MIDTERM NOTES ON ALL FILMS SEEN SO FAR

 MIDTERM NOTES ON ALL FILMS SEEN SO FAR

Movies and characters:
1) The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Joe Talbot, 2019)
Montgomery
Jimmie
Grandpa
Kofi

The cinematic invisibility of The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Joe Talbot, 2019) takes us from Hunters Point through San Francisco and to Lower Pacific Heights in a beautifully edited 3-minute skateboard ride. Without the use of seamless editing this ride would have taken the full two hours of the film.

The last Black Man is a protagonist, but in “San Francisco” is one also. We get to know both these protagonists together in these 3 minutes.

 

2) Middle of Nowhere (Ava DuVernay, 2012) Ruby
Ruby
Derek – husband
Brian – boyfriend busdriver
Ruth - Mother
The cinematic form in which the film is presented is primarily with the use of lighting and close up shots. There are other examples as well non-narrative patterns like parallel editing and jumping of time and space. I’ll focus on lighting and use of close-up shots in the film.

I remember in Juno when we started to hear things that were too loud or see things that were too close for her point of view, in the text they said, now we are in her head.

The lighting started out with dim lighting right away in the first prison visit. When Ruby would come home from a jail visit or work, her home was dim to darkly lit. It was also unusual that there weren’t a wider shots establishing the place where she lived. Instead she would walk around her apartment and we would hear voice narration and follow her along with close-up shots of her head.  Then it made sense to me that we were in her head. Her mind was depressed and unclear. The voices were thoughts coming from her head.

 

3) La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995)  Saïd and Vinz Hubert 
Vinz - jewish
Hubert – Afro-French boxes
Said – North African Muslim
Abdel Ichaha
Asterix
The depth of field is constantly changing but mostly follows Vinz.  By depth of field, I mean the field of vision that is the sharpest, where the camera directs our focus with its focus.

The scene starts with a pause and we capture Saïd in a shallow depth of field, we can see him the sharpest, Vinz is still coming behind him - not as sharp.

Saïd is now gone from the shot and there is a tracking shot that follows Vinz. As the depth of field increases, we see Hubert sharply, deep in the back corner doing a drug deal. We are seeing him through Vinz point of view through a metal gate. The gate area goes out of focus, as we see Hubert clearly.  Then we then see a reverse shot of Vinz looking back from Hubert’s area to him through the metal gate and there is a shift in focus with Vinz in a medium close up and the metal gate in blurred. This is another pattern shown visually in the story of these two characters staring at each other with constant suspicion.

The tracking shot of Vinz continues until he finds Saïd. He is in another corner lecturing his sister. This is seen through increasing the depth of field to make the background sharper as Vinz gets closer.  The tracking shot stops when Vinz stops and then we are in a long shot of Saïd, Vinz, and his sister with friends chatting in the room.

Anna’s comment:
Ida,

Yours is a great description of how the use of depth of field can help direct and audience to what is important within a shot. And I think you are correct that although many scenes appear to be available light, that light is augmented to get produce the desired atmosphere. One technique often utilized is to place lighting instruments outside the windows to add greater intensity, the more light the more you can easily stop down and create a deep focus shot.

Yes, the film leans heavily on Neorealism, but what is interesting is the film was shot in color and printed in black and white in post.

4) Kung Fu Hustle (Stephen Chow, 2004) The Axe Gang

 

Sing & Bone – want to be in the Axe Gang
Pigsty Alley
Coolie, Tailor, and Donut
the Harpists
the Beast
 the Landlord and Landlady 
Fong's lollipop
The film was done in wide screen which the pdf text Understanding Movies says is “especially effective in scenes that require elaborately choreographed movements, like a dance number, or shown here, a kung fu fight sequence”. The composition of this frame is excellent use of wide screen. The entire frame is well composed with The Tailor in the foreground, The Worker in the midground and the well-dressed bad guys around the periphery in the background. So much can fit in this frame and it’s needed to show context.

The key light is on The Tailor. He is the dominant one we notice. Dominant as used in the text is “that area of an image that immediately attracts our attention because of conspicuous and compelling contrast.”  He has just been introduced to the fight that The Worker has already been fighting.  As an introduction, they have made him the dominant. His chest is bright white in contrast to the other characters with darker costume hues and dimmer lighting in this scene. The features on his face are sharp. We see the bags under his eyes and his flared nostrils.  

The Worker is still our hero as well, and our eye scans him as in subsidiary contrast. We do not see his full body and his lighting has more shadow. He is still in focus with shadows under his jaw. He is definitely surprised that his meek neighbor has turned into a master kung fu fighter without a doubt. In this shot, we get a look like, What? Ok! He is respecting the dominant person in the shot.  

As the text says, the composition guides our eyes. First to The Tailor, then The Worker and then the periphery. The Axe Gang are well staged in a semi-circle but if this were not a screenshot, we would not really notice the features of the actors. They just seem as an anonymous group of assailants. We're not focusing on their faces. They are important but are of diminishing interest in relation to The Tailor.

The shot is wide lens with a slightly more shallow focus in front with the two lead characters and a slight out of focus in the back with the gangsters. 

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh, 2017)
Mildred Hayes
Daughter Angela
Chief Bill Willoughby
Jason Dixon – racist alcoholic police officer
James – Peter Dinklage

 

5) House of Sand (Andrucha Waddington, 2005)
pregnant Áurea
mother, Maria & daughter
Vasco de Sá 
Luiz, a young soldier

 

Massu 
Nothing but sand.
This beautiful widescreen shot shows the vast sandy area of the coast of Brazil. It is a loosely framed shot as there is a shadow of a frame for the characters in this shot, the slight natural contour of a recess in the sand. The rest to the left is negative space.  

In a loosely framed shot as there is room to move freely without restrictions. Loosely framed shots are usually wide shots.

This is an example of a tightly framed shot in the film.
The characters are in a cramped living environment where there are people sleeping in hammocks in layers on top of each other. In the foreground to the right are someone’s legs, midground to the left is a head and nose, and in the center, there is Maria on a mat with another boy. The opposite can be said of this shot. People cannot move freely without restrictions. I think Maria might step on someone or hit the guy above her with her head.

The vertical pole on the left makes a frame for the left side and the long vertical hammock makes a frame on the right side. Then there are some oblique horizontal lines made with the mat and another hammock and it really is claustrophobic. 

Tight framed shots are usually medium shots or close up.

Emotionally, a tight frame can show discomfort with the amount of clutter around the characters. Maria is hung over from a night of drinking and she doesn’t seem to care who she is waking up next to and her life is a mess. Tight framing can also show entrapment, which she is by her limited opportunities and trapped by the bad ones she did make.

My question:
I wonder if my understanding of open and closed forms is correct? Supposedly they have a connection to loose/tight framing.

Anna’s answer:
"Compositions in open and closed forms exploit the frame differently. In open-form images, the frame tends to be de-emphasized. It suggests a window, a temporary masking, and implies that more important information lies outside the edges of the composition. Space is continuous in these shots, and to emphasize its continuity outside the frame, directors often favor panning their camera across the locale."

And then, " In closed forms, the shot represents a miniature proscenium arch, with all the necessary information carefully structured within the confines of the frame. Space seems enclosed and self-contained rather than continuous."

In the still below although the men hang off the edges of the frame there is nothing hand-in-hand.

Another answer from Anna:
Ida amazing examples and analysis...in rereading your post I added the following, "You are absolutely correct that, "a tight frame can show discomfort with the amount of clutter around the characters," and entrapment as well. Your example is excellent. Further, and conversely a tightly framed shot can depict warmth and security, think of a medium close-up of a happy parent and child, or a close-up two shot of a couple in love. A tightly framed shot mirrors the emotional content of the shot, whatever it is and thus the dramatic intent of the scene." Well, for some reason it is posting....be right back.

Anna Geyer , Oct 13 at 4:57pm

Thank you including a reply. Can you point me to the moment in the lecture from which you drew your quote. If I remember correctly, I made the error and corrected it to the class last semester after the recording ended. Here is what I just replied to your post... I need to find that lecture page and redo it. What you are describing is deep focus. Deep space composition composes on all 3 planes, but is not necessarily a deep focus shot. A deep space composition often is a deep focus shot, or merely a single plane could be in focus as in the above example.  It is so wonderful you take notes. I am not sure it is a thing students necessarily do anymore. Sorry for the confusion.

 

MOONLIGHT

Looking at the Cinematography of Moonlight
Little
Chiron
Black
Kevin
Paula
Juan
Teresa
Terrel

TRANSCRIPTION OF CHAPTER 6 PAGE 230-233
Titled: "Looking at the Cinematography in Moonlight"
Looking at Movies: an Introduction to Film
Richard Barsam & Dave Monahan
Norton & Company
6th ed.
c2019

Moonlight, a 2016 film directed by Barry Jenkins, is about a gay black man struggling to attain acceptance and selfhood in a hypermasculine culture. His story is divided into three chapters, each titled after the name he is given (or gives himself) at a different stage in his life. In “Little,” the first chapter, the protagonist is a fragile child in Miami trying to reconcile the differences between himself and other boys. With no friends and scarce support from his troubled mother, the emotionally withdrawn Little finds an unlikely father figure in a crack dealer named Juan. Besides Juan and His girlfriend, Teresa, a sympathetic neighborhood boy named Kevin is the closest thing to a friend Little has to hold onto.

“Chiron,” the second chapter, chronicles a difficult period of the protagonist’s adolescence. His mother is addicted to crack, Juan is dead, and Chiron is tormented by a bully named Terrel. Chiron has his first sexual experience with Kevin, but before their relationship has any chance of evolving further, Kevin is pressured by Terrel into beating up Chiron in front of a crowd of other high school students. Heartbroken and humiliated, Chiron attacks and seriously injures Terrel and is subsequently arrested.

The final chapter is titled “Black,” which was Kevin’s nickname for Chiron and is now the name the grown man has adopted after reinventing himself as a muscular and street-hardened crack dealer in Atlanta.  After an unexpected call from Kevin, Black impulsively drives to Miami to see his first and only love, the person whose betrayal changed the course of his life.

Technical decisions made by Moonlight’s director of photography, James Laxton, were motivated primarily by aesthetic and expressive considerations. Laxton shot on the Arri Alexa XT, a digital camera that has a sensor capable of delivering the dynamic range needed to shoot  in a variety of lighting situations with a minimum of artificial lighting (primarily lightweight LED instruments). The sensor also provided exceptional color reproduction, especially in terms of skin tones.
Laxton and Jenkins wanted a look that diverged from the documentary realism typically expected of independent films dealing with social issues. To achieve an incongruous dreamlike quality that placed viewers in the protagonist’s solitary perspective, they shot virtually every scene using only a single key light with no fill, maximizing deep shadows to sculpt the characters’ faces. Footage was exposed at levels that gave the postproduction colorist the ability to provide rich, saturated colors, deep shadows, and bright highlights. The camera was equipped with anamorphic lenses, which squeeze the maximum possible visual information onto the camera sensor. More important, these specialized lenses dramatically narrow the depth of field in every shot. This thin slice of focus allowed the filmmakers to visually isolate Chiron and other characters and subjects within the depth of the image. Anamorphic lenses are oval (as opposed to standard spherical lenses), which means that out-of-focus reflections and lights in the image background (known as bokeh) are rendered in the same unusual oval shape, which adds another subtle layer of unorthodoxy to the film’s style. Although the Alexa camera is capable of shooting raw footage, Jenkins and Laxton elected to shoot in a codec that compressed the data because they felt that any loss in visual information would be more than offset by the ability to shoot longer without filling the cameras data storage card. Letting the camera roll continually helps actors immerse themselves in a dramatic situation without the distraction of cutting and slatting new techniques.

 Most of Moonlight was shot using a handheld camera and a Steadicam in a fluid style that reduces the reliance on editing to assemble sequences and scenes. The flowing camera work allowed Laxton to follow action capture performances as they unfolded, such as in a sequence in the third chapter where the adult Kevin prepares a meal for Black.

x Pans and tilts convey literal and figurative connections throughout this story of a boy desperate to connect with others. During Little’s first dinner with Juan and Teresa, the camera glides back and forth between the loving partners. Point-of-view shots often connected to the looking character with a pan instead of the traditional edit.

The accumulated and intimidating male gaze that the protagonist endures while xinteracting with other boys is conveyed with pans along rows of distrustful faces. Unlike our usual experience of the handheld camera, most of this footage is relatively smooth, with the exception of the shot that gives us our first look at Little.  Playing ball with a ball made up of paper.

xWhen we first meet the character, an erratic handheld camera chases Little as he flees from a group of hostile boys. The instability of the camera effectively conveys the child’s helpless panic.  Following him… up in the crack house…

…….

Circular motion

A particular application of the moving camera, in which the frame rapidly circles characters, was used once in each chapter to present a sort of dangerous, assertive masculinity. Dizzying effect of background information flying rapidly past a relatively static subject is both destabilizing and exhilarating, and thus effectively visualizes the menace and allure of male power.

x1)We experience it first an introduction to Juan as he meets with one of his street dealers, Camera goes around the dealer… You can’t get nothing… you know what time it is…guy is probably high… big circles around him. Finally stops in a medium shot when they talk about business.

x2)and again when Terrel intimidates Kevin into punching Chiron, He’s running around the yard looking for prey – I guess he is running around kevin

x3)and finally when we see the reinvented Black cruising his drug territory in a shot that equates his new persona with both his nemesis and his mentor.  Car goes around in circles. Inside his car

……..

Some of the most striking cinematic moments in Moonlight are accomplished with point of view. In a number of sequences, character interaction is portrayed using separation, with each subject staring directly into the camera lens. This eyeline exploits our tendency to identify with the lens, causing an intensified identification with the character offscreen whose point of view we have assumed as we stare directly back into the opposing character’s eyes.

These sequences are used in key moments of the story, including

Whose point of view we have assumed as we stare directly back into the opposing character’s eyes.

EYELINE

x1) When Chiron repeatedly refuses to stay down after Kevin hits him. In every case but one, the technique employs juxtaposed close-ups

PAULA RAGES AT JUAN 30.11

x2)But in what may be the film’s most dramatic example, the interacting characters are shown in medium shots and medium long shots. Consumed with fear and guilt after being confronted by Juan, Little’s mother, Paula, glares and screams at her offscreen son. Little, unable to comprehend or return her rage, offers no emotion in response.

The opposing characters are differentiated with color, light, and design. Paula’s angry world is dark and discordant, with lurid clashing colors.PINK, RED NEON white belt
In contrast, Little’s contained defiance is presented in whites and  blues-colors associated with his relationship with Juan and Teresa. Blue and white at their house

The sequence shifts between the mother and son five times before each walks off the screen in turn.

Separation and point of view
This separation sequence in Moonlight compels the audience to assume alternating points of view between the withdrawn Little and his raging mother, Paula, at a point in which her life is spiraling out of control.
The juxtaposed viewpoints are connected to the viewer and to each other through each character’s direct gaze. Color and light differentiate the opposing characters.

…….

xThe swimming scene and framing

Framing is used to place viewers inside the world of the story at a turning point in Little’s struggle for acceptance and affection. For the scene in which Juan teaches Little to swim, James Laxton brought the camera into the ocean so that the water washed in and out of the frame and across our intimate viewpoint. The filmmakers had scheduled 6 hours to shoot this crucial scene but were forced to capture the action in a mere 90 minutes when an unexpected storm blew in. It turned out to be one of filmmaking’s many happy accidents. The rushed takes lend the scene a dynamic spontaneity, and the rapidly darkening skies convey a progressive passage of time Moonlight’s innovative and effective cinematography was no accident.

Learning to swim in Moonlight
When the Atlantic Ocean leaks into frame, it implies a larger world outside of the screen’s limited perspective. By washing over our viewpoint, it makes us feel as if we’re in the water with the characters.

Most in close-up

……..

 

The movie’s economical but expressive cinematic techniques demonstrate what digital cinematography can do when in the hands of skilled artists and craftspeople. Cinematographer James Laxton and director Barry Jenkins earned Oscar nominations in their respective categories, and Moonlight became the lowest-budget film in the history of the Academy Awards to be named Best Picture     

Other notes:
Cinematography in Moonlight:
xThis shot of Juan driving the streets of the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami demonstrates the low-key lighting and saturated colors used in Moonlight, as well as the shallow depth of field and impressionistic bokeh achieved through the use of anamorphic lenses. 26.23

Expressive use of color and light:
In Moonlight’s second chapter, a flickering fluorescent bathroom light and a sickly green tone imbues the character
x1)Chiron with an awkward ugliness in the moment the normally gentle young man decides to seek revenge on his tormentor. (right before he leaves the bathroom to fight the guy)
2)In a matching bathroom mirror sequence in the third chapter, the light is similar, but the color has shifted to blue to emphasize the cold and hardened natured the character has since adopted.   

xMoving camera diminishes the subject
Perhaps the most poignant moving camera shot in Moonlight uses depth and relative size in frame. After Terrel has threatened to beat up Chiron after school, the camera pulls back as Chiron himself retreats against the wall behind him, reducing his size in comparison to the indifferent students strolling past him.

 

Dream – don’t look at me – he wakes up – mom from the yelling scene

Driving to Miami – people over imposed splashing in the water  over his car little kids…

Diner in slow motion.