There's more to film than a story

by Jim Piper

2005

If you watch films just for the story they tell, and nothing else, you're cheating yourself. For a film is also composed of hundreds of images and sounds, What's more, these images and sound actually affect your response of the story. If you go home from the theatre having liked a film story but aren't sure why, it may have been the cinematics of the film that so captivated you. Some pointers on tuning in to cinematics:

Tempo - Maybe it was the tempo of the film you liked. Tempo is the editor's contribution. Films are fast cut or slow cut or cut somewhere in the middle. If you like Stanley Kubrick's stories, for example, maybe you've responded to the slow-cut style of Kubrick's later films. Individual shots tend to run on the long side.Often they continue beyond the "climax" or high point of the shot. The result is a kind of grandeur imparted to such weighty films as Barry Lyndon and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Fast-cut films, on the other hand, often create a frenzied, dramatic feel. A French film Filmworks showed a few months ago, Chaos, is fast cut. The editing is sharp, the dramatic spaces between shots short. This creates a snappy story.

Frame - Directors are often partial to certain frames - which you probably know as close-ups, medium shots, and long shots. Films dominated by close-up tend to draw us into the inner life of characters: Every curling of a lip and raising of an eyebrow, clearly seen in close-up, is significant. Raising Victor Vargas of necessity has a lot of close-ups because much of the film was shot in actual rooms, cramped rooms, in the Lower East Side. The camera just could not be placed far enough back to take in wide views of the actors. The many close-ups of the film help us understand the characters. - Victor's bravado, Judy's reluctance, the grandmother's concern. Without the close-ups we would feel for the characters less.

Meanwhile the Australian film Rabbit Proof Fence has many wide shots - extreme long shots actually - which record the vast, formidable outback against which the story of the three aborigine girls on the lam is played. As characters, the girls are not as well developed as are the characters in Raising Victor Vargas, but it's not that kind of film. It's more mythic and historical. Though hot, tired, and often hungry, the girls cross the land with surprising ease. It is their aborigine heritage which allows them to endure the crossing and prevail. They know the land better than the whites who pursue them. The land comforts and sustains them. The many wide shots convey this.Color Values. Cinematographers, computers, and film labs can produce just about any kind of color the director wants. There is no one "best" or "realistic color." It depends on the story. In Monsoon Wedding the colors are saturated and rich, as befits the gayly-colored costuming of people vigorously celebrating a wedding. But a film like Bound for Glory, about the life of folk-song singer Woody Guthrie and the desperate dust-bowl refugees he sang about, is dominated by washed-out greys and browns. To keep his colors subdued, director Hal Ashby went so far as to experiment with wrapping panty hose over the lens of the camera to diffuse the color. The optical diffusion is a rich metaphor for both the dust bowl which the squatters have fled and the life of desperation they now live.

Movement - Movies, after all, move. But some move faster than others, while others move slower. Movement in film is often a sign of the mental state of the main characters. Thus in City of God, which Filmworks will show next month, the adolescent hoodlums who drive the story are nearly always in motion, to suggest vitality. The camera too is very active. The second story of The Day I Became a Woman, a film Filmworks showed at the Fresno Art Museum, is dominated by a woman in a bicycle race, a very unwomanly thing to do in contemporary Iran. She moves, the camera moves - constantly. This movement too is symbolic: She wants to escape her oppressive life. Her husband and various male relatives try to get her to cease. When they finally do get her to stop peddling, her quest for independence ends.

In other films, neither camera nor subjects move - as befits the story. In the first half of that political classic All the President's Men, the camera is stationary and Woodward and Bernstein don't move much either because their investigation (into Watergate misdeeds) is stuck. But when the pair start to get some good leads, both the camera and the reporters start moving vigorously. Movement equals excitement, progress, the breaking of the story.

Nothing you see or hear in a film is arbitrary. Every prop, shadow, swath of light, angle on the action, backdrop, color, and texture was decided on days or weeks before filming after the director conducted lengthy discussions with his professional people.

So as you watch a film, at least a thoughtful film, you'll want to keep track of how these cinematic options enhance story.

I believe John Moses and I are going to have some kind of dialog about a razzle-dazzle film topic the next time we do this.