MDA 2400: Cinematography essay

Hello!

In this post we were prompted to write an essay, where we had to:

• Identify a particular cinematograhic technique across the 5 films.
• Examine the ways in which it is used while using examples from the films
• Discuss the nature and function of this technique (How is it similar and how does it differ?/)
• Any conclusion towards my own filmmaking?

The cinematographic technique, I decided to focus on was lighting and colour. Since lighting "is more than just a visual style: it is inherently a part of the storytelling, an integral narrative device."

Eraserhead

In "Eraserhead" directed by David Lynch in 1977, the film itself follows a quite unusual storyline.  Having as the main character, a young man called Henry, who is forced into an unwanted marriage after he has sexual intercourse out of wedlock with a young unstable girl called Mary X. This leads to the birth of an abnormal child who neither feel love towards and only is viewed as a burden that, soon enough, only Henry has to take care of.

In a specific scene, where the Lady in the Radiator character is introduced, she appears from darkness into the centre of light where she sings “In Heaven, everything is right”. Her stepping into the circle of light serves as a beckoning to Henry’s personal salvation from doom. This use of lighting serves as a way to showcase characters that may be “pulled between good and evil, light and dark, illumination and shadow.”

Mulholland Drive

In "Mulholland Drive" by David Lynch, once again, in the “Club Silencio” sequence, it starts being bathed in a blue light as soon as the man who presents the act of the show disappears into smoke and the whole ambient shifts. The shot right after seems to give the indication that the scene could be playing underwater with the criss crossing of blue highlights throughout the stage and onto the audience. When this transitions into a “normal” atmosphere once more, it is known and felt that something is going to happen that will completely shift the balance between the two female characters, Rita and Betty.  This play with light and colour, offers the scene a dream-like feeling that makes the audience stop and think if this action is actually happening or if it is all part of a dream. And regardless of their answer, there is also the question of how this affects Rita and Betty’s friendship.

The Marquise Of O

In "The Marquise Of O" by Eric Rohmer, is the story of a young woman who is known as the Marquise, a widow with two young children. When she encounters a young Russian Count her life changes unexpectedly.

In the scene where the Marquise is being attacked by Russian soldiers, the Count appears on top of a hill. The actor has a back light on him as to make him stand out in the night and even without being able to completely see his face in that moment, the audience is given the impression that he is the hero of the story about to save a poor damsel in distress. Yet we come to discover further into the story, that he actually rapes her in her sleep and leaves her with a child that she can’t comprehend how it came to be. Here is a perfect example of how proper lighting may lead the audience astray with giving false truths about a character.

The Conformist

In "The Conformist" by Bernardo Bertolucci there is a scene where Marcello and Anna, recently engaged, are on the train is yet another perfect example of how the play on light and colour can shift the atmosphere between two characters quite so effectively. To fully understand this, some back story on the characters is needed: Marcello wants to be married because he feels the need for some stability and normalcy in his life and a young Anna Quadri seems to be good enough to achieve that. Yet Marcello, at least at the beginning, didn't feel any love for her and only looked at her as a way to achieve his goal to marry. He looked at her and only saw an uncultured and naive young woman who didn't have much to offer but was sensual and attractive enough to warrant a marriage. So when the scene of the two of them on a train to Ventimeglia is shown, something happens that changes their dynamic. Anna decides to tell Marcello of a time where she was abused for six years by an older family friend and the moment she begins the describe each of the older man’s actions towards her, the light shifts to a warmer/orange almost amber tone, at the moment Marcello starts to recreate the steps of the sexual assault that happened to her. But there was something compassionate about the way Marcello handled the situation since he was trying to give Anna new memories that could overshadow how the real loss of her virginity happened at the young age of 15. This was such a romantic gesture on his part and quite unexpected since it was the first time the audience could see that he actually cared for Anna far more than he let on.

The comparison between the use of the amber light in “The Conformist” against the way “Eraserhead” used it is that both are served to introduce a somewhat of a hopeful future for the characters. Since in “The Conformist”, the warm tones serve as an indication that there might still be hope for a happy marriage between Anna and Marcello whereas in “Eraserhead”, the appearance of the Lady in the Radiator may serve as a beacon of hope for Henry mental stability and possible absolution for his later sins.

The Great Beauty

In "The Great Beauty" by Paolo Sorrentino, the sequence where Jep revisits his adolescent self, the scene is bathed in a blue glow reminescent of an earlier and happier time in his life before it all changed. He remembers that time and part of him wishes he would've tried everything to get the girl of his dreams instead of letting someone else have her and having to live a life of mild success whilst being the "King of the high life", all without love. Whenever the image of this beautiful, young woman appeared, it was understood how much Jep wanted to have had a life with her that might have been happier than his one is right now.

To summarize, each of the different ways these films used lighting to their advantage and to bring forward a specific emotion or to showcase the importance of a character makes me realize even more the importance lighting possesses in a scene and to master it easily is an asset to a story. For me, I would love to be able to properly light actors and sets for when I do a noir style of a film because they used lighting in such a way that it evoked mystery and drama. I love how in “The Conformist”, the mood changed immediately as the colour of the scene changed. Or how in “Eraserhead” the Lady in the Radiator came from darkness and she was the only person visible in the entire set. These little things add up to different levels of intensity that can serve to add more layers to the story about to be portrayed on screen.

Bibliography

Brown, B. (2012) Cinematography: Theory and Practice, Image Making for Cinematographers and Directors, 2nd Edition, Elsevier Inc: London

MDA 2400: Cinematography assignment

Hello!

So in this particular post, I will be going through the short film sequence we did for our Producing and Directing module.

The way the project began was we were given the choice of being in groups of two or three, which just by itself is a hard choice to make. But I did it and got into a group with Deborah. That was our initial idea until I heard that an exchange student for the year, Erin, needed a group and we consequently took her in like a foster family would. Rambling.

So after that we started discussing what ideas we had and how we could go about doing this assignment. And to be honest, because me and Deborah had our attention more on the other project and Erin was a new member to the group, we ended up only accomplishing the work a day before we needed to upload it.

But getting back to the point, after we firmly decided to meet in a park in Hampstead because nature is such a beautiful source of inspiration, we started walking around and seeing what we could use for the purposes of this brief. 

And we settled on a tree which captured our attention since it was not only were the branches huge and sprawled almost perfectly around each other but the fact that it was completely naked of leaves, gave it a haunting feeling. My only comparison is to the tree in Tim Burton's Sleepy Hallow, when the Headless Horseman gets his revenge and gets sucked into the tree in a blood bath.

Eery.

So the idea was to get quite "intimate" with said tree and try to capture some of the essence it transmitted.

Then in post-production, we changed it to black and white and added some slow motion effect. 

Now, I kinda want to go to the park and get really up close with the tree if I can get more varied shots, besides the one's used on here.

1950's shoot: Ideas

Song: Marilyn Monroe's "River Of No Return" from 1954.

Actors: 1 female and 1 male.

Clothing:

• Outdoor:

1. Woman: High waisted pants, ruffled blouse (short or long sleeved), flats (might use my creme one's, if fits), vintage sunglasses, pearl earrings (have as well), 
2. Man: Simple shirt, trousers, leather shoes, vintage sunglasses

• Dinner:

1. Woman: Dress, high heels (might use my hot pink one's, so the colour of the dress needs to go according to them possibly).
2. Men: Different shirt (more conservative), same trousers, same shoes.

Possible locations for the shoot:

Dinner scene (night/evening shoot):

•  Ed's Easy Diner, Euston

 

• The Diner, Camden

(Top 10 American Diners in London)

Top 10 American Diners in London

Picnic by the canal scene (Day shoot)

Camden Lock, canal

Makeup:

Hair:

Screening: "Eraserhead" by David Lynch (1977)

Hello!

This being my first post of a new academic year, specifically my 2nd year, this is the topic I decided to approach since it was the first screening we had since coming back from the Summer holidays (which were AH-MAZING, but that's besides the point.)

So to start off in the right foot, this is a film made by noted filmmaker David Lynch as a final graduate project whilst he was attending the American Film Institute back in the day.
Even though he eventually got funding to effectively produce this film, he still fought through a lot of set backs and most of them were from people who didn't believe that his project would ever come to life as it was "too insane" as to ever become a successful screen story.

Well, far to say we know who came out on top from that setback.

But moving along to my actual interpretation/review of the film in of itself:

• The first thing that caught my eye as soon as the film started was, amazingly, that the movie was not only shot in black and white but rather that Lynch actually used film stock to create it! Talk about creativity and perseverance. 
• Consequently the mood of the film, didn't feel like any other stereotypical 1970's film but rather it transported the viewer into a completely different era in cinematic history. The ambient, mise-en-scene and respective clothing of the actors exuded a late 1940's/early 1950's vibe which in conjunction with the brilliant cinematography made the viewing of it quite an immersing experience.

• There is no way of putting "Eraserhead" into a specific category or genre since it can embody a diversity of both in a single scene. Yes, it has the crackling feeling thanks to the 35mm film stock that was used and the texture and feeling of a film noir where you feel like Humphrey Bogart could appear out of nowhere and become the hero of reaction less Henry and his down spiraling and short lived marriage to Mary. Yet still maintaining the contemporary feel to the story with the introduction of a fantasy element here showcased by the strange, alien-like creature that is assuredly Henry and Mary's out of wedlock child.

• Basically, there isn't only one single answer to what the meaning of the film is. It can be interpreted differently by different people. So if you are looking for a complete and all consuming answer to what Lynch's film is about then, well, I am sorry to disappoint you because there isn't one!

But my opinion is that, there is no denying that this film plays with the morals and social conduct of a society. Lynch exploits this through the introduction of a couple who has sexual intercourse before marriage in which the result is an unwanted pregnancy that forces them to be wed, despite them both being mentally and emotionally unstable people. This is the main plot of the story and what sets the story in motion. We see the ups and downs of both an unwanted marriage and child and how Henry and his wife react to it.

By the end of the film, Henry has been left as the only parent to his son and because he has never felt any love, or should even I say, acknowledgement for the creature that he ends up killing it and is thrown into this strange location where a smiling lady in white expects him and beckons him forward. She, in my eyes, functions as the portal to Heaven which he tries to access but fails because he is not worthy of such after murdering an innocent child. So he is condemned to Purgatory and his punishment is to live out the same series of events that led up to the murder of his creature child for eternity!

Or maybe that's just what I wished that had happened.

 "Eraserhead" (1977) Trailer