Dec. 29, 2007
At the beginning of the week we looked at several movies to better
understand how to use the camera to break up dialog and deliver another
level of story information.
Despite it's static nature, dialog
doesn't have to be a lead weight that kills the momentum of your story.
If you shoot it properly, you can actually propel the viewer through
multiple layers of information about the characters and the plot
without any additional effort required on the part of the audience.
This isn't merely an academic pursuit. In the Killers,
our next film project, most of the "action" takes place in a diner
where the characters spend most of their time sitting or lying down.
Also, we have to show the evolution of the character of Nick, a seemingly minor character, with few lines in the first half of the story, but who becomes the central character by the end.
We review some films, focusing on how to shoot dialog in a static location and keep it interesting. These included clips from Se7en, Jurassic Park, Gladiator, Cape Fear, The Incredibles
and American Beauty. All these films involved clever use of camera
motion to keep the story moving ahead during a lengthy exposition.
During
the last class each person gave a brief explanation of how they would
use lights and camera to best present the story in their final project
film. In the process I got some valuable feedback about how to set up
for different types of interviews, a question I've been looking to
answer for a long time.