Notes, Example, and Worksheet Form

The goal during analysis is to extract the maximum solid information about an interesting passage of film language, so it’s better to precisely log a short sequence (say, 2 minutes) than a long one superficially. Deal first with the picture and dialogue, shot by shot and word by word, as they relate to each other. Handwrite your initial version using wide line spacing on numerous sheets of paper so there’s space to insert additional information on subsequent passes. Write down only what anyone can see and hear; be eloquently descriptive, but avoid subjective thoughts or feelings. Make several passes dealing with one or two aspects of content and form at a time. Your split-page script should resembleFigure 1-AP-1A.

Once basic information is on paper, consider ruling between sequences, recording shot transitions, screen direction, camera movements, opticals, sound effects, and the use of music.

Lighting Notes

This project challenges you to categorize types and combinations of lighting situation, become familiar with the look and effect of each, and be able to use the appropriate terminology in describing them. The aim is to recognize the emotional associations that all the different possibilities of lighting and image control bring to our art.

When you do your lighting study, turn down the color control on your monitor until you have a black-and-white image uncomplicated by chrominance. What follows is a just a brief rundown; you will need a lighting text to go deeper. YouTube ® and other Web sites offer many lighting demonstrations, but mostly for still photography. I like www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KZe7Xbi6DM for the way it works in black and white and demonstrates the effect of each source light as it goes.

My illustrations are frame grabs from Tod Lending’s Omar and Pete (2005, United States; www.nomadicpix.com), shot by the masterly Slawomir Grunberg. The film’s first 12 minutes are available to watch on this book’s Web site, http://directingthedocumentary.com. It chronicles attempts by the prison system to rehabilitate recidivists—the hard core who keep returning to prison. Through two such men it examines the Gordian knot of social disadvantage, racism, poverty, poor education, and dys-functional family life that lies behind the tragedy of so many African–American men self-destructing. Grunberg’s camera handling and special picture quality set us deep within a grim world from which there is little escape.

Light Sources: Key, Fill, Backlight, Practicals

Key light is the source casting the shot’s shadows. The key light on Omar’s sister in her office comes from the window behind her and off to the left. The rest of her face is illuminated by fill light.

Fill light illuminates shadow areas so a camera can record their detail. InFigure 1-AP-3A, fill comes from soft light cast either by a fixture close to the camera or by window light reflecting from the office’s white walls. In exterior shots, you often throw fill light on the subject using handheld reflectors of silver or matte white. Fill is necessary becausehighlights under sunlight are often so bright that important shadow details, such as in a person’s eye-sockets, remain in deep shadow. By adding light to the shadow areas you lower the contrast (see following page) between highlight and shadow areas so the recording medium can record detail in each.

Backlight is a source shining on the subject from behind and often from above ( Figure 1-AP-3B). Also called a hair or a kicker light, it casts a rim of light around a subject’s head and shoulders and creates a separation between the subject and background, as seen here with the two men on Omar’s parole board.

A practical is any light source that appears in frame as part of the scene, such as a bedside light, miner’s lamp, or traffic signal. The fluorescent fixture above Omar and his guard is a practical ( Figure 1-AP-3C). Most practicals don’t supply light for exposure, but Omar and Pete was shot in prison under available light, so they supplied most of the lighting.

Set lighting is that needed to adjust a scene’s background to a proper illumination level.

Tonality

A high-key picture looks overall bright with small areas of shadow ( Figure 1-AP-3D). Any shot, interior or exterior, can be overall bright and thus qualify as high key. Comedies are mostly high key, while film noir is by definition low key. Every film needs relief from its predominating mood, and exteriors provide the audience with reprieve in Omar and Pete.

A low-key picture is one that looks overall dark with few highlight areas ( Figure 1-AP-3E). Low-key images, often interiors or night shots, predominate in Omar and Pete. This is the cage of steel surrounding Omar. The system offers him the opportunity to work his way out, but can he do it?

Graduated tonality shots have neither very bright highlights nor deep shadow but consist mainly of midtones—a term referring not to colors but the tonal range between dark and light ( Figure 1-AP-3F). Here, Omar seems to blend into the detention facilities that contain him.

Contrast

High-contrast pictures have a big difference between highlight and shadow illumination levels ( Figure 1-AP-3G). Here, birds have the liberty that an imprisoned man can only dream of, and their world is in stark contrast to his own.

Low-contrast pictures can be either high or low key, but their highlight levels are not far above their shadow illumination ( Figure 1-AP-3H). Notice how selective focus in this case isolates and separates Omar from his background, unlikeFigure 1-AP-3F.

Light Quality

Hard lighting describes light quality in terms of its shadow ( Figure 1-AP-3I). Hard light or specular light creates hard-edged shadows (for example, a studio spotlight, a candle flame, or sunlight as in the prison yard). Hard light is not necessarily strong light, just light coming from an effectively small source whose rays cast distinct shadows.

Soft light comes from an effectively large source and creates soft-edged shadows (for example, fluorescent fixtures, sunlight reflecting off a matte finish wall, light from an overcast sky, studio soft light). InFigure 1-AP-3J, there is some shadow under the subject’s chin and beard, but it’s very indistinct.

Types of Lighting Setup

Photography’s limitation is that you must use a two-dimensional medium to present a three-dimensional world. What’s missing is depth, so in portraiture you use angled lighting to reveal the third dimension. The basic portrait lighting setup is called three-point lighting, and its components are diagrammed inFigure 1-AP-3K. It uses a fill light, a key, and a back-light. There’s also set lighting, which illuminates the background and which we’ll leave aside.

In the diagram only the fill light is turned on; it emits disorganized light rays from a broad source that casts little shadow. Keeping it close to, and above, the camera means that any shadow it does cast is largely thrown behind the subject and out of sight of the camera.

Figure 1-AP-3L shows a face lit by fill light alone. Once you turn on the key, it will illuminate the other side of the face and cast definite shadows. By moving the key through positions A, B, and C we create three classifications of lighting.

Frontal lighting setups have the key light in position A, close to the camera/subject axis, so shadows are largely thrown backward out of the camera’s view ( Figure 1-AP-3M).

Broad lighting setups have the key light in position B so a broad area of the subject’s face and body is highlighted by the key ( Figure 1-AP-3N).

Narrow lighting setups have the key light in position C to the side of the subject and perhaps even beyond, so only a narrow portion of the face receives highlighting ( Figure 1-AP-3O). Most of the face is in shadow and depends on fill for an exposure.

Calculate lighting ratio by measuring light reflected in the highlight area and comparing it with that from the fill area. When taking measurements, remember that fill light reaches the highlight area but not vice versa, so you can only take accurate readings with all of the lights on.

In silhouette lighting, the subject reflects no light at all and shows up as an outline against raw light ( Figure 1-AP-3P). This setup is useful when the subject’s identity must be withheld.

Notes on Composition

Form is how content is presented, so visual composition is not just embellishment—it’s a vital element in communication. Composition can interest and even delight the eye, but in wise hands it becomes an organizing force that dramatizes relationships and projects ideas. It makes the subject (or “content”) accessible, heightens the viewer’s perceptions, and stimulates critical involvement—like language in the hands of a good poet.

Static Composition

Some questions to help you see more critically:

1. Why did your eye go to its particular starting point in the image? Was it the brightest point, the darkest, an arresting color, or a significant junction of lines that created a focal point?
2. When your eye moved away from its point of first attraction, what did it follow?
3. How much movement did your eye make before returning to its starting point?
4. What specifically drew your eye to each new place?
5. Are places in your eye’s route specially charged with energy? Often these are sightlines, such as between two field workers, one of whom is facing away.
6. If you trace out the route your eye took, what shape do you have? A circular pattern? A triangle? An ellipse? What else?
7. How do you classify this compositional movement? Translating from visual to verbal helps you see what’s truly there. Is it geometrical, repetitive textures, swirling, falling inwards, symmetrically divided down the middle, flowing diagonally…?
8. What parts do the following play in a particular picture?
   1. Repetition
   2. Parallels
   3. Convergence
   4. Divergence
   5. Curves
   6. Straight lines
   7. Strong verticals
   8. Strong horizontals
   9. Strong diagonals
   10. Textures
   11. Non-naturalistic coloring
   12. Light and shade
   13. Depth
   14. Dimension
   15. Human figures
9. How is depth suggested? It’s never present unless created. Is it by angling to make the action take place in the screen’s depth instead of its width; by composing a foreground, middle-ground, and background; by creating pools of light receding in a darkened space?
10. How are the individuality and mood of the human subjects expressed? By making juxtapositions between person and person, person and surroundings? By framings that suggest meaning or subtext? A good camera operator sees in terms of relatedness and uses composition to further the ends of the film.
11. How is space arranged around a human subject, particularly in portraits? Often there’s more space in front of a person (called lead space) than behind. Framing sometimes cuts off the top of a head or does not show a head at all in a group shot.
12. When are people and objects placed at the margins of the picture so that parts are cut off? Does a restricted frame make you supply what is missing from imagination?

Visual Rhythm

The film spectator must interpret each shot within a given time. It’s like reading the side of a passing bus; if you don’t get the words and images in the given time, the bus leaves and you’ve lost its message. If, however, the bus crawls, you see its message to excess and become critical or even rejecting.

I make this analogy to suggest that there is an optimum duration for each shot. This depends on its content and complexity and also on how fast or slowly we think we must work. This was set by the expectations signaled during preceding shots. The principle by which you determine each shot’s duration—by content, form, and audience expectation—is called visual rhythm. This can be relaxed or intensified according to how you want the film to develop.

Dynamic Composition

Working with moving images means you are handling dynamic composition. For instance, a balanced composition can become disturbingly unbalanced if someone moves or leaves the frame. Even a movement by someone’s head in the foreground may posit a new sightline and a new scene axis (more about this later) and demand a compositional rebalance. A zoom into close shot usually demands reframing because compositionally there is a drastic change, even though the subject is the same. You might see:

1. Reframing because the subject moved. Look for a variety of camera adjustments.
2. Reframing because something/someone left the frame.
3. Reframing in anticipation of something/someone entering the frame.
4. A change in the point of focus to move the attention from the background to foreground or vice versa. This changes the texture of significant areas of the composition.
5. Different kinds of movement (how many?) within an otherwise static composition. Across the frame, diagonally, from the background to foreground, from the foreground to background, up frame, down frame, and so on.
6. What makes you feel close to the subjects and their dilemmas? This concerns point of view and is tricky, but in general the nearer one is to the axis of a movement, the more subjective one’s sense of involvement is.
7. How quickly does the camera adjust to a figure who moves to another place in frame? Usually subject movement and the camera’s compositional change are synchronous. The camera move looks clumsy if it either anticipates or lags behind the movement.
8. How often are the camera or the characters blocked (that is, choreographed) in such a way as to isolate one character?
9. What is the dramatic justification for zeroing in on one character in this way?
10. How often is composition more or less angled along sightlines, and how often do sightlines extend across the screen? This often marks a shift from subjective to more objective point of view.
11. What does a change of angle or a change of composition make you feel toward the characters? Maybe more or less involved and more or less objective.
12. Find a dynamic composition that forcefully suggests depth. An obvious one would be where the camera is next to a railroad line as a train rushes up and past.
13. Can you locate shots where camera position is altered to include more or different background detail in order to comment upon or counterpoint foreground subject?

Internal and External Composition

Beyond internal composition (that is, composition internal to each shot), there is external composition. This is the compositional relationship at cutting points between an outgoing image and the next or incoming shot. Seldom do we notice how much it influences our judgments and expectations. Use your slow-scan facility to help you assess compositional relationships at cutting points. Find aspects of internal and external composition by asking yourself:

1. Where was your point of concentration at the end of the shot? Trace with your finger on the monitor’s face where your eye travels. Its last point in the outgoing shot is where your eye enters the next shot’s composition. Interestingly, the length of the shot determines how far the eye gets in exploring the shot—so shot length influences external composition.
2. Is there symmetry and are shots complementary? Some shots are designed to intercut.
3. What is the relationship between two same-subject but different sized shots that are designed to cut together? This is revealing; the inexperienced camera operator often produces medium and close shots that cut together poorly because proportions and compositional placing of the subject are incompatible.
4. Does a match cut, run very slowly, show several frames of overlap in its action? Especially in fast action, a match cut (one made between two different size images during a strong action) requires two or three frames of the action repeated on the incoming shot to look smooth, because the eye does not register the first two or three frames of any new image. Think of this as accommodating a built-in perceptual lag. The only way to cut on the beat of music is thus to place all cuts two or three frames before the actual beat point.
5. Do external compositions make a juxtapositional comment? Cut from a pair of eyes to car headlights approaching at night, from a dockside crane to a man feeding birds with his arm outstretched, and the like.