 |
Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday, July 10, 2000 Volume II Number 28
|
FOCUS - Film Literacy
This week, I ventured into the world of California Community College. It’s been awhile since I wandered down the halls of academia. Down the hall, past the bookstore and the snack shop and the registrar’s office to Room 505. For one morning, I audited a course. No one in the room knew me. Except the professor.
I took copious notes.
As I took a seat, I scanned the classroom. Most of these students could easily have been my sons or daughters. There was a time when I inhabited the college and university world every day. For years, I was a student. Then later I became a big brother in that world. Now, well, I’m a parent figure. How did that happen?
There were thirty or forty students seated in a large room. It was an early class. My coffee sat on the table next to my open notebook, fountain pen and Palm Pilot.
The course is called “Film Literacy.”
Technology has changed. The noisy 16mm projector is gone. A relic of a bygone era. The overhead projector, with the floppy transparencies and cardboard frames is nowhere to be seen. Hanging from a high ceiling is a video projector. At the touch of a button and a dimming of the lights, a fifteen-foot square silver screen is filled with the images from a video tape recorder, or a DVD, or a Power Point presentation generated by the professor’s notebook computer. Speakers in all four corners fill the room with surround sound.
Brandon wore a tie. It’s a skinny little tie that dangles from his neck in two strands down the front of his starched button down oxford shirt, kind of like the long braid of hair dangling down his back. The owlish spectacles make for the perfect professorial look, and Brandon is already walking up and down the rows, taking a look at the progress of each student who, for this semester, will participate in the writing and producing a brief screenplay which will be shown to the class at the end of the semester.
“Good,” he says as a student shows him his paper. “That’s excellent. Are you starting to get the hang of it?”
Brandon Cesmát is an artist. A writer. A poet. A reader. His highest academic degree is Master of Fine Arts – MFA. In the academic world of the Arts, it’s the equivalent of a doctorate. Better, an earned PhD. He’s mastered literature, language, and music, and has a special fascination for cinema. He teaches in the California State University system as well as the Community Colleges. Local high schools and elementary schools bring him into the classroom to teach students how to write. He believes poetry can unlock creative energies – and is an effective way to introduce children to the wonderful intricacies and subtleties of language. Brandon is in high demand.
I’ve read his stuff. He’s good. Very good.
* * * * * * *
It’s early in the morning. Brandon starts today’s lecture. “Today, we will explore the director’s use of editing and sound to produce effect. A film is not only made on the set, or through the camera lens, or by the performance of the actor, or the lighting, or on the storyboard. A film’s overall impact is driven by what happens in the editing room and then on the sound track.”
“To illustrate my point, we will look at
two films today - Amadeus and Jaws.”
Brandon explains how short quick edits can add to a sense of intensity or excitement or danger or motion or confusion or chaos while a director will choose a long, uninterrupted shot (where the camera will run for minutes at a time without editing) for a heightened sense of realism. The audience is drawn into the long scene. It’s like being there. Now, with new technologies, directors can take the camera through hallways and windows, down streets and up through the trees without a break. Films are edited, but life is not. Edits are manipulated, a break in reality. In real life, time is an unbroken continuum. So long shots, unlike highly edited sequences, are more like real life.
Then the subject turns to sound. “I’m going to take issue with your text this morning,” Brandon gets the attention of his students. Brandon believes that interest is peaked in the context of conflict. If you want your audience to be engaged in your story, you’ve got to create tension. You need contradiction. Surprises. Turmoil. Twists. Well, Brandon creates his own little tension in the lecture by questioning the premise of the author of the text. There are three sources of sound in a film. Dialogue. Sound effect. Music. “I disagree with the author’s definition of the first.” It’s not just the use of words, Brandon explains. It’s the use voice. It’s not just the phrasing, or the script. It’s sound of the human voice.
“Let me illustrate. I would much rather watch a foreign film with sub-titles than to see the same film ‘dubbed’ in English. Why? Simple. The human voice. Ah, the human voice. It doesn’t just produce language. The human voice sings. It makes its own kind of music. There are subtle nuances that transcend the mere use of words in language. We call it inflection. A tonal quality. Pathos. Passion.”
Can you hear the sound of the different languages? Brandon gets caught up in his own lecture. The romance of French. The lyrical Latin rhythms of Spanish. The piercing lilt of Japanese. Then the countless variations of expression – the emotion in the voice – anger, fear, determination, romance, compassion – you don’t need to understand the literal translation of the words to catch the meaning, Brandon says. It’s in the wonderful artful sounds of the human voice. Listen not just to the words, but to the way in which those words are delivered. Words and phrases come in emotive packages. They are wrapped up in colors and ribbons and bows. Catch the words. But hear the voice. Listen to the voice. Unwrap the meaning.
We’re all caught up in Brandon’s point. Taking notes… but mainly caught up the truth of it all.
* * * * * * *
Professor Cesmát (say-má French) cues up Amadeus on the DVD.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is a loony genius. His nemesis is the royal musician, Salieri, official composer of the Austrian court. An aristocrat. Salieri schedules the Emperor’s concerts – personal and public. He auditions every budding musician seeking entrance to the royal halls.
Mozart, however, is unaware of Salieri’s private determination to thwart his career. He’s too busy making music. Salieri is simmering in bitter jealousy. He understands Mozart’s true genius – and he cannot comprehend a God who would grant such inspiration to so lowly and crass a peasant as “Wolfie” (as his father called him). Salieri sets out to sabotage Mozart, and from his position of high influence, derails the career of the extraordinarily talented composer. Then Salieri spends the remainder of his life wallowing in dark regret.
The scene for class discussion finds Salieri on the road outside Vienna. Salieri encounters the Emperor, who inquires about Mozart. Salieri uses this opportunity to plant doubts about Mozart… craftily undermining Mozart’s credibility with the Monarch. And in the background, a subtle sound.
“Did you hear that?” asks Prof. Cesmát.
No response. Finally, a student offers, “a bird chirping.”
“That’s right. A bird. Now. What kind of bird?”
No one knows. “Listen again.” And Brandon replays the scene.
“It’s a hawk. A bird of prey,” Brandon explains. Director Forman has placed the cry of a hawk in the background, just as Salieri attacks. Salieri is a bird of prey. He’s after the kill. He’s determined to plant his claws deep into Mozart’s neck and have him for lunch. Did you hear it?”
“Wow.” “Cool.” Brandon’s students pick up their pens and jot down the insight in their notes.
* * * * * *
When Jaws hit the big screen in 1975, the director was a newcomer. Sure the marketing campaign was huge. Yep, the thought of a Great White shark on the loose sparked a national curiosity. But the name of the director didn’t do it (not many had even heard the name Spielberg). Nor the names of the stars. The movie became a blockbuster for one primary reason. Word of mouth. “You’ve got to see this movie,” one friend told another. The film was filled with subtleties that are now trademark Spielberg. The lighting. The music (John Williams of the Boston Pops). The action. The camera in motion. The tension. The non-stop surprises.
It was 1975, the summer that followed the resignation of President Nixon. Who would have imagined the sheer domination of Steven Spielberg? Think about it. There were three sequels – that’s four in the series of Jaws feature films. Then E.T. Then Raiders of the Lost Ark. Then the Star Wars phenomena.
Not to mention – Amistad. Schindler’s List. Saving Private Ryan. Incredible.
* * * * * *
The lights go dim in the classroom once more. Professor Cesmát fires up the VCR. His second film fills the screen. He lowers the volume, and informs the class that he will be lecturing during the entire film.
Brandon laments the “made for TV” version of the movie made for the wide screen. Thirty percent of the frame is lost in post-production. There are cuts and pans and slices that slash the original cinematography, and mangle the award winning edits.
In preparation for this class, the students have seen the movie. They read the original screenplay. Some have read the Peter Benchley novel. Brandon compares and contrasts them all.
It’s summer. Tourist season. Amity Island is buzzing with beach going visitors, all with fat wallets. The Chamber of Commerce welcomes the crowds. There is profit in the air.
The shark strikes. It’s a grizzly scene. Sheriff Brody decides to close down the beach. It’s not a popular move.
There’s a summit meeting. The Mayor and the Chamber President track down the distracted Sheriff… on an auto ferry boat.
“Why did Spielberg do this scene on the ferry? Can anyone tell me?” the professor asks.
Silence. Everyone is curious, but no one knows.
“Watch the scene. The background. What’s going on?”
Still no one ventures a guess.
“Watch the action,” Brandon says. “What’s happening to the ferry? What’s happening to the Sheriff?”
The Mayor presses the point. The Chamber President raises doubts about the cause of the grizzly death in the water. The Sheriff is backing down. He’s changing his mind. He’s turning around.
One of the students sees it. “It’s turning around,” and he points to the screen. “The ferry is turning about as it approaches the dock.”
“That’s right,” Brandon agrees. “Good. You see what the director did? He deliberately chose this setting – in his decision to close down the beach, the Sheriff turns about. So does the boat.”
It’s film literacy.
* * * * * *
I pulled myself away half way through the lecture on Jaws. I had to get back to the office.
And as I walked passed the bookstore and the library and the snackshop and the administrative offices and out into the parking lot, I was thinking about what I learned about watching films - paying attention to the little details that bring out the meaning - catching the director’s intent in the way he creates a scene. The way the story unfolds. The way in which important points are emphasized in creative ways.
Details matter, I thought.
I jumped in the car, turned the ignition key and put the transmission in reverse. As I looked up, through the windshield I saw a yellow sheet of paper under the wiper blade. Opening the window, I reached out and grabbed a parking citation.
The sign beside my parking space read “Permit Parking Only.”
Details matter. Oops.
* * * * * *
Leaders pay attention.
Once again, it’s Monday morning. The characters on the stage of your life are assembling once more, donning their costumes and playing their parts. It’s up to you to figure out what it all means.
Maybe you’ve got a Salieri who is really a bird of prey. He’s on the hunt. Be prepared. Be ready. Make your music. Don’t let him derail the plan.
Maybe you are a Sheriff Brody and you’ve got to make some tough decisions for the good of all. Don’t cave in to political pressures that’ll leave you with regrets.
Be a Professor Cesmát. Enter into the magic of the moment. Have fun with the details. Lead your people into new levels of awareness.
Teach them to see. Teach them to hear. Teach them to read the signs.
And as you teach them, you will learn, too.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2000
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
|
|