SCREEN WRITING ... contd.

SCREEN WRITING

I can say screen writing has nothing to do with alphabetical language. My camera is my ‘pen’ or ‘stylus’ and I write upon screen in the language of ‘Cinema’ ; that is images and sounds orchestrated or syntaxed in a certain meaning making manner, universal or vernacular, depending upon my choice of symbology. 

Most often, however, we have to write ‘proposals’ because before we can start a production we need to let certain sort of people know, certain basic ideas or themes & premises & often a financial scope of our project. These ‘people’ are usually not directly associated with film making, its skills and practices. So, a certain narrative, descriptive, analytic, or even poetic resume of what’s on your mind you make hoping the reader will get impressed enough to say ‘yes’ . This, by no stretch of imagination, is the correlate to the ‘film’ that you may have visualized to some extent in your mind or made notes about as you dreamt images & sequences or bits of racy dialogue and what have you.

There is a basic document, however,   called “The Script” which  initiates  unit members or the inner circle into vicissitudes of  your film at various levels. Copies of it will be shared and studied by technicians and craftsmen, artists and professionals in their own perspective and in their own privacy as often the entire film can neither be visualized nor spoken about in one sitting and every body may or may not be present at all sittings. This document is a bench-mark for during shooting one may simply take off & never refer to script in a tsunami of inspiration but in the absence of such inspiring, heady moments one can always fall back upon the minimum essential program , so to speak.  The unit members will understand it in the perspective of their own ‘departmental’ methodology. Their creative skills  will contribute to richness and endow your work with nuance  &  refinement. To this end we make a ‘Director’s Script’ ; a central document, fairly elaborate and technical, consisting of alphabetical language describing physical actions and sounds, speech & musical accentuations if any, on a chronology of images  which are again, described in terms of physical attributes like light, focal length, composition, perspective  & depth, fore / mid & background, color, sound effects and volumetrics, commentary or dialogue even grunts, coughs  & sneezes;  movement of frame independent or vis-à-vis movement within the frame…. choreography and a thousand other details depending upon the individual writer’s imagination and ability for abstraction. This last is extremely important as there is a tendency to slip into the ‘symbolic’ or ‘poetic’ or literary sort of writing which may have been good for the aforementioned “Proposal” but anathema for Director’s Script. It must only speak in terms of physically understandable / achievable bits of action and endeavor “This side” & “That side” of the Frame. Got it?

Basically, it’s a ‘dialectical instrument’ that we are creating .  There is an inherent dialectical interplay in its format which goes  …  IDEA/SYNOPSIS/TREATMENT/SCENARIO and onto “DIRECTOR’S SCRIPT” containing Scenes (numbered) and its breakdown in terms of shots (also numbered). There is a dialectical relationship built among the core members like designers, camera & sound technicians, actors & editors as well as production assistants and managers who all study and refer and cull out of it bits of do-able work and imagine bits of physical details to be brought together at one given time that is when that particular shot is being ‘taken’. This is careful orchestration and not quite possible without a good “Director’s Script”  in loose leaf files, in the hands of each & every member of the unit. They will, at their own level de-construct  these bits you have denoted and come to a working knowledge of what’s required in a given scene, at what time and where. Again, creative take offs are always possible and discussions welcome, but the Script shall remain the basic bench-mark; you can soar above that & sky or possibly ‘budget’ is the limit but not fall short of its demands.

Suffice so much for the moment…  shall continue later.

Caca readings #652

SCREEN WRITING cntd.

 The process of film making actually is a process of giving form to that which is form-less. In other words, it is a process of progressively crystallizing abstractions, dreams, visualizations in our imagination and script writing is step-one towards this end.

IDEA :  In the ‘Authorship Mode’ of screen writing, the author, that is the film maker herself writes her own script conceived according to her own visualization. It is eminently possible, therefore, for one to have a ‘kernel’ … in seed form, in a phrase or in  an illuminated sentence to evoke the entire meaning and feeling of the enterprise. It’s a tall order to start with but loose-leaf sheets or lap-top pages can come to our rescue; in the sense that one need not actually begin at the beginning!  One can start writing. After once one has got a fair  grip of the substance / corpus, one can attempt to coin a crystalline word construct and see if it works as “The Idea” … it can change and alter throughout the process of writing the script until one is satisfied with what one got.

SYNOPSIS :  a short narrative. It describes the theme in general terms to give the “Idea” a specific  content.  Synopsis need not be too brief, but it does not carry itself very well encumbered with details. Broad blocks, the beginning, middle and the end, some sketchy yet telling symptoms of characters, locations, so that the reader gets a clear picture of “what” is to be  “said”.

TREATMENT :  is indicative of precisely “How” it is being said. To evoke a certain form, tone and texture peculiar to your film, to proclaim your élan or particular style of the author; to approach that particular class of society,  age group,  intelligence level; the same thought,  you I hope will agree with me when I put it to you  that it needs to be articulated in each case, differently. That is the treatment we give to address the same matter to different targets as we alter the ‘Treatment’ each time to suit the purpose.

So between Synopsis and Treatment, the reader gets a clear picture of “What” is being said and “How” is it being said and most hopefully, to whom it is being said. Care must be taken, however, for a good marriage of “Form” with “Content”; obvious mis-match, unless stylistically called for is best avoided.

SCENARIO :  This is where I think it is actually at. I wake up in small hours of night, jump out of bed and with bleary eyes write down a scene or a sequence, an image or a fragment of dialogue in a situation I’d been working on perhaps during day-light hours. It’s  rewarding to sleep by one self in utter quietitude and complete darkness during those contemplative periods of screen-writing! There is no one way, and there is  no compulsion for following linear progression of Idea / Synopsis/ Treatment / scenario / and even the Director’s script if you are dexterous and can guess where to place what your imagination just threw up in an  alphabetic word construct. It is definitely not the film, I repeat, because we are working with language, a different medium and a tyrannical one if you ask me but its only words & words are all we have, to keep our imaginings from evaporating every next morning …! So, its good to write down whatever bits and pieces, and zor-lagi-fa-yu-ba meaning, “May the Force be with you” if you can sit and write like professionals, like  a piddling cow or like how oil flows down in one steady, cogent stream.  For me, normally it comes as flashes, like a collage and I have to sort it out later on. There is no defined universal path, what I am sharing with you is what has worked for me.

Now, the brass tacks; a scenario is not a piece of literature. It is a visual approximation in words (no symbols, similes or figures of speech please..!) with as much detail & clarity on what is seen and what is heard as one can conjure up. By all means you may like to make general scenes, separating big chunks of the narrative like chapters, and even give  short descriptions of what happens in  particular scenes like chapter-headings  of Victorian novels. In the body we give detailed description of space time, action & intent of dialogue; ( need not actually fill in precise words a character will speak on screen). What sounds surround the scene or what sounds make signification for  progression of our meaning. We do not spell out ‘the meaning’;  we remain out side, describing the exterior, the look, the action in order to indicate the ‘interior’ … as if it were. I hope we are together, so far …?!

So we go on adding to this central document called  Scenario, we give it a working ‘Title’ which may point toward our intended meaning, or we may not like to name it before it is even born; we can name our film when it is complete in all aspects or along the way, somewhere; working title is prone to changes. It is quite flexible if our focus is right, if our intuition is strong and steadfast we shall sail through until one day  … or night, we shall all of a sudden come to realize that we have finished writing our scenario..!

One can take a caesura at this stage. Many pegs of  production tent can start being hammered into place. The scenario will give clear clues to an experienced Production Manager about Budget. You and your inner circle can start the process of “Casting” and “Location Hunting”  or “Set Designing” if you please; you can start writing dialogues and as you do so you can shift gears into making your “Director’s Script”.

DIRECTOR’S SCRIPT :  essentially is a hugely expanded and amplified version of Scenario. First of all Scenes here are defined as ‘space-time continuums’ ;  they are different in so much as  even if it is slamming the front door and walking away on  graveled drive-way, when the ‘action’ shifts from one to another place and there is a fracture in either special or temporal thread, the scene is deemed to have shifted. These scenes have to be numbered, mention has to be made whether the scene is in-doors or out-doors, whether it is day / night / or some other twilight point, a location has to be specified and if it is overcast, windy or scorching. In the body of the scene entire action is broken by semantics / syntax into virtually  shots that will be taken on actual shoot. Dialogues often serve as a clue for shot break down although the strict method would be to evoke your innate ‘Cinematic’ … ‘Editorial’  … as well as  & most specially your ability to fragment the unit space / time / action in order to interfere with it according to concepts of ‘mis-en-scene’. The description almost visually evokes the tension, pace & feeling, stress, the poetic or dramatic structuring of action through shot taking; yet virtually, which in a sense is de-constructing the scene only in order to re-construct it later during editing stage; but here they are both fused into one . There is the sound section to complement visuals and there are durations of each shot as we write. Sum total of durations can be roughly mentioned at the top with other details of time / space / day / night / etc.

This is another one of those exercises when you simply jump out of bed and behold fingertips flying on your feather-touch key-board or pounding at it in excited frenzy. Your powers of ‘visualization’ can illuminate any given scene at any given time and you have to instinctively obey its command and ‘Roger Wilco’ ! once you do one scene nicely, technically you can repeat performance and do as many scenes as are required  to complete your film.

Well … !! Good luck .. .

Rahatavalokit

Cacareadings #

In Conclusion

IN CONCLUSION

Clearly, a full and real expression of the modern scene and modern experience can not be achieved unless people are observed in accurate relation to their surroundings, in their environment. To do this, there must be establishment and development of character. There must be growth of ideas not only in the theme, but in the minds of the characters. Your individuals must be of the audience. They must be familiar in type and character. They themselves must think and convey their thoughts to the audience; if possible, they must make the audience think along with them; because only in this way will the ‘Cinema’ succeed in its sociological purpose.

And it is these very requirements which will continue to distinguish ‘Cinema’ from story-films; for in the latter, a character is seldom permitted to think other than trivial, personal (selfish?) thoughts, or to have opinions in any way connected with the larger issues of existence. Just as the facts of the Theme must be important facts, so also must be the outlook possessed by the individuals for they are, and in turn their characterization is, conditioned by those same facts. In Cinema this is possible, whereas in the story-film, at any rate under the present conditions of manufacture, facts and ideas as well as characterization are suppressed in the interest of the balance sheet and ‘technique’ alone is left to the Director, who often ends up as a eulogized manager.

Whereas some prefer the attitude of romanticism, others among us may set ourselves the task of building from a materialistic basis. It is purely a question of personal character & inclination, of how strongly you feel about satisfying private artistic fancies or communal aims.

The immediate task is, I believe, to find persuasion to put the people and their problems, their labor & their service, before them. This is also a job of presenting one half of the populace to the other; of bringing a deeper and more intelligent social analysis to bear upon a whole cross section of modern society; exploring its weaknesses, reporting its events, dramatizing its experiences and suggesting a wider and more sympathetic understanding among the prevailing class in society.

For this reason, although it has made special use of actualities rather than artificialities, it is the ‘method’ which prompts this practice that is important and not the type of film produced. The sociological, political or other purposes served by the ‘method’ will continue to be of abiding importance. The ‘Method’ actually designs our attitude toward our ‘corpus’ and is visible as well as effective right from the stage of research & scripting, to location & characters hunt; it permeates among people through the shooting and when the film is complete; its screenings precipitate the resolve. And that effect of the ‘Method’ is the real purchase of our enterprise.

In short, the ‘Method’ is more complex than its traditions would have us believe. No longer is it the mere pictorial description of things & people & places of interest. Observation alone is not enough. Camera portrayal of movement, no matter how finely observed, is purely a matter of aesthetic ‘good taste’. The essential purposes lie in the ends applied to this observation. Conclusions must be indicated and results of observation must be put across in a manner that demand high creative endeavor. Below the surface of the modern world lie the actuating issues of modern civilization. In industry, commerce, civics and nature, mere superficial portrayal of actuality is in-sufficient. Such surface observation implies no intellectual ability. It is the meaning ‘behind’ the thing and significance ‘underlying’ the people that are the inspirations for our ‘approach’. Every manufacture, every organization, every function, every scheme of things represents at one point or another, the fulfillment of a human interest. No matter whether politics, culture, economics or religion, we are concerned with the impersonal forces that dictate this modern world. The puny individual must be re-focused into his normal relationship to the general mass, must take his place alongside in the community’s solid struggle for existence and forsake personal achievement.

Above all Cinema must reflect the problems and realities of the present. It can not regret the past; it is dangerous to prophesy. Cinema can & does draw upon the past in its use of existing heritages but it only does so to give point to a modern argument. In other words we are allowed to grow nostalgic and refer to ‘past’ but only with the aim of ‘illuminating the present’. In no sense, then, is a historical re-construction, Cinema and attempts to make it so are destined to fail. Rather it is contemporary fact and event expressed in relation to human associations.

We may assume, then, that this determines the approach to a subject but not necessarily the subject itself. Further, that, this approach is defined by the ‘aims behind production’, by the Director’s intentions and by the ‘forces making production a possibility’. And, because of the film camera’s ability for reproducing a semblance of actuality and because the function of Editing is believed to be the main-spring of film-creation, it has so far been found that the best material for this purpose is naturally, and not artificiality, contrived. But it would be a grave mistake to assume that this method differs from story-film merely in its preference for natural material. That would imply that ‘natural material’ alone gives the distinction, which is untrue. To state that it only makes use of analytical editing methods is equally mistaken.

The postulate that it is realistic as opposed to the romanticism of the story-film with its theatrical associations, is again in-correct; for although it may be realistic in its concern with actuality, realism applies not only to the material but more specifically to the method of approach to the material. Such inspirations demand a sense of social responsibility difficult to maintain in our world today. That I am fully prepared to admit. But, at the same time, you dare not be neutral or else you become merely descriptive & factual. The function that the film performs within the present social & political sphere must be kept constantly in mind. Relative freedom of expression for your views will obviously vary with the production forces you serve and the political system in power. In countries still maintaining a parliamentary system, discussion and projection of beliefs within certain limits will be permitted only so long as they do not seriously oppose powerful vested interest; which most often happens to be the force controlling production. Under an authoritarian system, freedom is permissible provided opinions are in accord with those of the State for social & political advance, until, presumably, such a time shall arrive when the foundation of the State are strong enough to withstand criticism. Ultimately, of course, you will appreciate that you can neither make films on themes of your own choice, nor apply treatments to accepted themes, unless they are in sympathy with the aims of the dominant system.

Compared with the broader aspects of ‘Artistic Vision’, which have absorbed my attention lately, film seems a limited subject. Yet what attracted the young student in the 20’s was not only the new, fantastic, inquisitive and sentimental play of moving shadows in itself, but also a critical challenge to certain principles of theory. It frequently happens that a guiding theme, whose development will occupy a man’s later life, takes shape around his 20^th year. At about that time I started to make copious notes on what I called ‘Materialtheorie’. It was a theory meant to show that artistic and scientific descriptions of reality are cast in moulds that derive not so much from the subject-matter itself as from the properties of the medium or Material employed. I was impressed by geometrically and numerically simple, elegant forms, by the regularity and symmetry found early cosmologies as well as in Bohr’s atomic model, in philosophical systems, and in the art of the primitives and children. At that time, my teachers were laying the theoretical and practical foundations of the Gestalt Theory at the Psychological Institute, University of Berlin; and I found myself fastening to what may be called, ‘Kantian turn of the new doctrine’, according to which even the most elementary processes of vision do not produce mechanical recordings of the outer world but ‘organize’ the sensory raw-material creatively, according to principles of simplicity, regularity & balance, which govern the receptor mechanism.

This discovery of the Gestalt school fitted the notion that the work of art too, is not simply an imitation or selective duplication of reality but a translation of observed characteristics into the forms of a given medium. Now, obviously, when Art was thus asserted to be an equivalent rather than a derivative, cinematography represented a test case. If a mechanical reproduction of reality, made by a machine, could be art, then the theory was wrong. In other words, it was a precarious encounter of reality and art that teased me into action. I undertook to show in detail how the very properties that make photography and film fall short of perfect reproduction, can act as the necessary moulds of an artistic medium. The simplicity of this thesis and the obstinate consistency of its demonstration explain, I believe, why a quarter of a Century after the publication of ‘Film’ the book is – still & again – consulted, asked for and stolen from libraries.

Something more hopeful & helpful might have been written, the reader may feel, if there had been less insistence on ‘art’ and more gratitude for useful & enjoyable evenings spent in the movie theatre. Indeed there would be little justification for an indictment that charged violation of this or that aesthetic code. The issue is a more real one. Shape and color, sound and words are the means by which men define the nature and intension of life. In a functioning culture, man’s ideas reverberate from his buildings, statues, songs, and plays. But the population constantly exposed to chaotic sights & sounds is gravely handicapped in finding its way. When the eyes and ears are prevented from perceiving meaningful order, they can only react to the brutal signals of immediate satisfactions.

Let me bring this conclusion nearer home to Faiz Ahmad ‘Faiz’, the beauty of whose romantic metaphor was as intense as his message for the downtrodden; in his own words, “in totality, he value of a couplet includes both romantic niceties and social consciousness; a good couplet, therefore, is one that meets the standard not only of art, but of life as well. I crafted my style as an amalgamation of romance & revolution.”

Caca1776.readings

TAKE AN ISSUE ...

The UNHCR  grilling of India during  the Universal Periodic Review May 24. 2012.

NORWAY:

1.      Is India repealing  Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act and the Jammu & Kashmir Public Safety Act?

2.     How will the GOI work to arrest the decline in sex ratio of 914 girls to 1000 boys, for children aged 0-6 years?

SWEDEN:

How does the Government guarantee that freedom of expression on internet is not un duly restricted?

DENMARK & SLOVENIA:

1.      How & when the Government will put a stop to Manual Scavenging?

2.     Is the right to work only guaranteed to members of rural households (through MGNREGA); and if yes, why?

IRELAND:

1.      What measures are being taken to ban labor for children  aged 6-14 years? (under Child Labor Act. 1986)

2.     How are the families and employers of child workers encouraged to move them from work-place to class-room? (under Right to Education law)

GERMANY:

1.       Discrimination on the basis of religion, cast & race as well as gender is prohibited by Constitution, transgression with impunity is quotidian. How does the Government intend to enforce the Rule of Law?

2.      Foreign Contribution (regulation) Act guarantees that Human Rights Defenders are able to carry out legitimate and peaceful activities; some amendments, however, create problems for NGOs and their grantees that amount to harassment and intimidation – by the Government itself. How is GOI taking cognizance of this?

INDIA:

1.      can introspectively indulge in questioning itself  on Social Cost of Corruption,

2.     runaway urbanization as well as inflation;

3.     and the widening differential between rising livelihoods and the even faster rising cost of living.

Rahatavalokit 

Introducing "transpaerncies" series of short films ..

A KIND OF DOCUMENTARY

practice art for art’s sake and ‘get away with it’!

If there was a unified theory of Arts; it would say that there are inherent possibilities & limitations in every medium, and art-practice playing with & within these is for the sake of that specific art. It can be seen how both ‘Dhrupad’ and Phillip Glass’ music fit this definition. What is true of music ought to be true of Cinema for, ‘All Art Aspires to the State of Music’. 

This is the age of DV. What Vishnu & I have been able to get away with is something that could have happened only between the two of us during that particular time when light was just so and in this particular space. We are old friends and digital technology ‘user friendly’. The uniqueness of what we call, “In Search of Rahat” [working title] is specific to this particular film document and non-replicable. There is Cinema in it because it agrees with our honest sense & the definition above. There is too much talk, of course, but you can’t have it all your way…every time.

Aesthetically, films are triadic in nature. There is the ‘Gaze’ of the director, that of Camera and sound, where the film is heading, there is the Gaze (regarde`) of the Actor, and then, there is the ‘gaze’ of the spectator. If there is an interlock between these three, we have a successful film; ‘it works’, as they say. If no, then it doesn’t work while it might still be good cinema-art-practice true to definition. There is no guarantee, after all, that art must ‘work’.

Rahatavalokit

Caca274

Basic Reading list for Starters ... !!

STRUCTURALISM OF CINEMA…

I have been asked if I could provide a kind of reading program to help students of Prof. Rahat Yusufi approach new cinematic criticism which is transforming academic practice as well as film-making in Europe, America and Australia. There are far more gifted commentators than I, and further, I write in haste, so what I indicate here is necessarily crude and idiosyncratic and I would not like to be formally held to the following piece.

General Comments

Despite some brilliant, early attempts to formalize Film Theory & critical practice such as:

Eisenstein                “Film Form & Film Sense”

Bazin                       “What Is Cinema?”

Arnheim                  “Film Art”

Lindgren                 “The Grammar of A Film”

Kracauer                  “Redemption of Physical Reality”

(…these texts are well worth study but I have personally discarded Lindgren & Kracauer) most enlightened film-criticism was humanist, evaluative, liberal, often concerned with the problems of ‘realism’ (Gaston Roberge prefers ‘realism/s’ and I agree) and aimed at a well rounded aesthetic effect. Such an essay is by David Bordwell – ‘On Citizen Kane’ (in Bill Nichols’s “Movies & Methods”) and the prefatory remarks are very illuminating. Increasingly, however, this criticism seemed un-satisfactory to my generation, for narrative / feature films were quarried only for ‘moral’ or ‘aesthetic’ dilemmas, or the psychological consistency of characterization/ character. At worst they ended up as plot-summaries and at best they were over literary and scarcely referred to ‘cinematic’ quality of films; being most dependent on the ‘anchorage of dialogue’ to illuminate the film’s meaning. To find the peculiarly ‘cinematic’ quality of films, many of us returned to the notion of rhetoric and examined the conventions and dramatic devices and the use of poetics, while others incorporated insights from art history.

In the 60’s, however, linguistics accelerated as a discipline through the impact of structuralism, best evidenced by Levy Strauss’s insight that, “society was structured like a language” & that “Myth” was a social coding system that maintained contradictory &/or dominant social practices and exchanges. In short, he saw a play between “Absence” & “Presence”; just as breath & the presence of obstructing mechanisms like lips and teeth create sounds like h  -  s  -  p  -  b…., to create with vowels words or signifiers or “re-presentations” of “meaning”.  Derrida and Kristeva have further extended his play of ‘presence’ & ‘absences’ to a principle of “differences”, nothing can be understood unless it is compared with something. “Difference”; in the simplest structure things are held in tension thus the tremendous insight of ‘binarism’ which has ultimately created through ‘digitalism’, the computer revolution.

Claude Levi Strauss:    “Triste Tropique…Structural Anthropology”.

Thus the next advance, in English film criticism was the work on ‘auteur’ , whereby American directors, held anonymous by the Hollywood commercial & industrial requirements could actually be ‘revealed’ not as mere ‘assembleurs-de-la-scene’ but as powerful and literary authors, once their individual codes of themes, subjects, postulates and prominent stylistic conventions employed were made into their own individual structure. Again, certain ‘genres’ were constructed by theorists derived from consistency of convention, character positions, binary oppositions. Two useful examples are:

“Signs and Meaning in the Cinema” :  Peter Wollen

 

 

“Six Guns and Society”  :  Will Wright.

In his book Peter Wollen indicated that the next step forward was to develop semiotics or ‘the science of signs’ much as the early French linguist Sassure had outlined at the turn of (the previous!) century. In the Russian Revolutionary times the project had been begun by the formalists who became the Warsaw School, but had dwindled because of because of lack of translation and intellectual support. About this time, the important French magazine “Cahires du Cinema” (which for a few years brought out English language editions as well; collector’s item, that lot) issued a comparative essay:

“The Young Mr. Lincoln”  :  Cahires du Cinema  in

“Movies & Methods”  :  Bill Nichols; which I feel was part influenced by :

“Cinema / Ideology / Criticism”  :  Comolli/ Norboni. In Movies & Methods & in SCREEN vol. 12/1&2 &/or SCREEN READER #1.

Both essays indicate an assertion of the materiality of film; its placement as a commodity under certain economic practices, and hence, reflecting social practices & relations; and most importantly that all such products are grounded in ideology – at that level there is nothing that can be ‘value free’ or could avoid some political utilization.

In France, Christian Metz attempted to determine whether there was a :“Film Language”  :  Christian Metz.  Trying to be scrupulous in determining the “Cinematic Object” he posited the “Shot” as the basic Cinematic Unit; but there is much controversy about his work. For my preference resolves many difficulties and raises the seminal idea of “Triple Articulation” :

 

“Theory of Semiotics”  :  Umberto Eco.

To gain a general grasp of Semiotics is not easy but these books will help:

“Semiology”  :  Pierre Girandy

“Structuralism & Semiotics”  :  Terence Hawkes

“Marxism & Formalism”       :  Tony Bennet

“Structural Poetics”              :  J. Culler

“Subcultures”                       :  Dick Hebdige

“Levy Strauss”                      :  E. Leach

“Elements of Semiology”      :  R. Barthes also “Image Music Text” by him.

As these areas developed, the Feminist Critique also developed and in the Caheri’s essay, Freudianism & Marxist Theory was employed, as well as a critique of ‘realist’ practices. The two central propositions are that, “…as the world moved from feudalism to capitalism, hierarchical society and culture had to arrange itself differently, and if we believe Tawney, Weber & Reisman, a different personality type had to be constructed with a different set of perceptions and social control mechanism – hence the myth of the autonomous, free enterprising and “progressive individual” became the ideal without any real attention to social consequences. To sustain these perceptions, the Arts changed dramatically, especially Painting & Architecture; so ‘perspective and 3`dimentiality became prized objectives aimed at verisimilitude with external phenomenon’. So also with Cinema – ideas of “best camera position”, crossing imaginary line, continuity cuts and most important of all, matching of looks and screen direction were enlisted to make realistic camera practice in the capitalistically and economically dominant Hollywood system – hence French terms like, “le plan American”. As with the realistic novel, the aim was to make a cohesive, centralist, single perception which would convince the reader / viewer that s/he was indeed seeing real life; the construction of a seamless web, an apparent transparency of object. But, of course, film is a representational system and though it may affect reality and be part of it, it is not total reality. Hence one needed to criticize film practice and notions of realism. So we have the following:

Noel Birch   :   “Theory of Film Practice”

R. Barthes    :   “Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein” (Screen vol:15/2)

C. Metz        :   “Realism and the Cinema”  (Screen vol:15/2)

D. Broadwel :  “Space and Narrative in the films of Ozu” (Screen vol:16/3)

E. Branyan   :   “Formal permutations of the Point-of-view shot” (Screen vol:16/3)

Ogle             :   “Depth of Deep Focus”  (Screen vol: 13/1)

Mc Cabe      :   “Principles of Realism and Pleasure” (Screen vol: 17/3)

THE FEMINIST CRITIQUE

 

asserts that the world is phallocentric, Male-dominated. One of the most sustained psychological systems, Freudianism asserts the centrality of the male for the reality and understanding of the male-constructed world. A person can not speak to a person but a man speaks to a woman, and it is in that dimension that male tyranny prevails.

The psychological mechanism that holds the Cinematic object in place is called, “Scopophilia”: the desire to look & its two fetishistic practices “voyeurism & narcissism”. Women are not constructed as active agents in film capable of determining events, but as passive ‘sexual’ objects and are ornamented and displayed as such. Even when a woman is narcissistic, she is constructing herself on an already existing, male dominated voyeuristic principle. Thus, Feminist Film Practice chooses to de-construct the positioning of the female in Cinema and hopes to post an alternative reality, which will reflect more equal relationship between men & women, which they hope will come about. So we have:

Laura Mulwey    :   “Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema” (Screen vol:16/3)

Claire Johnson   :   “The Subject of Feminist Film” (Screen vol: 21/2)

John Cllis           :   “On Pornography” (Screen vol: 21/1

Thus these two areas lead to “New Cinema” and the resurgence of Avante Garde. An overall perspective on the current state of Film Theory is provided by:

Brian Henderson,   but you might like to work towards him through:

Andrew Tudor   :   “Theories of Film”

Dudley Andrews :   “Major Film Theories”

 INTERCULTURAL or NATIONAL FILMS 

At this stage, my thoughts are un-formed in this area, but I have noticed in Hong Cong and at a lesser level in India; a desire to re-examine the formalist qualities of popular film, rather than hold to an elitist, moralistic, superior film alternative. In both groups, earlier Dance & Drama have been incorporated even if further vulgarized into the staple formula movies of sword-play, martial-arts, song & dance.

India has, of course, one of the most profound Semiotic works:

“A Monograph of Bharata’s Nattya Shastra : PSR Appa Rao & Pt. R. Sastri.

“The Nattya Shastra” : Manmohan Ghosh. MA. PhD. Cal.

“Introduction to Bharata’s Nattya Shastra”

:  Adya Rangacharya.

Most critics and scholars have merely paid ‘lip service’ to this systematic approach, but with new semiotic insights, I feel, much analysis should be carried out. Of course it is very hard to know which way to go, but I found:

Noel Burch   :   “The Distant Observer”

Rosalind Coward/John Ellis : “Hong Kong, China 1981” (Screen vol: 22/3) useful.

CRASH COURSE

 If you are in a hurry; I’d suggest essays as follows:

Comolli/Narboni   :   Cinema/Ideology/Criticism

Cahiers du Cinema:   Depth of Deep Focus

Mc Cabe               :   Realism & the Cinema

Mc Cabe               :   Principles of Realism & Pleasure

Muldey                 :   Visual  Pleasure & Narrative Cinema

Metz                     :   The Imaginary

??                         :   Programming the Look (in the last few ‘Screen Education’)

The Three Best Film Teaching Books:

“Movies & Methods”    :    Bill Nichols

“Film Art, An Introduction    :    D. Bordwell & K. Thompson

“How to Read Film”    :    James Monaco.

If anyone undertakes an extended analysis of Intercultural or Indian Film, I would be interested in seeing the work and exchanging opinions.

PETER JEFFERY.

Lecturer in Film & Television.

Murdoch University.

MURDOCH. WESTERN AUSTRALIA.

Caca1701.readings

Stylistic Posture

IN CONCLUSION

Clearly, a full and real expression of the modern scene and modern experience can not be achieved unless people are observed in accurate relation to their surroundings, in their environment. To do this, there must be establishment and development of character. There must be growth of ideas not only in the theme, but in the minds of the characters. Your individuals must be of the audience. They must be familiar in type and character. They themselves must think and convey their thoughts to the audience; if possible, they must make the audience think along with them; because only in this way will the ‘Cinema’ succeed in its sociological purpose.

And it is these very requirements which will continue to distinguish ‘Cinema’ from story-films; for in the latter, a character is seldom permitted to think other than trivial, personal (selfish?) thoughts, or to have opinions in any way connected with the larger issues of existence. Just as the facts of the Theme must be important facts, so also must be the outlook possessed by the individuals for they are, and in turn their characterization is, conditioned by those same facts. In Cinema this is possible, whereas in the story-film, at any rate under the present conditions of manufacture, facts and ideas as well as characterization are suppressed in the interest of the balance sheet and ‘technique’ alone is left to the Director, who often ends up as a eulogized manager.

Whereas some prefer the attitude of romanticism, others among us may set ourselves the task of building from a materialistic basis. It is purely a question of personal character & inclination, of how strongly you feel about satisfying private artistic fancies or communal aims.

The immediate task is, I believe, to find persuasion to put the people and their problems, their labor & their service, before them. This is also a job of presenting one half of the populace to the other; of bringing a deeper and more intelligent social analysis to bear upon a whole cross section of modern society; exploring its weaknesses, reporting its events, dramatizing its experiences and suggesting a wider and more sympathetic understanding among the prevailing class in society.

For this reason, although it has made special use of actualities rather than artificialities, it is the ‘method’ which prompts this practice that is important and not the type of film produced. The sociological, political or other purposes served by the ‘method’ will continue to be of abiding importance. The ‘Method’ actually designs our attitude toward our ‘corpus’ and is visible as well as effective right from the stage of research & scripting, to location & characters hunt; it permeates among people through the shooting and when the film is complete; its screenings precipitate the resolve. And that effect of the ‘Method’ is the real purchase of our enterprise.

In short, the ‘Method’ is more complex than its traditions would have us believe. No longer is it the mere pictorial description of things & people & places of interest. Observation alone is not enough. Camera portrayal of movement, no matter how finely observed, is purely a matter of aesthetic ‘good taste’. The essential purposes lie in the ends applied to this observation. Conclusions must be indicated and results of observation must be put across in a manner that demand high creative endeavor. Below the surface of the modern world lie the actuating issues of modern civilization. In industry, commerce, civics and nature, mere superficial portrayal of actuality is in-sufficient. Such surface observation implies no intellectual ability. It is the meaning ‘behind’ the thing and significance ‘underlying’ the people that are the inspirations for our ‘approach’. Every manufacture, every organization, every function, every scheme of things represents at one point or another, the fulfillment of a human interest. No matter whether politics, culture, economics or religion, we are concerned with the impersonal forces that dictate this modern world. The puny individual must be re-focused into his normal relationship to the general mass, must take his place alongside in the community’s solid struggle for existence and forsake personal achievement.

Above all Cinema must reflect the problems and realities of the present. It can not regret the past; it is dangerous to prophesy. Cinema can & does draw upon the past in its use of existing heritages but it only does so to give point to a modern argument. In other words we are allowed to grow nostalgic and refer to ‘past’ but only with the aim of ‘illuminating the present’. In no sense, then, is a historical re-construction, Cinema and attempts to make it so are destined to fail. Rather it is contemporary fact and event expressed in relation to human associations.

We may assume, then, that this determines the approach to a subject but not necessarily the subject itself. Further, that, this approach is defined by the ‘aims behind production’, by the Director’s intentions and by the ‘forces making production a possibility’. And, because of the film camera’s ability for reproducing a semblance of actuality and because the function of Editing is believed to be the main-spring of film-creation, it has so far been found that the best material for this purpose is naturally, and not artificiality, contrived. But it would be a grave mistake to assume that this method differs from story-film merely in its preference for natural material. That would imply that ‘natural material’ alone gives the distinction, which is untrue. To state that it only makes use of analytical editing methods is equally mistaken.

The postulate that it is realistic as opposed to the romanticism of the story-film with its theatrical associations, is again in-correct; for although it may be realistic in its concern with actuality, realism applies not only to the material but more specifically to the method of approach to the material. Such inspirations demand a sense of social responsibility difficult to maintain in our world today. That I am fully prepared to admit. But, at the same time, you dare not be neutral or else you become merely descriptive & factual. The function that the film performs within the present social & political sphere must be kept constantly in mind. Relative freedom of expression for your views will obviously vary with the production forces you serve and the political system in power. In countries still maintaining a parliamentary system, discussion and projection of beliefs within certain limits will be permitted only so long as they do not seriously oppose powerful vested interest; which most often happens to be the force controlling production. Under an authoritarian system, freedom is permissible provided opinions are in accord with those of the State for social & political advance, until, presumably, such a time shall arrive when the foundation of the State are strong enough to withstand criticism. Ultimately, of course, you will appreciate that you can neither make films on themes of your own choice, nor apply treatments to accepted themes, unless they are in sympathy with the aims of the dominant system.

Compared with the broader aspects of ‘Artistic Vision’, which have absorbed my attention lately, film seems a limited subject. Yet what attracted the young student in the 20’s was not only the new, fantastic, inquisitive and sentimental play of moving shadows in itself, but also a critical challenge to certain principles of theory. It frequently happens that a guiding theme, whose development will occupy a man’s later life, takes shape around his 20^th year. At about that time I started to make copious notes on what I called ‘Materialtheorie’. It was a theory meant to show that artistic and scientific descriptions of reality are cast in moulds that derive not so much from the subject-matter itself as from the properties of the medium or Material employed. I was impressed by geometrically and numerically simple, elegant forms, by the regularity and symmetry found early cosmologies as well as in Bohr’s atomic model, in philosophical systems, and in the art of the primitives and children. At that time, my teachers were laying the theoretical and practical foundations of the Gestalt Theory at the Psychological Institute, University of Berlin; and I found myself fastening to what may be called, ‘Kantian turn of the new doctrine’, according to which even the most elementary processes of vision do not produce mechanical recordings of the outer world but ‘organize’ the sensory raw-material creatively, according to principles of simplicity, regularity & balance, which govern the receptor mechanism.

This discovery of the Gestalt school fitted the notion that the work of art too, is not simply an imitation or selective duplication of reality but a translation of observed characteristics into the forms of a given medium. Now, obviously, when Art was thus asserted to be an equivalent rather than a derivative, cinematography represented a test case. If a mechanical reproduction of reality, made by a machine, could be art, then the theory was wrong. In other words, it was a precarious encounter of reality and art that teased me into action. I undertook to show in detail how the very properties that make photography and film fall short of perfect reproduction, can act as the necessary moulds of an artistic medium. The simplicity of this thesis and the obstinate consistency of its demonstration explain, I believe, why a quarter of a Century after the publication of ‘Film’ the book is – still & again – consulted, asked for and stolen from libraries.

Something more hopeful & helpful might have been written, the reader may feel, if there had been less insistence on ‘art’ and more gratitude for useful & enjoyable evenings spent in the movie theatre. Indeed there would be little justification for an indictment that charged violation of this or that aesthetic code. The issue is a more real one. Shape and color, sound and words are the means by which men define the nature and intension of life. In a functioning culture, man’s ideas reverberate from his buildings, statues, songs, and plays. But the population constantly exposed to chaotic sights & sounds is gravely handicapped in finding its way. When the eyes and ears are prevented from perceiving meaningful order, they can only react to the brutal signals of immediate satisfactions.

Let me bring this conclusion nearer home to Faiz Ahmad ‘Faiz’, the beauty of whose romantic metaphor was as intense as his message for the downtrodden; in his own words, “in totality, he value of a couplet includes both romantic niceties and social consciousness; a good couplet, therefore, is one that meets the standard not only of art, but of life as well. I crafted my style as an amalgamation of romance & revolution.”

Raharavalokit

Caca1776.readings

Cinematography

CINEMATOGRAHY

My notes from, “Notes on Cinematography” By: Robert Bresson

[Robert Bresson uses the term ‘Cinematography’ in a special, holistic sense embodying the entire evocative power of the visual component of Cinema. Perhaps the turn of phrase in French language has its own connotation that does not become clear in English language translation of this very important, ‘sutra’ form of writing which makes a slim volume; ought to be the most cherished possession of filmmakers who wish to have the ‘Realization’ (again, as in French, something beyond mere Direction).]

01/         Rid myself of accumulated errors and untruths. Get to        know my resources, make sure of them.

02/         Master precision. Be a precision instrument myself.

03/         Not have the soul of an ‘executant’ (of my own projects).

04/         Find, for each shot, a new pungency, over & above what I had imagined.

05/         Invention (re-invention on the spot.)

06/         No actors (no directing of actors)

07/         No parts (no learning of parts)

08/         No staging.

09/         But, the use of working models, taken from life.

10/       BEING instead of SEEMING (actors)

11/       HUMAN MODELS.

12/       Cinema: moves from exterior to interior

13/       Actor: moves from interior to exterior. The thing that matters is not what they show me but what they hide from me; above all, what they do not suspect is in them.

14/       TWO TYPES OF FILM: those who employ the resources of the Theatre (Actors, Direction etc.) and use the camera in order to reproduce; & THOSE: that employ the resources of Cinematography and use the Camera to create.

15/       An ‘actor’ I Cinematography might as well be in a foreign country. He does not speak its language.

16/       “…without lacking naturalness ‘they’ lack nature”, - Chateaubriand.

17/       NATURE: what the dramatic art suppresses in favor of a naturalness, that is learned and maintained by exercise.

18/       Nothing rings more false in a film than that natural tone of the theatre copying life; traced over studied sentiments.

19/       Respect man’s nature without wishing it more palpable than it is.

20//      IMAGE: If an image, looked at by itself, expresses something sharply, if it involves an interpretation, it will not be transformed on contact with other images. The other images will have no power over it, and it will have no power over other images. Neither action nor reactions. It is definitive and unusable in the Cinematographer’s system. A system does not regulate everything, it is a bait for something.

21/       Apply myself to the insignificant (non-significant) images.

22/       Flatten the images (as if ironing them), without attenuating them.

23/       ON LOOKS: the ejaculatory force of the eye.

24/       To set up a film is to bind persons to each other and to objects by ‘looks’.

25/       My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper, is resuscitated by the living persons and the real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected onto a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.

26/       To create is not to deform or invent persons and things. It is to tie new relationships between persons and things which are, and as they are.

27/       RADICALLY SUPRESS ‘INTENTIONS’ IN YOUR MODEL.

28/       SHOOTING: PUT YOURSELF INTO A STATE OF INTENSE IGNORANCE & CURIOSITY, AND YET SEE THINGS IN ADVANCE.

29/       CINEMATOGRAPHY: a military art. Prepare a film like a battle.

30/       To shoot ex-tempore, with un-known models, in un-foreseen places of the right kind for keeping me in an intense state of alert.

31/       Let it be the intimate union of Images that charges them with emotion.

32/       Catch instants, spontaneity, freshness.

33/       A sigh, a silence, a word, a sentence, a din, a hand, the whole of your model, his face, in repose, in movement, in profile, full face, an immense view, a restricted space….each thing exactly in its place: Your Only Resources.

Rahatavalokit

Caca654.reading