Frames, Camera Movements, and Mise en scène

This week, I’ve been running around in circles, finishing tasks until I fell victim to a vicious migraine attack and basically hibernated through yesterday… Which is why I am late on reporting and thus serving you two sessions with one recap now.

Last week in Introduction to Filmmaking, we learned what a narrative and of what elements it consists - namely beginning, middle, and end -, what a reveal is, how to write a story, how to divide it into its smallest parts (namely actions) and finally, how to incorporate those into a storyboard of 16 stills (or story grid, as we call it).

Which is a lot of fun since you are able to experiment with story elements and increase/decrease. So I had fun sketching up a 16 shot-story about writer’s block, using a deus ex machina-device as final reveal.

In order to make this task possible, we furthermore touched upon the six basic film shots, which are, at least for now:

- extreme wide shot (scenery),

- wide shot (whole person),

- medium shot (naval to head),

- medium close up (head to shoulder),

- close up (head, basically) and

- extreme close up (detail).

As you can see in my story grid, I already experimented with a couple of these shots, alternating between different shot sizes and perspectives to give the story a vivid visuality. Down below, I added a detailed description of the action and especially of the shot size I wanted to employ for this task:

As you could see with the example of the clock or the trash bin, these shot sizes naturally also work for objects on film, not only for characters - though I still need to develop a feeling for which shot is which considering smaller and larger objects.

Now, this week, we deepened our understanding of the basic film shots by discussing their various effects and furthermore learned our fair share about iconography (the use of symbols and themes within a film), mise-en-scène (THE art of filmmaking!) and camera movements.

While mise-en-scène centers around the arrangement of various elements within the given frame, it naturally gives a concise idea about the genre of the film, its characters and the time in which the story is set. And so far, we've been given the following elements to look out and take care for:

- lighting

- setting

- props

- hair and makeup,

- costume,

- body language and

- casting

While this is an extensive list already, to my mind, I would certainly want to break down the wieldy but rather muddy term "body language" into clearer and more concise aspects to easier specify how characters may differ on screen:

- mimics,

- gaze (how are the character's eye-lines, does he look away, can he maintain eye contact, etc.),

- proxemics (how the character behaves in and interacts with and within a given space, is he rather ducking away in a corner or standing prominently in the middle of the room),

- kinesics (how the character gestures and interacts with props)

- chronemics (how time-consuming/fast-paced/slow-paced does the character act?).

Even though I am aware that these extra aspects might add more work into the design of mise-en-scène, I do think that a further distinction of a character's bodily behaviour might not only help defining the character and his traits more accurately, but I think that bearing these in mind can help to further accentuate the story and bring the mise-en-scène to perfection.

Proceeding to the possible camera-movements, we have been taught the following examples so far:

- track and dolly (following a character 'in his tracks')

- pan and tilt (horizontal and vertical movement on the spot)

- steadicam

- crane shot

- bravura shot (one continuous shot without edits)

- trombone shot (the infamous 'Vertigo'-shot)

- endoscope shot (shot entering a mouth or tunnel)

- 4th wall.

And finally, today we have been given the task of a Seven Day Film Challenge in which we are supposed to shoot a short film based on roughly 16 shots but moreover doing it as camera-in-editing!

For those of you who have no idea what this means, let me tell you it’s a pain... Being more professional, it means that you shoot your film shot by shot, without the possibility of editing in post-production. So if you have, e.g. two scenes closely intertwined with each other (say, a young man having a beach party and a middle-aged woman working long hours in the office), you would NOT shoot scene one first and the second one after that and edit it together whenever and however you like, no no no no no....

You would have to travel to each location between EACH AND EVERY shot. Regarding this, you would also need to shoot them like pearls on a string and plan ahead neatly, incorporating all the elements we learned during those last two weeks.

Given this requirement, you realise it is pretty hard coming up with a decent idea, planning and writing it, taking care of the proper risk assessment AND shooting the damn thing within one week. So yeah, it’s a stressful business after all.

Which is why I will be off again and probably not post anything in the upcoming seven days. We’ll see…

Keep your fingers crossed for me!