Cinema- Concept & Practice

by Edward Dmytryk

  The sad fact that every generation has its records of people driven by starvation to eat almost anything, including other people, makes the situation believable. But what makes this innately tragic scene extremely funny is that Chaplin eats the boiled boot delicately, as if he were a gourmet dining on pheasant under glass, while the hallucinating Swain, a huge hulk, sees and stalks Chaplin as if the comedian were a man-sized chicken. If the basic predicament were not so completely credible and worthy of the viewer’s concern, the comedy would be seen as completely contrived.

  There are a number of situations, however, where believability can bring us to the brink of disaster. In the present context, the foregoing examples are the reverse of what happens in more serious films. Comedy scenes of suspense carry built-in relief; laughter is their reason for being. In straight drama, suspense, or good horror films, that is obviously not the rule. When such films are realized, scenes of suspense can reach a point where viewers react in fear— a few may scream—even though something at the back of their minds assures them this is only make-believe and, whatever happens, the endangered character(s) cannot actually be hurt.

  Such a feeling will remain subliminal until the suspense becomes unendurable, at which point, like a dreamer rejecting a terrifying nightmare, viewers will pull themselves back into their real reality—the theater and the people around them. That is why “safety valves” are essential. The more compelling the scene the greater the obligation to provide viewers an opportunity to extricate themselves from intolerable emotions, such as fear, suspense, and sorrow, before they are forced to deny the film’s reality.

  But I’m ahead of myself, slipping into an analysis based on a filmmaker’s point of view rather than that of a film theorist, speaking of emotion and involvement rather than of how these two factors can best be realized in a medium composed of two-dimensional images accompanied by mechanically recorded sound, each in turn much bigger and louder than life.

  Two essential elements of a script, plot construction and character development, are much the same in all of the narrative media. But when the end product is meant for the screen, the unique tools and techniques of the motion picture make possible special treatment

  Charlie Chaplin was a master of the comic film. In this scene from The Gold Rush, he and Mack Swain fight off hunger. Photograph courtesy of Charles Chaplin Films.

  of plot and character which can render that product more believable and more effective in reaching and touching the viewer.

  To be sure, the reasons for making commercial films have little to do with the tools of the trade; content, if considered separately, is more important than structure. Certainly, technique without substance is purely of parochial interest. On the other hand, effective and challenging ideas are, in themselves, not enough. By a creative alignment of carefully chosen words an exceptional author can elicit more emotion and illuminate more ideas in a single paragraph than a routine scribbler can manage in a whole book. Filmmakers must have an equal talent; the radiant “visions” they so frequently invoke become tiresome twaddle if transferred to the screen in unknowing fashion.

  Some mastery of filmmaking techniques is essential for effective translation of vision into image, but in the working world it is at this level that misunderstanding persists, and that much of the conflict between writer and director arises. As a rule, writers are not trained to think in terms of cinematic images, action, and reaction; words are their stock in trade. But film is not a literary medium. A good director thinks more of images, metaphor, and reaction than he does of words and, assuming equal understanding of the content, the filmmaker with the greater knowledge of the creative use of film techniques is more likely to enrich the given values of the film’s substance and to enhance its appeal to viewers.

  Which gets us back to syntax and style. Unlike the birthing of original ideas, the basic rules of film technique can be taught and learned, though creative manipulation of those rules into an individual style is, alas, a matter of talent. But before syntax and style can be considered, even at an elementary level, the essential “words” of film grammar, the shots or angles which are the building blocks of film construction, must be fully understood.

  The choice of a set-up, as the shot or angle is more commonly called on the set, is no mystery to an experienced filmmaker, and he rarely thinks of it in aesthetic terms. For him the set-up is determined by the substance of the scene. It is as simple as that. It may be an advantage if the shot is also beautiful, but more often than not beauty befogs the essence of reality, and the primary purpose of a particular set-up is to offer the viewer the best possible presentation of the scene or, most often, some particular part of it. Ignoring for the present the personal embellishments or distortions the director may supply, it follows that the dramatic demands of different scenes, or portions thereof, require set-ups that are best suited to those demands, and here practice will often depart from theory, since the “reading” of such demands will vary with the “reader.”

  In film’s crawling stage the long shot was the only shot in the film maker’s repertoire and, out of respect for age, it is proper to start with its analysis even though, today, it is probably the least common set-up on the director’s list. It is impossible to define any shot exactly in terms of size, and the long shot is the prime example of this difficulty. It includes a near infinite variety of shots, ranging from little more than a full figure (in height, not amplitude), through a bird’s eye view of, say, Death Valley, to a shot of the earth taken from an orbiting satellite.

  The development of a battery of closer shots in what must have seemed to be a contradictory search for dramatic truth destroyed the all-purpose aspect of the long shot, but its supporters gave ground grudgingly. Long after Griffith (or Billy Bitzer) introduced the close shot, important critics objected to the sight of human bodies apparently sliced off at the waist and with no visible connection to an imaginary ground below the bottom of the screen. Indeed, for many years it remained compulsory to begin each new sequence with a fall or establishing shot (two of the long shot’s alter egos) whose purpose, as the term indicates, was to establish the setting or location of the sequence and the relative positions of the actors in it.

  To be sure, techniques have changed with time. But the films of John Ford and David Lean still exemplify the proper use of the exterior long shot more eloquently than those of any other modem filmmaker. Their long shots are not only compositional masterpieces, they do what every shot in a film should do: they further the establishment and the development of the film’s characters. An Oriental artist might symbolize “winter” with a bare bough, a bird ruffling its feathers against the cold, and a few artfully designed snowflakes. Under Lean’s direction, “winter” becomes an entity, a motivating force in the film. In Doctor Zhivago, vast areas, buried under a claustrophobic white shroud, inform the viewer of the Russian winter’s influence on the character and the attitudes of the land’s inhabitants far more effectively and believably than any aesthetic presentation of the idealized winter could possibly do. And every viewer will sense, if only subliminally, that a dweller in Ford’s

  The “white claustrophobia” of winter is a constant presence in David Lean’s Dr. Zhivago. Photograph courtesy of M.G.M. Enterprises.

  impressive but stark Monument Valley must have a different conception of the world and its people than, say, an urbanite bom and reared in Philadelphia.

  The Western painter, Charles M. Russell, pioneered a style that is especially compatible with outdoor films. His magnificent depictions of the plains, mountains, and mesas of the Northwest never feature the landscape alone,- hunters, cowboys, and Indians, often on horseback, and usually in violent movement, dominate the foreground and lend vitality to his compositions, but the background is always there to awe and inspire the viewer. On film, the proper balance of the two elements is a function of time and cinematic instinct, since too much attention given to one will often detract from the other. The beauty of t
he setting should attract the viewer’s attention, but it should be admired in context, not as an independent composition. It should not interrupt the flow of the story or diminish, even momentarily, the importance of the characters in the shot. When a narrative film becomes a travelogue it also becomes a bore.

  The more constricted and more commonly used interior long shot discloses or establishes a location such as an indoor sports arena, the interior of a cathedral, or a convention hall. The approach to the most effective use of this shot, indoors or out, is best described in an excerpt from On Filmmaking*:

  If a director is filming a football game, he might choose to start his sequence with a long shot of the stadium. This would serve to “establish” that there is a football game in progress with a large crowd in attendance, nothing more. Now, think of the sequence as starting in a different way: a close shot of the quarterback barking signals; then, in a series of cuts, the center hands him the ball, the play develops, the receiver streaks down the field, the quarterback evades a tackier and releases the ball, the receiver catches it in the end zone. TOUCHDOWN! Now, for the first time, a full shot of the stadium as the crowd rises to its feet in a screaming reaction. Here, the long shot is employed for dramatic emphasis as well as an establishing shot. There is no confusion, for even though, in the earlier set-ups the background has been exposed only incidentally, at no time would a viewer be in doubt that the game is being played on the gridiron.*

  The introduction of closer shots eliminated the presence of the “fourth wall”—the audience—and encouraged far more flexible staging. It also mandated the development of more advanced editing techniques. But for many years cutting from a long shot to a close- up was taboo. It was deemed necessary to approach the closer angle through one or more intermediate steps, the number being determined by the relative sizes of the shots at either end. In other words, the long shot was followed by a medium shot, then probably by a close shot before the desired close-up (there is a difference) could be used, a routine that involved careful planning. The development of a high degree of viewer sophistication eventually rendered both the practice and the medium shot obsolete. Now the screenwriter who types medium shot is using a convention which long ago ceased to have any exact meaning. He is also admitting he has no specific setup in mind.

  It is a truism that development of new equipment fosters new techniques which, on occasion, lead to improvement in an art or a craft. Perhaps the best example of a creative set-up brought into existence by the introduction of a new tool is the modem master shot, which has become one of the two most useful shots in the director’s arsenal. This much misunderstood set-up was originally a full shot which, although used in conjunction with closer angles, carried the main burden of the scene since the editor returned to it frequently in order to reestablish the scene’s setting or the “real time” of the action. The descriptive term master shot was applied to the full shot alone, not to the series of shots with which it was intercut. A simple opening or establishing shot was never considered a master shot, unless it continued into the scene’s mainstream.

  The development of the crab dolly made the modem master shot possible. Although there are many pieces of special equipment available, in general, directors find the crab dolly the most useful. It needs no tracks, is capable of moving easily in any direction, and is much more maneuverable than a tracked dolly or crane. It can incorporate a series of angles within a single set-up, limited only by the ingenuity of the director and the dexterity of the camera crew, especially the master grip. To put it simply, the camera crew can move the dolly in or out, from a full shot to a close-up, and back. The camera can be moved right or left or obliquely, and it can be moved up or down to accommodate limited vertical movement and compositional adjustment.

  When combined with the actor’s freedom to move into or away from the camera, such a set-up, precisely staged and paced, can encompass an entire sequence without recourse to the editor’s input. However, if the shot runs too long its precision stifles spontaneity of movement as well as spontaneity of performance. The result is a stagy, awkwardly-timed and noncinematic scene which only a clever editor might salvage, if he has been given the necessary protection shots. There are definite limits to the use of the technique, whose pitfalls are most explicitly demonstrated in Hitchcock’s film, The Rope. Being a wise man, Hitchcock never repeated the experiment.

  That area of set-ups vacated by the general-purpose medium shot has been filled by an assortment of angles whose terms are self-descriptive. This was probably the result of the growing awareness of the film’s separation from the theater, and the realization that the opportunity to present more facets, or points of view, increased the possibilities of presenting more and finer shades of screen reality. In effect, the medium shot had said only that we were moving in closer to the characters in the scene, but usually from the same audience point of view. The concept that the viewer could be allowed to regard the scene from any number of observation points resulted in qualitative changes in filming techniques. Filmmakers discovered that the viewer could instantly and independently be placed at any point in a full circle, even raised or lowered in a third dimension, while the actors maintained their positions relative to each other.

  The term, medium shot, now became too ambiguous even for motion pictures, and a more specific nomenclature took its place. Each new term defined the image which filled the frame. A group shot includes that collection of characters who are active participants in the set-up in question. It can be the only group in the set, or a particular group separated from a larger gathering such as, for instance, a party or a congregation of spectators. Like the long shot, though to a much lesser degree, it can vary in size, and distinctions in its compositions are indicated by terms such as loose group or tight group. A tight group is usually limited to five or six people who crowd or overlap the edges of the screen.

  A shot which contains fewer than four persons always bears its descriptive title. A set-up of three people is a three shot. Two people make up a two shot, while a “loose” shot of one person is a single or an individual. Such self-defining terms may need some modifying, since they can vary in size from loose to tight, or from full to waist figures. When the single becomes tight we are in close shot territory.

  Close shots are normally tight compositions of one or two characters, though a third may occasionally squeeze its way into the frame, as when three heads huddle conspiratorially. A close shot is never fuller than a waist figure, since it is at about this size that facial reaction can readily be seen by the viewer. But it is also at about this size that body language begins to lose significance (more of this later).

  Except for a few unusual situations the profile two shot, that is, an angle on two people, face to face, profiles to camera, is the dullest shot in the inventory. The characters are too close for meaningful body language and the faces in profile make reading of eye reactions difficult, if not impossible. Such a shot says only that two people are facing each other, nothing more. Under ordinary circumstances it is of minimal value, although, if brief, it may occasionally be of use in a series of cuts.

  The preferred two shots are those in which one player is favored over the other, if only to a slight degree, and the best of these is the over shoulder shot (O.S. shot) which shares with the skillfully executed master shot a reputation as the most useful set-up in film-making. The O.S. shot is usually quite tight—in wide screen format the full head can be as large as that in an individual close-up—and, to use a filmmaker’s phrase, it is generally three quarters on the favored character, though the degree of “favoring” is a matter of directorial judgment. In any case, both the eyes “on camera” must be clearly visible so that the actor’s reactions can deliver a clear message.

  In a single, the close shot becomes a close-up when the bottom line of the frame cuts the subject at upper chest level. From here it can vary in size from “bust” through “choker” (a full head) to a shot of the eyes, or mouth, al
one, or even the single eye favored by many horror film makers. The close-up is unquestionably the most abused set-up in films. As Stefan Sharff says, “The shot having dramatic emphasis might be medium, reverse angle, or moving camera shot, rather than the strongest gun in the film arsenal, the close-up.”* Exactly! What many modem filmmakers fail to realize is that the close-up, since it is the most potent set-up at their command, should be used sparingly to deliver unusual reactions or thought processes and at dramatic climaxes. And there are far fewer of these in any film than the average director wishes to believe. The undisciplined use of the close-up for minor purposes weakens its value at those times when its impact should be great. It all started with the exclusivity of long shots, but the pendulum’s swing has made it necessary to educate filmmakers to use fewer close-ups rather than more of them. And the best way to do that is to leam the effectiveness of the longer shots in their repertoires.

  Incidentally, when a number of people are in the picture, from long shots down to the occasional two shot, it is good practice to fill, or “squeeze” the frame. That is, the shoulders of the characters on the extreme left and right sides of the shot should extend somewhat outside their respective side lines. In effect, this brings the scene closer to the viewers and encourages them to feel that they, too, are part of the group. Players arranged neatly and totally within the frame appear to be on a stage (which they are) and the viewers are relegated to the role of spectators. That is an effect the pure filmmaker avoids at all cost.

  It will be recognized that the continuing development and increasing use of more revealing set-ups were largely the result of a search for more truth and greater believability. But because film-makers were often unsure of the viewer’s willingness to respond favorably to newer filmic conventions (wrongly so, it turned out), progress was relatively slow (see Chapter 8, page 71). However, it was recognized that the longer shots abetted contrivance and concealment, and soon the camera’s encroachment forced fundamental changes in the art of acting (and the interlinked art of editing). The closer the lens the more honest and “real” the actor had to be. Faking was out. Was the crying “dry” or were those real tears in her eyes? Was the smile merely an artificial rictus or a genuine expression of feeling? Was he telling the truth or lying, in his performance as well as in his dialogue?