Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
MAKING
MARATHON
DIRECTING TIPS &
TECHNIQUES
By Elisabeth Benfey
February 2, 2007
Shooting your short film: a step-by-step
approach to designing a scene
You will also find here practical tools that will help you to visualize
the design of your scene, communicate your creative choices to your
cast and crew, and organize your footage prior to editing. Those visual
tools include examples of floor plans, storyboards, marked script, shot
list, and a printable log sheet. The sources for this section of our
website (books and links materials) can be found at the end of this
document.
This process should not take place at the last minute, on the set, when
constant demands on your attention risk to derail the shoot. You may
have the time to work with your actors and to rehearse the key scenes
with them; you may be able to have access to your location hours before
you start shooting, but be aware that those are ideal circumstances.
You must consider the possibility (the strong likelihood), that you
will not have that luxury. In other words, you need a PLAN, which will
keep you on track, confident, and available for your actors and your
crew on the set.
Although he is the hub at the creative process, the one who provides
and carries out a vision, the director must learn to use the ideas and
talents available to him on the set. Therefore your plan must also be
flexible enough to let the creative energy flow between you and your
collaborators (cast and crew) during the shoot. Respecting the balance
between adequate preparation before the shoot, and open collaboration
during filming, is the secret to creating a rich, complex, memorable
movie.
Acknowledgments
The following material is based in great part on Nick Proferes’ book:
FILM DIRECTING FUNDAMENTALS: FROM SCRIPT TO SCREEN (Focal Press).
Nick
was one of the teachers who influenced me the most when I was in Film
School at Columbia. His short book is full of insightful comments, and
offers a clear, succinct overview of what an aspiring director needs to
know to shoot a short film. If you only buy one book on directing, buy
this one! At the end of this document, you will also find a list of
reading materials, and links on directing short films, directing
actors, and editing your movie. I will add more materials (about
directing actors, editing, etc.), as we get closer to the MMM event.
What is an action?
Characters perform actions to get what they want (a “want” is also
called an objective). They never take their eyes off the prize. A
character performs one action at a time. (To ring the door bell; To
peek inside; To get a foot in the door, etc.) Always choose a verb to
describe the action, which is in the “now” and contains the immediate
intent of the character in the moment (ex. To stop him)
Once you have identified your directing beats (let’s just call them
beats from now on), take a pencil and physically draw lines to separate
one beat from another. Now look at the pages of your script. Each scene
(let’s say a two-pages scene, the most common length in a short script)
will be divided into clear dramatic paragraphs, separated by a
horizontal line. Now write, at the beginning of each paragraph, its
title: “To get in” would be the title of the first paragraph.
Designing=Blocking+Camera placement
Please remember that designing a scene is a rigorous, TWO step process.
Do not rush it! First, you must stage, or “block” the movements of
your actors (A). The blocking must spatially reflect what is happening
dramatically between the characters in the scene.
Once the movements of your actors is clear -and only then, should you
think about introducing the camera and setting up your shots (B).
6-Punctuate actions
Movement can be a way to suggest a change of pace, or of mood. One
character may become absorbed in a task, which gives him time to think.
The movement acts as a pause between two beats.
Casting
You have only a few hours to cast the parts. Make sure that the people
you cast not only resemble the characters as you imagine them, but that
their general demeanor, their behavior, what they tell you about
themselves, is as close as possible to the characters in the script.
You are not in a position to work long and hard with them to “get” the
part and create a character, so don’t hesitate: Type-cast!
Dialogue is action!
If I say “Hello” to you, it may be a greeting. If you are late, it
might be a reprimand.
Silence is action.
A character’s silence, a glare, a mournful glance are all acting beats.
They advance the drama as effectively as words. Once you are done
drawing the positions and movements of your actors on
the overhead diagram, you are ready to bring in the camera.
B- Setting up the shots: working with the camera
In the beginning of the movies, the only function of the camera was to
record the action of the actors as the director bellowed to them what
they were supposed to do. The camera was placed in a proscenium
position, like an audience in the theater. The only dramatic tools the
director had at his disposal to tell the story were the actor’s
blocking and the quality of their performance. Once he was done
directing them, as he would actors in a theater, he would shout
“Lights, Camera, Action”, and that was it: one Master Shot covered the
whole scene.
Camera placement
Now you have blocked the movements of your actors. You are ready to
for the second step of your scene design: selecting your shots. Just as
blocking has to serve narrative and dramatic purposes in your scene, so
does camera placement. Think about putting together a visual sentence.
Each shot must have meaning within the context of other shots. Where do
you put the camera so the resulting images will tell the story you want
to tell? How can the camera convey behavior, dramatic elements, plot
elements, atmospheric touches? There are five questions to answer to
help you determine where to put the camera:
Note: Coverage is a term you will hear a lot. It is used to express the
number of camera setups to render a scene, usually, wide, middle and
close. Although you should definitely consider this time-effective
technique when shooting under a deadline, you run the risk of creating
a generic design that has little meaning.
Shots are the sentence of the movies. The significance of the sentence
only becomes clear in a context. Ex. If you show a watch on a table,
the sentence reads: “wristwatch lying on a table reads three o’clock.
The significance of this film sentence will only emerge when the shot
is given a context. Eisenstein gives an example of how context changes
the meaning of the story. Imagine the shot of a man’s face. The man
looks intense, his attention focused to something off-screen. Cut to a
woman. The audience mentally connects the shots: the man wants the
woman. Now use the same close up of the man, looking off-screen. Cut
to a plate of food. Now the audience thinks: “This man wants to eat”. It
is the connection and mutual relationships of shots that yield meaning.
Context also applies to camera angles. No camera angle (extreme low or
high, tilt, pan, etc.) contains in itself any inherent dramatic psychological
or atmospheric content. It has to be put in context of other angles.
The audience is constantly engaged in an active process of matching
chains of shots.
-Screen direction
*Left to Right; if a character exits screen right, he should re-enter
it screen left. Again you can break the rule to create dramatic
tension, but the shot should be varied in length and duration. The
last shot of the series should respect the grammatical rule.
*Right to Left and Up: since we are used to reading from left to right
anddown, more tension is created if the characters moves from right to
left and up.
*Approaching and receding: a character approaching the camera and
exiting frame camera right (bottom) should enter camera left (bottom)
B- Film time:
A story unfolds in time as well as space. We can shorten what is
interesting (compression) and lengthen what is interesting
(elaboration) in a single scene.
-Cut to another angle: low angle, high angle, overhead shot. The most
neutral shot, which mimics what a person would normally see, is at
eye-level.
-Change image size: master shot (covers the entire scene), Long Shot
(LS), medium shot (MS), two shot, over the shoulder shot, Close Up
(CU), etc.
-Put it into motion: pan right and left, tilt up and down, tracking
shot (moves with people in motion), a zoom shot (no actual movement.
Just an electronic adjustment of the lens), crane shot (camera rises
above the actors’ head) -Change the focal length of the lens: wide
angle, long lens, etc.
-Change speeds or stop motion with a freeze frame
A little more film vocab:
-Objective cam: What the camera sees: it can be playful, distant,
static, use extreme Close ups etc.
-Subjective camera: The camera allows us to see what a character is
experiencing (Ex: the frame becomes blurry to convey the fact that the
character’s vision is impaired, as in the climactic fight scene of The
Cinderella Man).
-This is different from a Point-of-View (POV), which is an
approximation of what a character sees.
Producing and Directing the Short Film and Video by David K. Irving and
Peter W. Rea. Third Edition (Focal Press)
This Directing Tips & Techniques Packet was created for the
Movie Making Marathon at Duke University.
For more information concerning the Movie Making Marathon, please visit
www.duke.edu/web/mmm.
Copyright 2007.