Film Directing

Within the scope of ANSWER, an EC-supported research project, a new artistic notation system, called DirectorNotation, is being developed for describing media content, much like notes are used to document a music composition. Our current research focuses on developing “notation-enabled ” offline authoring tools, but interactive applications are an anticipated extension. Here, we summarise the key aspects of DirectorNotation and the ANSWER project, from the point of view of a multimedia-technology audience interested in content-based manipulation of media. Categories and Subject Descriptors

This paper—a conversation between scholar/practitioners working separately on the mediation of bodies—is an interrogation into practices of acting for stage and for camera, and the ways that practices for the theatre can be used in training actors for film. Challenging the essentializing metaphor, “acting for camera,” we engage strategies for dislocation of the sovereign seat of the director—a point of focus toward which bodies are trained and become entrained. Rather than accept habitually repeated logics of representation and the subjectivities they tend to produce, we develop practices that replace actor with player. Drawing on various inflections of the physical action from divergent Western theatrical training traditions (Stanislavski, Grotowski, and Brecht), we have developed strategies for actors and a framework for thinking about what “works” for the camera and what doesn’t. These strategies pull the camera into practice and process as an active player rather than seating it as an apparatus of capture to be coped with by a performer on one side and a director/crew on the other. The player plays with the camera rather than for a future audience it represents. Much of the paper draws from workshops where we used theatrical devising techniques and games with filmmakers and actors. We take as a given that most actors-in-training in the West already have a relationship to camera that brings along habits, ways of seeing, and entanglements that require examination as part of rehearsal and performance processes. We pull the camera into the making process, not as a capture device or a stand-in for a future audience, nor as “content,” but as one of the elements of mise-en-scène and the games that players use to produce it. Actors become filmmakers and vice versa. The processes we found emerging unsettled the habitual narrativizations arising from the actor-filmmaker-editor continuum.

Der Film ist die Regiekunst par excellence. Während das so- genannte Regietheater, bei dem der Regisseur über den Text des Stücks souverän verfügt, dieses in die Gegenwart transferiert, kürzt oder um- stellt, manchen Kritikern und Theater- besuchern noch immer wie eine Aber- ration vorkommt, gilt für den Film, dass er zunächst und zumeist das Werk einer Regisseurin oder eines Regisseurs ist – ob diese nun Murnau, Lang, Hitchcock, Bergmann, Akerman oder Varda heißen.

Este trabalho examina as relações que se estabelecem entre a imagem e memória quando inclinadas por um primas pós-moderno do pensamento. Essas relações aparecem no filme 'Imagens do mundo e inscrições da guerra' (Bilder der Welt und Inschrift des Krieges, Alemanha, 1988), de Harun Farocki, no qual analisamos algumas de suas estratégias visuais.

Kevin M. Flanagan
Scarecrow Press/Rowman & Littlefield, 2009.

Publisher Page: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780810869554/Ken-Russell-Re-Viewing-England's-Last-Mannerist

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Ken-Russell-Re-Viewing-Englands-Mannerist/dp/0810869543/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1436376223&sr=8-1&keywords=ken+russell+flanagan

In recent years, post-revolutionary Iranian cinema has been praised in many international forums. With its distinct style, themes, authors, idea of nationhood, and manifestation of culture, a global market was suddenly surprised to find Iran producing poetic humanist films. Many questions can be raised on the success of the Iranian cinema and the characteristics which have made it so distinctive. Are there aesthetic or thematic similarities in these films, and what are the influences and motivation behind them? Is there such a thing as a signature style, specific to the New Iranian Cinema and in what ways might it be responsible for its positive reception from festivals, scholars and critics? For this study to engage with these questions, it will need to focus on contextualizing the emergence of this new cinema by providing a brief history of Iranian national cinema, with an emphasis on the foundations of filmic art in that region. While their films have differences and contrasting elements, this essay will identify recurring themes and features of the New Iranian cinemas and assess the factors which have taken shape.

Ce mémoire de recherche-création cherche à repérer trois figures de mise en scène dans le cinéma des frères Dardenne (la caméra portée à l'épaule, le cadrage restreint, le plan- séquence) et d’identifier en quoi celles-ci sont génératrices d’une tension transnarrative qui garde le spectateur en haleine, lui procure des affects, l'engage dans la narration, le choque ou le bouleverse : bref, lui fait vivre une expérience intense. Par une analyse de la scène d’ouverture de Rosetta, nous décrirons comment la caméra mobile portée à l’épaule exprime l’affolement du personnage éponyme tout en proposant un pôle d’identification spectatoriel inédit. Le Fils sera ensuite étudié afin de cerner comment les frères Dardenne emploient le cadre comme un cache afin de générer une tension narrative dans une logique de réticence informationnelle. L’usage du plan-séquence, que nous suggérons d’interpréter comme une sorte de réalité virtuelle permettant de faire l’expérience de la solidarité sociale, fera également l’objet d’une analyse à partir de son usage dans Deux jours une nuit. En guise de conclusion, nous verrons comment nous nous sommes inspirés de ces trois figures de mise en scène dans Tala, le court-métrage de fiction qui accompagne ce mémoire.

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This research & creation thesis aims to identify three components of the Dardenne brothers' directing style (over-the-shoulder camera, tight framing and long take) and try to describe how they generate a transnarrative tension that captivates the audience, immerses it in the story, shock it or move it : in other words, these components make the viewer go through an intense experience. We will analyze the opening scene of Rosetta to describe how the over- the-shoulder camera visually translates the character's emotions whilst suggesting a new type of spectatorial identification. Le Fils will then be analyzed, hoping to demonstrate how the Dardennes' use of tight framing creates mystery and suspense by discarding narrative information. Finally, Deux jours une nuit will allow us to examine the brothers' use of the long take, which we choose to read as a type of virtual reality that allows the viewer to experience social solidarity. As a conclusion, we will explain how these three directing components have been recuperated in Tala, the short fiction film that makes up the creation part of this thesis.

Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini (1920-1993) is one of the most renowned figures in world cinema. Director of a long list of critically acclaimed motion pictures, including La strada, La dolce vita, 8½, and Amarcord, Fellini's success helped strengthen the international prestige of Italian cinema from the 1950s onward. Often remembered as an eccentric auteur with a vivid imagination and a penchant for quasi-autobiographical works, the carnivalesque, and Rubenesque women, Fellini's inimitable films celebrate the creative potential of cinema as a medium and also provide thought-provoking evocations of various periods in Italian history, from the years of fascism to the age of Silvio Berlusconi's media empire.

In Making a Film Fellini discusses his childhood and adolescence in the coastal town of Rimini, the time he spent as a cartoonist, journalist, and screenwriter in Rome, his decisive encounter with Roberto Rossellini, and his own movies, from Variety Lights to Casanova. The director explains the importance of drawing to his creative process, the mysterious ways in which ideas for films arise, his collaborations with his wife, Giulietta Masina, his thoughts on fascism, Jung, and the relationship between cinema and television. Often comic, sometimes tragic, and rife with insightful comments on his craft, Making a Film sheds light on Fellini's life and reveals the motivations behind many of his most fascinating movies.

Available in its entirety for the first time in English, this volume contains the complete translation of Fare un film, the authoritative collection of writings edited and reworked by Fellini and initially published by Giulio Einaudi in 1980. The text includes a new translation of the Italo Calvino essay "A Spectator's Autobiography," an introduction by Italian film scholar Christopher B. White, and an afterword by Fellini's longtime friend and collaborator Liliana Betti.

The study on the one hand analyses in detail the television series Modré stíny (Blue Shadows), and on the other hand it does so on the background of more general phenomena: A. The television cycle Detectives from the Holy Trinity, of which Blue Shadows is a part, while deviating from some of its norms; B. the narrative and stylistic trends of contemporary Czech and international television crime fiction, with which Blue Shadows surprisingly does not appear to communicate; C. the history of Czech detective films with focus on a specific narrative tradition recognized by this article and labelled restrained detective film, which has developed at least since 1940s. With its narrative solutions, Blue Shadows seem to be an unusually intense variation on the restrained detective fi lm: detectives never get to understand the background of investigated events, the solution cannot be deduced from presented clues, and the aim of narration is, above all, to observe the very ramified structure of fictional macroworld. At the same time, the rarity of the composition of Blue Shadows lies in the gradual shift in emphasis from the investigation (first two episodes) to the private aspects of characters in the team of the superintendent Výrová (second two episodes). I claim that the central principle of narration in Blue Shadows is suppressing the expected and emphasizing the unexpected elements, and it is possible to think similarly about the self-conscious stylistic organization of the series — it expectedly provides spectator with elements necessary to comprehend the story but clearly does not follow the principle of functional equivalence in the set of preferred artistic solutions and emphasizes decorative aspects of stylistic construction, which is revealed especially in the way filmmakers approach to dialogues among characters.

As screenwriting continues to establish itself as a discrete discipline in academia, either in alignment with creative writing departments or film and media practice departments, there is a danger that such developments may entrench a distancing of the craft from the cinematic form itself and that such a distancing may ultimately reinforce the screenplay's propensity for dramaturgy and the dramatic, rather than the sensory and experiential of the cinematic.Closely related creative stages in telling cinematic stories include directing and editing and this article seeks to argue, with reference to personal screen practice, that screenwriting, directing and editing are, in fact, three variations of the same thing. The article proposes the notion of the Total Filmmaker who embraces all three aspects of the cinematic storyteller.If the ultimate aim is to create a narrative that fully utilises the unique properties of the cinematic form in telling a story, rather than being dominated by the theatricality of dramatically driven classical narratives, how might one explore the relationship between screenwriting, directing and editing? Can an integrated approach to creating the cinematic blueprint change the way we think of pedagogy and screenwriting?

An extensive in-depth interview with Sophie Raymond, co-director of MRS CAREY'S CONCERT which followed music students at a Sydney girl's school in the lead-up to their performance at the Sydney Opera House.

As the film proceeds, the focus tightens on student Emily Sun, who is selected to perform solo for the concert; and Iris, whose disinterest in the class activities acts as a counterpoint to the film’s drive.

One of Australia's most critically acclaimed documentary films, MRS CAREY'S CONCERT won a suite of AACTA awards (Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts), and launched Emily’s career as a solo violinist.

This interview discusses Sophie Raymond's background as a musician and filmmaker, the process of documentary-making (constraints, impact on participants, logistics) and the intensive and complex process of editing a documentary into a cohesive film, and their decision to distribute the film themselves.

This is Farsi version of the brilliant and invaluable book has been edited by Paul Cronin.

From Amazon page: "An invaluable analysis of the director's art and craft, from one of the most revered of all film school directors. Alexander 'Sandy' Mackendrick directed classic Ealing comedies plus a Hollywood masterpiece, Sweet Smell of Success. But after retiring from film-making in 1969, he then spent nearly 25 years teaching his craft at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles.

Mackendrick produced hundreds of pages of masterly handouts and sketches, designed to guide his students to a finer understanding of how to write a story, and then use those devices peculiar to cinema in order to tell that story as effectively as possible. Gathered and edited in this collection, Mackendrick's teachings reveal that he had the talent not only to make great films, but also to articulate the process with a clarity and insight that will still inspire any aspirant film-maker."

From Lessons from a master, Zoë GreenSat 20 Nov 2004:

"Perhaps the book's richness stems from the fact that Mackendrick did not intend it as his definitive comment on directing. Over the 25 years he spent at Cal Arts he amassed and refined a wealth of handouts and diagrams designed to help his fledgling directors acquire a strong sense of story structure. With this foundation laid, they studied cinematic devices and learnt how to take an idea, process it, and redeliver it to an audience as an effective narrative.

Mackendrick was tough on his students, and they (eventually) appreciated it. "Student films come in three sizes, too long, much too long, and very much too long," he told them on day one. His tactics were clever. Many of his students initially railed against absorbing traditional theories of montage, coverage and three-act structure, saying that "plots are old fashioned". Mackendrick simply asked them to follow his formula as a "temporary exercise" which they would be "perfectly entitled to discard later". Immersed in his boot camp, they found that they were putting words to ideas that they held subconsciously. Mackendrick was ready for them. "As an instructor the only things I can teach are what you already know."

This may be true, but it's overly modest; Mackendrick had developed his ideas over decades of professional directing, so he'd made his mistakes the hard way. His writing style is a wonderful mixture of co-conspiratorial musing and succinct commands. In one paragraph he'll dismiss his magnificent Sweet Smell of Success - "Looking back I cannot say I am surprised at its poor reception" - and then move forward to a string of pithy observations: "Exposition is BORING unless it's in the context of some present dramatic tension or crisis." "PASSIVITY is a capital crime in drama." His students must have loved it; a directing teacher who didn't put them down, yet rapped out opinions like gunfire.

To the meat of the matter: this is an eminently readable volume, but it is something of a challenge too, which is exhilarating. It requires focus. It's like the textbook you wish you'd had earlier; but as Mackendrick says, "Work is the only real training". Whether you use this book to help you reflect on your working practice or see it as an enjoyable insight into the development and execution of a film idea, there's a great deal packed into these pages. Part one covers dramatic construction, with an enjoyable section entitled "Slogans for the Screenwriter's Wall". I am especially fond of "BEWARE OF FLASHBACKS, DREAM SEQUENCES AND VISIONS".

You can then opt to undertake the exercises Mackendrick set his students, or proceed to the comparison of two drafts of a scene from Success. After this, there's a fantastic chapter on working with actors, taking the wise and often ignored stance that the director "must have respect for his actors". If this is a given with you, consider the concept of the actor as "meat-puppet" currently at large in some California classrooms.

Part two is more taxing, and covers film grammar. You can expect to emerge from this section with a solid understanding of the development of editing, point of view, axes, eyelines and camera set-ups. It's all beautifully illustrated by Mackendrick. As a bonus there's a chapter called "Drawing Lesson". If you can write legibly, Mackendrick argues that there's no excuse for you to be "wholly inept" in your attempts to sketch the human form. You need to be able to draw your idea of a medium long shot, and he shows you how.

Having limbered up your mind, the proponent of "making a disciplined effort in the development of fertile invention" equably signs out, leaving you raring to get back to work, six figure deal or otherwise. Which, I think, is what he would have wanted. "

Eyes and eye lines are one of the key ways in which the perspective on a story is established in figurative narrative fiction cinema. As such, the eyes and the use of eyes by a performer needs as much creative and technical attention as shot composition, sound, production design and editing. Rather than thinking of the eyes of a performer as a subservient aspect of a projected performance, often driven by the dominance of dialogue-action delivery, this paper seeks to examine how, in fictional cinematic expression, eyes can be deployed to enhance an introspective and transcendent narrative perspective on a story. This exploration takes place through practice. In particular, during the creation of my latest feature film, The Raven On The Jetty (Erik Knudsen, UK 2014), in which I sought to explore how to enhance the relationship between eyes, eye lines and narrative perspective on story. In reflecting on these issues, I shall look at what is meant by narrative perspective and relate this not only to the performativity of a fiction film, but also to the relationship of this performativity to emotions and feelings. I shall then look at eyes: first looking at their behavioural importance, then at looking and seeing. I hope to show that we can think of eyes not merely as a part of an actor’s performance, but also as a window through which we can see a world whose presence is untouchable. I aim to argue that looks and eye lines are as effective as any other cinematic tool in establishing actions, re-actions, space, time, intentions and revelations and to illustrate how I have sought to challenge certain understandings and approaches to the use of eyes to add a different perspective on a story. I write this paper primarily from the perspective of a filmmaker, as opposed to a film scholar, and therefore while acknowledging the considerable theoretical work done by film theorists such as Vivian Sobchack (on phenomenological semiotics[1]), Stephen Heath (on narrative space[2]), Edward Branigan (on point of view[3]) and Tom Brown (on breaking the fourth wall[4]), not to speak of the extensive debates taking place on Catherine Grant’s Film Studies for Free Blog[5], this paper is a subjective and reflexive exploration that seeks to reveal a creative thought process in action, in contrast to a scholarly examination of the cultural theory around film language or film form. Finally, I shall very briefly summarise some of my key findings in a conclusion.

The title of this Dossier points to the two basic features of Stanley Kubrick's work that we will examine: on the one hand, the rich array of themes that inform all his films, his concern with the problems and dramas that confront human existence; on the other hand, his power to visualize such themes by mastering the most important tool of film language, i.e. the power of images to convey concepts and feelings, prompting the audience's intellectual and emotional response.

Technological advances have always had an impact on the development of new audio-visual aesthetics. Recently, exploiting the spatial capabilities of immersive sound technology in the form of Dolby Atmos, Alfonso Cuarón introduced in Gravity (2013) an innovative sound design approach that enhances the illusion of ‘presence’ in the space of the diegesis by always maintaining a coherent, realistic, and immersive representation of a given point-of-audition. Such sonic strategy – which we have termed immersive point-of-audition – provides a three-dimensional representation of the filmic space, localising sound effects, music, and dialogue in accordance to the position of the sources within the diegesis. In this paper, we introduce the definition and main characteristics of this emergent sound design approach, and using Gravity as an illustrative example, we argue that it has the potential of facilitating the processes of transportation and identification in cinema.

Angulaciones Definición: Angulación es la inclinación que lleva la cámara sobre el eje en el cual la misma hace una panorámica vertical. Es básicamente cuan hacia arriba o hacia abajo apunta la cámara. Hay tres angulaciones básicas, picado, normal, contrapicado; y dos angulaciones adicionales que son la versión extrema de dos de ellas. El cenital, versión extrema del contrapicado; y el Nadir, versión extrema del contrapicado. Usándose así 5 angulaciones a la hora del rodaje y la escritura del guion técnico. El uso de las angulaciones es una de las herramientas básicas en el lenguaje del cine y de las primeras que se deben aprender. Las angulaciones a su vez están relacionadas con los movimientos de panorámica vertical y el movimiento de grúa. También tienen que ver con el estado de ánimo de los personajes con la importancia que tienen. Las angulaciones también influyen en los planos dado que por ejemplo para filmar a una figura humana vamos a necesitar menor cantidad de espacio entre la cámara y el sujeto en una imagen cenital por ejemplo que en una imagen normal.

Feature article and 4000-word in-depth interview with artist, illustrator and film maker SHAUN TAN (The Arrival, The Red Tree) focusing on his background and training, creative practice and experience in publishing, and also the creation of THE LOST THING (which won the 2011 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film).

Culp, Edwin. “Directing Actors for Non-Directors: Creative Research Strategies for Fiction Films” in Maria Dora Mourão, Stanislav Semerdjiev, Cecília Mello and Alan Taylor (eds.) The 21st. Century Film, TV, and Media School. Vol. 2, Directing the Future. Sofia: The International Association of Film and Television Schools - CILECT, 2019, pp. 184-198. ISBN: 9786197358087.

Throughout film history, many famous scenes and even entire films have been devised with actors improvising on certain general parameters that ultimately depict a character, often vaguely portrayed. These turns to improvisation and narrative experimentation tend to come forward every time filmmakers propose a new rupture, frequently accompanied by technological changes that have made the filmmaking process cheaper or more immediate. From their uncomfortable pauses, mumbled dialogues and candid unawareness, fresh emotional intentions emerge in filmmaking every certain time as refreshing new waves. Digital technologies have recently furthered the issue, as they allow filmmakers to make cheaper and more immediate productions that rely heavily on the work of actors and their ability to react to unexpected circumstances.
Despite being one of the most creative resources readily available to young emerging filmmakers, a didactic approach to actor-director tools as a creative research approach is rarely taken into account in Filmmaking courses and curriculums. Even more uncommon is for these courses to go beyond the training of directors to efficiently obtain a specific result from an actor. To devise an improvisational mechanism that embraces the mistake, the accident and the error in a film school environment usually focused on virtuosity is not a minor challenge. In this paper, I argue that by using acting techniques and improvisation strategies to impregnate the whole film production and learning process, directors —and also cinematographers, art directors, image and sound editors— can devise an experimentation space to explore creative aspects of fiction filmmaking. Firstly, I will go over the main points where the techniques for Directing Actors can be useful for filmmaking students (and professionals alike). Then, I will present two exercises that I have used in my own teaching experience.

Culp, Edwin. “Directing Actors for Non-Directors: Creative Research Strategies for Fiction Films” in Maria Dora Mourão, Stanislav Semerdjiev, Cecília Mello and Alan Taylor (eds.) The 21st. Century Film, TV, and Media School. Vol. 2, Directing the Future. Sofia: The International Association of Film and Television Schools - CILECT, 2019, pp. 184-198. ISBN: 9786197358087. Throughout film history, many famous scenes and even entire films have been devised with actors improvising on certain general parameters that ultimately depict a character, often vaguely portrayed. These turns to improvisation and narrative experimentation tend to come forward every time filmmakers propose a new rupture, frequently accompanied by technological changes that have made the filmmaking process cheaper or more immediate. From their uncomfortable pauses, mumbled dialogues and candid unawareness, fresh emotional intentions emerge in filmmaking every certain time as refreshing new waves. Digital technologies have recently furthered the issue, as they allow filmmakers to make cheaper and more immediate productions that rely heavily on the work of actors and their ability to react to unexpected circumstances. Despite being one of the most creative resources readily available to young emerging filmmakers, a didactic approach to actor-director tools as a creative research approach is rarely taken into account in Filmmaking courses and curriculums. Even more uncommon is for these courses to go beyond the training of directors to efficiently obtain a specific result from an actor. To devise an improvisational mechanism that embraces the mistake, the accident and the error in a film school environment usually focused on virtuosity is not a minor challenge. In this paper, I argue that by using acting techniques and improvisation strategies to impregnate the whole film production and learning process, directors —and also cinematographers, art directors, image and sound editors— can devise an experimentation space to explore creative aspects of fiction filmmaking. Firstly, I will go over the main points where the techniques for Directing Actors can be useful for filmmaking students (and professionals alike). Then, I will present two exercises that I have used in my own teaching experience.

This chapter examines the presence of bisexuality in the content and marketing of Wishman’s roughies of the 1960s. It frames Wishman’s engagement with bisexuality though tracing the cultural history of bisexuality within the historical context of the American sexual revolution, and it also brings bisexual studies to bear on the formal techniques used in Wishman’s films from this period. To trace a contextual backdrop, the chapter reviews gay and bisexual histories to show that queer audiences and urban spaces of sexual media consumption formed a significant and overlooked social context for the sexploitation films that emerged on the brink of the gay liberation movement. Wishman’s earlier roughies, The Sex Perils of Paulette (1965) and Bad Girls Go to Hell (1965), are examined for formal and narrative techniques that centralized bisexual female protagonists. Additionally, Wishman’s later roughie Too Much Too Often! (1967) is argued to reflect a bisexual address in not only its formal and narrative elements, but also its advertising techniques spanning newspaper ads, pressbook details, and the film’s trailer. The chapter argues that Too Much Too Often! is a nearly unprecedented overt depiction of male bisexuality in a context where female bisexuality was more commonly present.

ABSTRACT

This Paper is comparative analysis of films Prisoners and Enemy, both directed by Denis Villenueve. After using Karl Jung’s and Sigmund Freud’s theories of unconscious to examine the text narrative in these movies, I will show the importance of supporting narrative and symbols in understanding the meaning of these works. Like in his previous films, Villenueve offers us drama and suspense but also much more through supporting narrative and relations of the characters if we care to take a second look. I will explain how connected together into one piece, these two movies support Freud’s and Jung’s theories of psychoanalysis.