Father of Independent Cinema 2

He sums up his approach to filmmaking in the documentary when he says:

We decided we’d come up with a great idea, that we would buy all of our film equipment, but they wouldn’t give us any credit. So, we started our film without any money, and we just used people that would help us to make the film only because of their idealistic attitudes toward filmmaking, which is, in America, a business not an art. So, we’re saying [sound]  with your business, and we’ll try to make it some kind of an art — art meaning that we will enjoy ourselves and express ourselves freely.


The enlightenment I anticipated from you is being replaced by another. This one doesn’t invite analysis or dissection, only observation and intuition. Instead of insights into, say, the construction of a scene, I’m becoming enlightened by the sly nuances of human nature.

Yeah, you are a great filmmaker, one of my favorites. But what your films illuminate most poignantly is that celluloid is one thing and the beauty, strangeness and complexity of human experience is another.

Learn - Coppola & Scorsese Discuss the Future of Filmmaking

This is a fascinating interview especially for those of us in the midst of the very swing of change that Coppola and Scorsese predicted. But aren’t things always changing? In a time of transition, one thing will always beat out another — that’s natural selection, but Coppola describes how a time of transition is important for seizing the moment and creating that change.

The traditional studio period was coming to an end and it was a bit of a no man’s land, and the movies I got to make in the 70′s were purely because we were running too fast for anyone to stop us. We never got permission to start those movies — we just sorta started and by the time they realized what we were doing, we had those films in production.

The contention that Scorsese makes is that the corporate studio world essentially became too afraid to takes risks. Well, that seems to be a job better suited for the artists. Filmmaking is such an expensive medium that it has a built-in obligation to make money, but with budgets getting lower and lower, what does it mean for the current system? What Coppola had to say 15 years ago still rings true:

The movie business is not Coca-Cola– you still depend on artistry and this flies in the face of how modern corporations are run. Things change whenever you have an old system that basically is not profitable and shaky, and at the same time you have a vital new group of young people who are very passionate about movies. It’s sort of like how Italian neorealism collapsed the old Italian costume period.

Which leads us to another question: Is cinema an important medium? Why? What is its true purpose? Is it in conflict with the apparatus that is required to create them? To me, Coppola says it better in this interview than anywhere else I’ve read:

When you hear people talking about a film they’ve just seen, you can see hear how important it is for them to get something out of it — how audiences look to film to somehow illuminate life. As long as film is gonna be this product that is based on another film that was successful, then how are writers and directors and actors going to deal with the subject matter that helps interpret modern life? Life is changing, the role of the woman has changed, the politics, all these things. You wish that films could shed some light on this stuff, because that seems to be the role of art.

How is cinema different from television? Scorsese describes what it is for him:

It’s a different frame of reference. We had the frame of reference from Hollywood’s Golden Age. We saw movies on the big screens, in theaters. Unfortunately, a lot of the audiences now, the younger people — their frame of reference is television with snappy dialogue. This is cinema, this is something else. This is something else that is supposed to be here in this room.

It seems that everything in life moves in cycles, and the organism that is cinema is no different. The ebb and flow of the established movie industry and the rise of independent film is a pendulum with no end in sight. Coppola describes a sense of regret he feels about his own inability to make the kind of permanent changes he thought he might:

Back then in the middle ’60s I really thought we had the potential to have a company that would change the system. I don’t regret any of the projects I did, but I regret a little bit that the film industry we’re leaving to the next generation is not as good as what we received.

What makes these two people such great filmmakers? I think the theme that unites Scorsese and Coppola is the hunger for learning. The risks they take are to create opportunities for learning — for growth. They want to experiment, to push boundaries and unlock doors.

The diversity of my films comes from the fact that I always would say, well, if it’s an assignment, as The Godfather was, then I’ll learn a lot. I used to use every film as a kind of experiment, and saying someday when I get back to making my own films I’ll have done all these experiments and I’ll be able to utilize what I’ve learned. We use the profession of making movies as a way to educate ourselves, because we haven’t uncovered 6% of what cinema can be and what it can do.

What have you learned from Scorsese and Coppola? Join the discussion in the comments below.

Father of Independent Cinema 1

Most known for his films Shadows,faces,A Woman Under the Influence and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Cassavetes’ films consist of exposing the human condition as truthfully as possible. It wasn’t able glitz and glamor, idealizing a scenario so that it’d be easier to digest for an audience. He shied away from themes like politics or religion, instead making films that dealt with love, isolation, and trust. Cassavetes once said:

Life is men and women. Life isn’t, say, politics. Politicians are only bad actors grubbing around for power — In my opinion, these people and these small feelings are the greatest political force there is.

His first film, Shadows, which he made in 1959, was financed by Cassavetes for $40,000, and because of its limited release, didn’t find much of an audience. However, it did catch the eye of some critics, which helped him cash in on a Venice Film Festival Critics Prize for the film. Studios also began showing interest, and Cassavetes signed with Paramount to do Too Late Blues and A Child Is Waiting. 

The documentary, an episode of a French documentary series called Cinéastes de notre temps (Filmmakers of Our Time,) which originally aired in 1969, reveals Cassavetes great passion for filmmaking, as well as artistic free expression. For him, it wasn’t just about making films, it was about making films that allowed him to say what he wanted to say. He didn’t need a big budget or known actors. In fact, he chose to work mostly with handheld cameras, and with his friends and people he knew, casting many of them in roles often times without compensation.

The expo storyboard

A practice and a idea about my expo. just doing the first step storyboard. 

lately work.

lately, i have been doing reading researching and shooting.

as you can see the photo is my lately work its about a "Big issues" seller. this is one part of the "Subcut"."Subcut" is about people from nottingham. Me and Beck have been doing this for nearly half years already. we still working on it.

Widescreen Aspect Ratios Composition Techniques effect "Mise en scene"

Martin Scorsese once famously asked, “How do you frame a close up with widescreen?” This was a common criticism when widescreen first became popular. The beauty of 4×3 Acadmey Ratio is how it beautifully fits a human face. 16×9 and 1.85 are still relatively conducive to closeups but once you start getting into the 2.35 and above range, there’s a lot of wasted screen real estate in a full face closeup. Sometimes you’ll want that emptiness…

But sometimes you may want to use a technique of crafting your own specialized spaces inside your frame. The traditional word for this is mise-en-scene – literally placing on stage. By carefully composing your shot with a mix of foreground and background objects you can make really cinematic composition.

The most basic example is in shooting a face-to-face two person dialogue scene.

My work Train station farewell

Here we used the back of an actor’s head to reduce the size of the space we’re using to frame the other actor speaking. Even though we’re shooting here with a 2.35 aspect ratio, the area of interest is significantly smaller. This technique of including unwanted elements is also called “Dirtying up the frame”

You can also use architectural elements to do this using walls to create natural boarders.

One of my favorite techniques is using doorways as in this Godfather inspired sequence. Notice the walls and door way                            
used to break apart the shot.

This Mis-en-scene approach to composition is really made possible by the widescreen aspect ratios. Orson Welles started the trend in Citizen Kane with his unique blocking but it became much easier when filmmakers had a wider canvas to work on. Generally speaking The wider your screen the more you should incorporate mis-en-scene in your compositions and rely less on montage (cutting) – or don’t. It’s up to you.

Just as with every choice in filmmaking, the choice of which aspect ratio to use and how you compose your shots all demand compromise. Be aware of your options, experiment, learn how these things affect your story telling and then make a choice – make something great.

A very useful resource about film - The History of Aspect Ratio

"WIDESCREEN"

I find this imaging history flashback last week and i have been shocked about how original 

filmmaker developing the technique. some is physics make up and some is new technique.  

when i first time see widescreen they use three camera to  make “panorama” shooting at same time. and i also notice mise en scene developing during the same time. 

Aspect Ratio is a fundamentally simple concept with a deep and important history.Simply put, the aspect ratio is the ratio of the width of the image to the height. This can be expressed as two numbers like 4×3 or 16×9 or as a decimal such as 1.85 and 2.35 – though these can be written as a ratio as in 2.35:1.

We owe the first aspect ratio to one man: William Kennedy Dickson. Dickson worked at Thomas Edison’s Lab as a staff photographer. After Eastman Kodak began mass producing flexible film in the early 1890s, Thomas Edison wanted to put this new film to use in a device called a Kinetescope – the precursor to the projected film. After a few years of start and stop experimentation, they finally arrived at a working prototype.

Using 35mm film Dickson settled on an image that was 4 perforations high – resulting in an image that was .95” by .735” – a 4:3 aspect ratio – or 1.33

We really don’t know why William Dickson settled on 4 by 3 but it stuck. In 1909 the Motion Picture Patent Company (a trust of major American film companies who were all practically under the thumb of Thomas Edison himself) declared that 35mm film with Edison perforations, and 4×3 aspect ratio with an image 4 perforations high as the standard for all films that were to made and shown in the US. This settled it – making film and projection ubiquitous across the United States.

And for a whole generation, everything stayed pretty much the same. When synchronized sound came in the scene in 1929 and optically printed on the film itself as a strip that ran along side of the image, there was a slight shift in the aspect ratio.

In 1932, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted on and declared that in order to make room for the sound track, the image should be masked off on the top and bottom for a 1.37 aspect ratio (so close to 1.33 that it’s sometimes used interchangeably). This image size would be called the Academy Ratio and it remained the standard in Hollywood for yet another generation of movie goers.

The 1950s was a tumultuous time for film, the industry was forced to restructure and decade saw the rise of Film’s little brother – Television. Since everybody alive at that time had been going to theaters and watching films in 4×3 aspect ratio- it was only natural that television would carry over that same screen shape.  Like a new sibling in the Entertainment family, TV was getting all the attention and that reflected in smaller movie going audiences.

Mise en scene test 1

A little mise en scene test done last two weeks ago. the results from people is not very perfect. 22 people  have finish the survey. most people are not really understand the questions and also i put to many thing at same time, such as acting, prop, location setting , lighting. a lot people can not focus on too many things. they just can concentrate on one thing. also i learned from this time is find the right people to do the survey. this time 22 people only 5 people who can understand film in Professional way, the Rest Of The people is none professional film people.

Michael Rabiger suggestion make a brief content description of each scene, annotate it with how you want the audience to feel about it, and you have a firm beginning. turn the list into a colored graph or storyboard to show what the audience should feel from scene to scene, and then you can think about how the storyteller must tell the tale to make this happen. once you have an overall strategy, you can design individual scenes. 

i will do the another test as soon as possible.