PART 2
SCREENCRAFT
This part (Chapters 4 through 6) contains a detailed moviemaking workout, beginning with the origins of screen language as an approximation of human perceptual processes. Once you grasp the idea, you can practice applying it to your own consciousness at any time and in any place. Next, we look critically at film language and see how well the makers of a film have used film techniques to approximate human perceptual habits. This is when you analyze a film minutely, a radically different activity from free-associating with what you remember from a viewing. A study project in this part compares the original screenplay of a film with how the director interpreted and transformed it. This allows you to peer speculatively into the complicated act of making a film and to hazard what decisions were made. There is practice at naming and identifying types of lighting, which have so much to do with mood and rendering of time and place. Finally there are shooting projects, all of which can be developed into more than one version. This is to get you used to executing different points of view and purposes in the cutting room, where a film finds its final voice.
There is a lot of work here, but you'll come out with skills that would take you years to acquire by a more haphazard route. Before doing any project, be sure to check its Assessment Form in the appendix. This will help focus your work. Do make use of the checklist at the end of this part for salient reminders from the chapters. Anything else you need is likely to be in the index or glossary at the end of the text.
CHAPTER 4
A DIRECTOR'S SCREEN GRAMMAR
Film as a Reproduction of Consciousness
The Concerned Observer and the Storyteller
Why Directing Must Be Storytelling
Lines of Tension and the Scene Axis
Crossing the Line or Scene Axis
Text and Authorship Essentials
Organic and Inorganic Metaphors
Different Angles on the Same Action
Duration, Rhythm, and Concentration
Transitions and Transitional Devices
Researching to Be a Storyteller
Why Documentary Training is Useful
CHAPTER 5
SEEING WITH A MOVIEMAKER'S EYE
Project 5-1: Picture Composition Analysis
Visual Rhythm: How Duration Affects Perception
Internal and External Composition
Composition, Form, and Function
Project 5-3: A Scripted Scene Compared with the Filmed Outcome
Project 5-4: Lighting Analysis
How Best to Explore the Basics
Project 6-1: Basic Techniques: Going and Returning
6-1A: Plan, Shoot, and Edit the Long Version
6-1B: Editing a More Compressed Version
6-2A: Plan, Rehearse, and Shoot Long Take of Character-Revealing Action
6-2B: Adding an Interior Monologue
6-2C: Vocal Counterpoint and Point of View
Project 6-3: Exploiting a Location
6-3A: Dramatizing an Environment
Project 6-4: Edited Two-Character Dialogue Scene
6-4B: Editing for an Alternative Point of View
Project 6-5: Authorship through Improvisation
6-5A: Developing a Short Scene
6-5B: Editing a Shorter Version
Project 6-6: Parallel Storytelling
6-6A: Seeing the Scenes as Separate Entities