference is there in the two lenses? The 105mm not only makes the background a little less in focus, it brings the background closer to the camera; it sharpens the features of the actors, making them thinner, with their noses less broad and shorter. If the camera is very close to them, their eyes are in better focus than their ears, creating a sense of isolation of that crucial part of the human face. The 55mm, on the other hand, flattens out the picture a little more. Shift to a wider lens—say, 28mm—and features that were sharp are broader; you not only include more in the picture (hence, “wide” lenses), but what is included is fatter and/or wider. Everything begins to be in focus, making it harder to fasten attention on any one item.
But we’ve only begun. What happens to light and color when lenses of varying length are used? If the background is out of focus, the color and light on the background “spreads” to create a pattern that is quite different in effect from the same background in sharp focus. A red lantern hung on a wall behind a sea captain “smears” into a soft red smudge when he is shot with a long lens. Bright patches of light, often distracting or ugly when in focus, become attractive crystals when out of focus. And what about movement? Take this shot: a running woman, dashing through the undergrowth in pursuit of a rabbit, is followed through a long lens (with careful attention to “follow focus,” as it’s called). The background and the foreground are out of focus, so she is seen by the camera as if she were the only creature on earth, and almost as if we were eavesdropping from a great distance. If you use a wider lens and get closer to her, the camera is forced to move along with her. Things are in focus, and the chase seems nowhere near so “panicked.” We all know the effect of filming a running horse with a long lens, as it comes right at the camera. It seems to come on and on, never getting any closer. With a wide lens, the same animal comes on much faster, going from a dot in the screen to a close-up animal in a few seconds. So, if you are trying to achieve a sense of quick movement, a wide-angle lens and a head-on shot will do it.
A discussion of the varieties of effects caused by changes of lenses could go on forever. The purpose here is not to outline all the possibilities, but to make it clear that experimentation with a variety of lenses is part and parcel of the creative baggage you bring to a shoot. When your D.P. changes lenses, you should anticipate the effect it will have; you should verify it by looking through the camera; and you should put the lesson into your lexicon for future use. Above all, you should think of shots not as fixed images, but as flexible ones, with each variation dependent upon the particular lens you choose to use.
DECORUM
You want people to behave in a certain way in order to accomplish certain goals. How do you create this situation? Well, in part, that depends on you: how you talk on the set, how you ask for people to do things, how you expect people to talk to you.
There are two sides to this. One is the question of personality— that is, who you are as a person. The second, equally important, is what has to be done in order to get a good scene.
If you’re an irritable kind of person, greedy, pushy, hard to get along with at home, it’s not likely you’ll change on the set. If you’re a nice, soft-spoken, polite person, with plenty of ego strength, you can behave well on the set and still get a good movie made. I know that goes against the image of the tough, demanding, jodhpurs-wearing director, screaming at his cohorts and exhorting them to do their utmost, despite the rains and the snakes. But in fact, the opposite works. One of the sweetest men I know is a director of one of the most expensive, time-consuming PBS shows, using seven cameras and a crew of thirty. I’ve never heard him raise his voice; I have always heard him say “please.” And the show is impeccably directed. Just because you shout and work people ten hours overtime every night doesn’t mean that the film will be “creative.” Okay, but what if you’re the kind of person who feels good shouting at people and who never says “please” and can’t operate any other way? I guess you’ll have to keep on doing that, but it certainly is unpleasant and I think you’ll find that it wears thin after a while. Your teammates may respect your craft, your art, but I don’t know if they’ll respect you.
What do you have to do to achieve the kind of scene you want? Do you have to be hushed on a set where you’re shooting a tragedy? Should you laugh and joke on a set that’s doing a comedy? What kind of clothes are required? I’m afraid there’s no single answer to this. Some actors need quiet sets and peaceful surroundings to be able to concentrate on even the funniest lines. Others, even in a serious film, can make jokes just before they go into the set, so good is their concentration. So be it. Learn what your actors need—and what you need—and ask for it. Nicely.
THE LONG SHOOT
It rained yesterday, and you had to use the alternate (rain date) scenes. It rained the day before and you had to use those alternate scenes. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow. You’re depressed, and no one can blame you. But three successive days of rain is not the only depressant in a long film shoot (or a short one, for that matter). You’ve moved from the long buildup of the preproduction days into the fast, hectic pace of the first days of a shoot. The adrenaline is going, the actors are delivering, you’re finding your feet. And then, without warning, you wake up one morning and decide you don’t want to be out there shooting. Too many little things have gone wrong. Maybe the producer doesn’t understand what you’re doing, hasn’t hea
ped enough praise on you. Maybe your own internal critical mechanism is at work. Whatever it is, rain or lack of praise, you’re depressed. How do you cope? Part of what’s happening is that your system is coping, it’s adjusting to the time span. You can’t keep the adrenaline going sixteen days in a row. There has to be some letdown so your body can handle it. Part of what’s also happening is that the film shoot is becoming a “job.” You never thought that could happen, did you? Filmmaking is so exciting, so creative, so full of wonderful events that it couldn’t just degenerate into a routine. Sure it could. And does. Don’t let it all disappoint you. There are a lot of good directors who shoot forty weeks a year, and for them life would be an impossible nightmare if they treated each and every shoot as if it were a creative orgy. Some of what you’re doing is pure art and some is the work of a craftsperson.
Routinizing some of your work will actually help you be more creative in other parts of the work. As for the lack of praise—well, there’s nothing to do but wait. If the film is as good as you think it is, then praise will come eventually, and from some very strange and wonderful places. If not, then there’s always another film.
9
The Digital Realm
I made a promise earlier in this book not to get too technical. There are already wonderful books on the market that compare the physical nature of videotape with film, or talk about the way various film and video cameras work, or show how to set up different kinds of equipment and how to edit on diverse kinds of devices. Where I have ventured into technical matters, it was to demonstrate the relationship between technology and the creative direction you may wish to employ. In other words, the freedom to be a creative director often depends on a modicum of technical knowledge. This brief foray into the digital realm is another exception to my general rule to stay away from nuts and bolts, because digital directly affects many young directors and writers—and some older ones as well. I will tell you, for instance, that the ease of using digital cameras has turned me from a producer-director-writer into a director-cameraman at a late stage in my life.
Directing for Film and Television Page 17