Film Studies- An Introduction

by Warren Buckland

  He also appears as soon as he begins to talk – it seems that Welles chose to co-ordinate a character’s entrance on screen with their speech. Mr Kane then walks towards the camera, which tracks back and stops when it reaches a table, where Mrs Kane and Mr Thatcher sit in the foreground. Mr Kane

  continues to stand in the middle-ground, looking helpless, and the carefree young Kane can clearly be seen and heard through the window in the far background. He does not realize his fate is being sealed in the room. The characters are arranged in the scene in such a way that they are all clearly visible, and are all in focus; there’s no need for any editing therefore or any extensive camera movement. Once the papers are signed, the scene begins to repeat itself in reverse – the characters and camera move forward to the window. The shot ends on a sharp sound when Mrs Kane opens the window and calls out to her son. Welles defines space in this shot via character movement, camera movement and precise staging of characters in the foreground, middle-ground and background.

  Twenty-six minutes into the film, Welles uses another flashback to 1929 when Kane goes broke. This time it is he who has to sign a piece of paper, giving control of his assets to Mr Thatcher. Welles films the signing ceremony in a two-minute long take without any camera movement at all. Yet he uses other ingenious methods to divide up the action. The scene begins with Mr Bernstein just a few centimetres from the camera, screen right; he is holding up and reading a document, which takes up most of the left hand of the screen. When he puts the document down on the table, Mr Thatcher is revealed to be in the room (the piece of paper, huge in the foreground, blocked his presence). Moments later, Kane starts to speak and enters screen right (he enters as soon as he speaks). He then 1 Film aesthetics: formalism and realism

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  continues talking while walking to the back of the room, before walking back up to the camera to sign the document. The space of the scene is clearly defined by the staging of Mr Bernstein in the extreme foreground, Mr Thatcher in the middle-ground, while Kane moves from middle-ground to background and

  back to middle-ground. His movement helps to define the

  background space.

  In his next film, The Magnificent Ambersons, Welles uses a long take with deep focus to film the parlour scene. George is seated in the left foreground of the shot while his aunt Fanny (Agnes Moorehead) feeds him huge quantities of strawberry shortcake.

  The tension of the scene is created by the fact that they are talking about Eugene, with whom aunt Fanny is in love.

  George’s uncle Jack enters into the scene and, indirectly, makes fun of aunt Fanny’s love for Eugene. Aunt Fanny runs out of the scene, crying hysterically. While all of these events are taking place, the camera remains in its same location throughout the whole scene, with only slight camera movement for reframing.

  The way Welles shot this scene suggests that he was unwilling or refused to interrupt the events as they unfolded and developed.

  In other words, the translation of mise-en-scène into mise-en-shot is kept to a minimum. The film critic André Bazin wrote the following about this shot:

  The refusal to move the camera throughout the scene’s duration, particularly when Agnes Moorehead has her emotional crisis and rushes away (the camera keeping its nose obstinately glued to the strawberry shortcake), is tantamount to making us witness the event in the position of a man helplessly strapped to an armchair.

  Orson Welles, p. 74

  What Bazin suggests is that the static nature of the camera for a long period of time limits the spectator’s involvement with the events and characters. In summary, the long take distances the spectator from the events and characters. It is as if the scene never gets beyond its establishing shot. The long take eliminates 10

  editing that would place the spectator within the action. Below we shall see how editing involves the spectator in the action.

  So far, I have described the deep focus shot in predominantly negative terms. Yet there are many positive aspects to Welles’s stylistic choice. The space and time of the scene remain whole and continuous. The scene is not fragmented into several shots (that is, into several fragments of space and time). In other words, the long take observes the dramatic unities of space and time.

  One of the consequences of observing the dramatic unities of space and time is that it emphasizes the actor’s performance.

  Rather than cutting a performance up into many shots, it is realized on screen uninterrupted. If the actor’s performance is particularly important in a scene, the director may decide to use the long take in order not to interrupt the actor’s performance as it develops.

  This principle does not only hold for Hollywood films of the 1940s. Contemporary directors occasionally use the long take when they want to maintain the dramatic unities of space and time or to emphasize the actor’s performance. Steven Spielberg uses several long takes in Jaws (1975). In one dramatic scene on the harbour of Amity Island, Mrs Kintner, wearing mourning clothes, confronts Chief Brody about the death of her son, Alex.

  After a series of reverse angle shots in which she slaps Brody, a static deep focus shot frames Brody in the foreground right with his back to the camera (and probably standing less than 30 cm from the lens), Mrs Kintner in the foreground, and her father in the middle-ground to the left. As with many of the deep focus long takes in this film, the image’s composition is distinct.

  It is composed along a strong diagonal line. The shot is briefly interrupted by a reaction shot of Brody, before returning to the same set-up (one continuous take has been cut in two by a reaction shot). The first half of this diagonal shot lasts 15 seconds, and the second half 43 seconds. By cutting to a reaction shot of Brody, the scene ends up becoming about him. It is the moment in the film when he confronts the moral consequences of his inaction and tendency to be swayed by others. The scene ends with him accepting the blame for Alex’s death.

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  Spielberg combines the long take with deep focus in The Lost World (1997) when Ian Malcolm visits Hammond at his home. While waiting in the hallway talking to Tim and Lex, Hammond’s nephew, Peter Ludlow, enters. As he signs documents in the foreground, Malcolm, Tim and Lex are shown in the background (and there is also considerable space behind them). Malcolm then walks into the middle-ground to talk to Ludlow, and in the background the children prepare to leave.

  This shot consists of deep focus and long take (of 73 seconds).

  It appears to be strongly influenced by the long take in the Colorado sequence from Citizen Kane that I analysed above. In addition to the use of the long take with deep focus (and low camera angle), the staging is similar: documents being signed in the foreground, Ian Malcolm in the middle-ground (he’s as powerless as the father in the middle-ground of the Colorado sequence), and the children in the background (just as Kane was in the background).

  Many other directors also prefer to use long takes. Secrets and Lies (Mike Leigh, 1996) focuses on two characters: Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), as she searches for the mother she has never met, and Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn), an unhappy, working mother preoccupied and distracted with the mundane problems of everyday life. In one scene, Cynthia talks to her brother Maurice during one of his infrequent visits to her. After talking about mundane matters, Cynthia is suddenly overcome by emotion and hugs her brother. They hug each other for over two minutes, which Leigh films in one take, with little camera movement (except a very slow zoom in). Leigh does not interrupt or distract from this sudden expression of repressed emotion with any marked camerawork or editing. He allows the emotion to express itself uninterrupted.

  Leigh’s use of the long take is more pronounced later in the film when Hortense has telephoned Cynthia, informing her that she is Cynthia’s daughter and they meet in a café; Leigh films the scene in one take lasting 7 minutes 40 seconds (and, this time, with no camera movement). The drama of this scene is created by Cynthia’s gradual realization that Hortense,
who is black, is her daughter (Cynthia is white). The long take then shows the desperate attempts of the two women to communicate

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  with one another. Leigh allows these dramatic and emotional events to unfold uninterrupted; indeed, the shot is relentless and unyielding in its depiction of the two women trying to communicate with each other.

  Richard Linklater employs a long take in Before Sunrise (1994).

  An American student, Jesse, meets a French student, Celine, on a train going from Budapest to Vienna. Jesse persuades Celine to tour Vienna with him. The film charts their growing relationship during their 14 hours in Vienna. In an early scene, Linklater decides to film the two of them on a tram as they begin to get to know one another. Linklater films the scene using a long take lasting six minutes. The long take shows the characters’

  interaction as it unfolds and blossoms into friendship.

  Colour is another important element of mise-en-shot.

  We shall examine a growing trend among contemporary

  cinematographers – the trend towards silver retention, or non-bleaching processes, in the film development process.

  Normally, after colour films are developed, they go through a bleaching process, which dissolves all the unexposed silver. The film is then fixed, washed and dried. As its name suggests, the silver retention or non-bleaching process reduces or eliminates altogether the bleaching of the film. In its place the colour film is developed again, this time in a black and white developer, before it is fixed, washed and dried. What this means is that some additional silver is developed in the black and white developer.

  This may sound overtly technical, but this process has strongly influenced the look of films such as Reds (1981), Saving Private Ryan (1998) (especially the first half hour), Minority Report (2002), Delicatessen (1991), City of Lost Children (1995), Alien Resurrection (1997), Evita (1996), Seven (1995) and The Panic Room (2002). The last six films on this list were all shot by the same cinematographer, Darius Khondji. In interviews he says he wants to make colour films in black and white. The non-bleaching process allows him to achieve very deep, dense blacks in the films he shoots, which also enhances contrast and ‘desaturates’ (that is, it reduces the colour intensity of) the image. The first crime scene in Seven demonstrates what results can be achieved: an atmosphere of an old, shiny, greasy 1 Film aesthetics: formalism and realism 13

  dark space is created through set design, lighting and especially through the non-bleaching process.

  contInuItyeDItIng

  In this section we shall briefly look at the techniques of continuity editing. Continuity editing refers to a series of techniques that attempts to imitate, in the cinema, the space of Renaissance painting and the proscenium space of nineteenth-century theatre. These techniques are necessary because, unlike the long take and deep focus photography, editing breaks down a scene into a multitude of shots (fragments of space and time). The techniques of continuity editing function to create a synthetic unity of space and time from these fragments. We shall address the reason why a film-maker may want to use editing rather than the long take. But first, we shall seek an answer to the question: What are the major techniques of continuity editing and how do they work?

  Continuity editing is all about coherence and orientation. If a film-maker randomly stuck together a series of shots, the spectator would soon become disoriented. The separate spaces in each shot would not add up because the spectator would not be able to relate them to one another. The way shots are edited together must therefore be controlled and regulated by a series of techniques that permits the spectator to fit them together like the pieces of a puzzle. Once all the pieces of the puzzle have been fitted together, the whole picture becomes clear. When we watch a film that is made up of numerous shots, we piece the shots together in our mind to create a coherent picture. The techniques of continuity editing enable the spectator to create a coherent picture from the shots presented on screen.

  I noted that continuity editing attempts to imitate the space of Renaissance painting and the proscenium space of nineteenth-century theatre. Both of these arts attempt to create coherence and orientation, and achieve this by adopting a strategy that may sound rather obvious, but is fundamental and should

  not be taken for granted. That is, in Renaissance painting and nineteenth-century theatre, the spectator is positioned on the same side of the scene or action. In the theatre, for example, the action takes place within a scenic space consisting of 14

  three walls, and the audience always occupies the space of the invisible fourth wall. The techniques of continuity editing create a coherent scenic space and orient the spectator so that he or she occupies the position of the invisible fourth wall.

  In more technical terms, each film creates coherence and orients the spectator by means of the 180-degree axis of action line.

  David Bordwell writes:

  The assumption is that shots will be filmed and cut together so as to position the spectator always on the same side of the story action. Bazin suggests that the ‘objective’ reality of the action independent of the act of filming is analogous to that stable space of proscenium theatrical representation, in which the spectator is always positioned beyond the fourth wall. The axis of action (or center) line becomes the imaginary vector of movements, character positions, and glances in the scene, and ideally the camera should not stray over the axis.

  The Classical Hollywood Cinema, p. 56

  A change in shot always involves a shift in vantage point but if the axis of action line is obeyed, then screen direction will be maintained when there is a cut from one shot to another.

  Other techniques that create coherence and orient the spectator include:

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  the eyeline match

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  point-of-view cutting

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  the match on action cut

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  directional continuity.

  In the eyeline match, a character in one shot glances at something off-screen (out of the frame) and a cut reveals the object the character is looking at. The line of the character’s glance has therefore matched the two shots together, creating coherence and spatial orientation.

  Point-of-view cutting is a variant of the eyeline match. The structure is the same: a character looks off-screen – cut to – the 1 Film aesthetics: formalism and realism 15

  object the character is looking at. However, what distinguishes point-of-view cutting is that the object is shown from the character’s optical vantage point. In other words, the object is seen through the character’s eyes.

  Point-of-view shots are usually marked to indicate that they represent the character’s optical vantage point. In a scene in The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941), Marlowe is drugged.

  As he becomes dizzy, the camera takes his exact optical

  vantage point. The camera moves from side to side, goes out of focus and eventually fades to black. All of these filmic devices are used to represent Marlowe’s (loss of) vision and consciousness.

  Similarly, in The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963), Mitch Brenner spies Melanie Daniels in a small boat on the water of Bodega bay. He runs into his house, gets a pair of binoculars, and directs them at Melanie. As he does so, the camera cuts to a close-up of Melanie in the boat. The edge of the image is blacked out by a mask, a cinematic convention signifying a point-of-view shot of a character looking through binoculars.

  In the match on action cut, the cut from one shot to another occurs when an action is being performed, in which the action is continued from one shot to the next. It is the continuity of the same action across the cut that creates coherence and orientation.

  A related technique is that of directional continuity. If a character exits the shot from the right of the screen, he should enter the next shot from the left of the screen. In addition to creating continuity across the cut, directional c
ontinuity maintains screen direction.

  All of these techniques create an impression of a coherent scenic space, and they position the spectator on the same side of the action, creating orientation. But these techniques are popular for financial as well as aesthetic reasons. The cameras, crew and technicians remain relatively fixed on the side of the invisible fourth wall and only three walls of the set need to be built.

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  33 Editing versus the long take

  In contrast to the long take and deep focus photography, editing breaks down a scene into a multitude of shots. But why would a director go to all the trouble of shifting vantage point on the event and actors and risk disorienting the spectator? One answer is that editing gives the director almost complete control over the events and actors, since the scene comes together only when the shots are edited together. One director who is particularly notable for insisting on complete control over events and actors is Alfred Hitchcock. In 1938 Hitchcock wrote:

  … if I have to shoot a long scene continuously I always feel I am losing grip on it, from a cinematic point of view. The camera, I feel, is simply standing there, hoping to catch something with a visual point to it… The screen ought to speak its own language, freshly coined, and it can’t do that unless it treats an acted scene as a piece of raw material which must be broken up, taken to bits, before it can be woven into an expressive visual pattern.

  Hitchcock on Hitchcock (ed. Gottlieb), pp. 255–6

  The advantage of editing over the long take and deep focus is that, through the changes in viewpoint implied by the change of shot, the director can fully involve the spectator in the action.