The Camera
I have titled this chapter “The Camera” rather than “Production” because the camera conjures up visual images, which are what most of this chapter is about. A more accurate description might be production, because in this chapter we discuss camera shot selection, but we also address other elements that affect the nature of a shot—light and art direction. We also briefly discuss sound, another production variable. Late in the chapter we also address the edit, as many production decisions made are intended to maintain flexibility for the edit. After the text interpretation, two production decisions are critical with regard to the material to be edited—shot selection and direction of actors. We have saved the direction of actors for the next chapter. In both production and the direction of actors, the choices made are principally driven by the director’s interpretation of the text.
The Shot
The first decision a director needs to make is whether to use a long shot or a close-up, although the possible range of shots is even broader; for example, the director could use an extreme long shot. Think of the desert shots in David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia” or the battle between the Romans and their slaves in Stanley Kubrick’s “Spartacus.” The extreme long shot is used to locate action and tends to be primarily informational. The long shot can include one person or many. The opening extreme long shots of Robert Wise’s “West Side Story” locate the action in Manhattan, and long shots are used to introduce the Jets following the opening. These shots provide information and identify characters within the location. The long shot is used to move into and out of a scene.
The three-quarter shot, or American shot, is essentially a shot where we see three-quarters of the character. The shot was used primarily in the studio as opposed to location filming. The shot is used to follow action within the limits of the studio set built for the scene. Three-quarter shots are used less now than they were in the heyday of studio production.
The mid shot is a waist-up shot. It is often used when filming a conversation between two or more characters—in a car or in a bar, for example. The mid shot remains informational but it is more intimate than the long shot and consequently yields more emotion than longer shots do. We can think of this shot as a mix of information and emotion. Great conversation scenes include Joseph Mankiewicz’s “All About Eve” and Howard Hawks’ “His Girl Friday.”
The next option, the close-up, is principally emotional (think of the human face). The primary use of the close-up is for dramatic emphasis. The moment Romeo sees Juliet it is time for a close-up. Close-ups were also utilized for the moment of violent death in Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch.” A variation on the close-up is the extreme close-up—the missing index finger of the villain in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Thirty-Nine Steps” or the key in Cary Grant’s hand in “Notorious.” This shot is extremely emotional and can be used to add a great deal of dramatic emphasis.
The next variable when it comes to the shot is lens selection. A fish-eye lens distorts the faces and objects closest to it and makes people and objects in the background seem even farther away. John Frankenheimer used this distorting quality to great effect in the opening of “Seconds.”
Use of a wide-angle shot requires being aware of and working with the foreground, the midground, and the background. Anthony Mann in “El Cid” and John Frankenheimer in “The Manchurian Candidate” were particularly effective at manipulating wide-angle shots. The wide-angle shot is contextual in that the background and midground provide context for the foreground. Aside from the considerable amount of visual information in such a shot, the wide-angle shot offers an opportunity to visualize conflict, or its opposite, in a single shot. Generally, characters presented the same distance from the camera are working together, while characters positioned at different distances are in effect pitted against one another.
The normal shot provides some degree of visual context but not as much as the wide-angle shot. In the normal shot, the director is working with the foreground and midground. The normal shot is the workhorse of shots and is the one most often used. It is not as elegant or interesting as the wide-angle or telephoto shot.
Finally, the telephoto shot has a single depth; the midground and background are out of focus. The telephoto shot collapses the depth of field so distances become difficult to discern. The shot of Benjamin running to the church from his failed car in Mike Nichols’ “The Graduate” is an example of a telephoto shot. As there is no context in this dead-on shot it looks as if Benjamin is running but not getting anywhere. Because he does not have much time to get to the church before his former girlfriend’s wedding (so he can prevent it), the sense of running yet standing still exaggerates the tension we feel for Benjamin and his goal.
Camera Placement
Another choice the director must make is where to put the camera. The options are broad, but each has a specific impact. The large questions are:
- How close should I place the camera to the action?
- Do I want a subjective or an objective placement?
- How high or low should I place the camera?
Proximity
Placing the camera at a distance from the action of the characters distances us from those characters and their actions. Doing so puts the audience in the position of observers. Placing the camera very close to the action promotes intensity, intimacy, and even a somewhat claustrophobic relationship with the characters and action. In the films of Steven Spielberg and Alfred Hitchcock, the camera is placed close to the action so the audience can identify with the characters. Roman Polanski, in “Tess” and in “Repulsion,” crowds the characters with the camera. The camera is all but on top of the characters. Such placement generates intensity, anxiety, and identification. Placing the camera somewhere between at a distance from the action and up close to it puts the camera in a neutral position where it can be used to record action but does not particularly create intensity. There is no question about who the story is focused on. The more neutral position is where most directors place the camera.
Objectivity
An objective camera position places the audience in a position to watch the action. There is no clear choice of sides being made, no single point of view presented. The objective camera placement consequently distances the audience from the action and at least initially neutralizes the potential for intensity. A director chooses the objective camera position to provide information about what is going on without choosing a distinct point of view or taking sides.
Subjective Camera Placement
More often directors choose sides and vest our emotions in one character over another. This means using a subjective camera placement. As already mentioned, Spielberg, Hitchcock, and Polanski have used the subjective camera placement to establish identification and, in the case of Polanski, a sense of the inner feelings of the character, which are vital to building the audience’s relationship with the story. Other examples where subjective placement of the camera is crucial to how we experience the sequence would be the sniper sequence in Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket,” Reuben Mamoulian’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” and Robert Montgomery’s “Lady in the Lake.” In the latter two films, the directors positioned the camera as if it were a main character; in fact, this strategy was followed throughout “Lady in the Lake.”
Camera Height
There are essentially three camera positions that represent the extreme options in terms of height. Of course, directors can and do choose options somewhere in between the extremes. The first extreme is a low camera position. Using such a camera position, the viewer looks up at the actors and the action in the shot. This “heroic” placement is a favorite in action–adventure, science fiction, and Western films. The second option is high placement. Extremely high-angle shots might be from the top of a spire or palace. Shekhar Kapur in his film “Elizabeth” used high camera placement to provide an omniscient view of the action. This type of shot can be used to chart the quest for power of those who covet power, or it can simply put mere mortals in their place. More often a high-angle shot looking down on a character is used to signify the loss of power, or enslavement. Stanley Kubrick used low-angle as well as high-angle placements to characterize the power relationships in “Spartacus,” an epic about a slave revolt against Rome. Stories that require a sense of enclosure or entrapment (e.g., film noir such as Billy Wilder’s “Double Indemnity”) will use high camera placements as often as possible. The third option is the eye-line camera placement. This is the most natural and democratic of camera placements. It is also the camera placement most often used by directors. Power implications are not the only rationale for camera placements. Many times a camera will be placed in a particular position to allow a longer take while following the action. Although there is a lesser dramatic benefit to such placements, the economic benefit of shooting the film within budget expectations can more than compensate for the dramatic limitations of the shot.
Camera Movement
Generally speaking, camera movement is one of the most exciting choices available to the director. Movement is dynamic and energizing, but the choices the director makes can make the resulting energy more purposeful, or at least they should. The most significant choice the director faces is whether the movement should be stabilized by putting the camera on a tripod or whether the obvious movement of a handheld camera is preferable. If a sense of stability is needed, a tripod-mounted camera is preferable. If a sense of immediacy, of being there is crucial, then the handheld camera can be used to provide a sensation of watching news footage by virtue of its slight to moderate tremor. For example, footage of a bomb going off shot with a handheld camera will capture the photographer’s sudden jerk in response to the bomb and will serve to place the audience closer to the action.
A variation of the handheld shot is the use of a steadicam (a gyroscopic offset to smooth out the jiggle) to record the shot. The steadicam glide made famous in walking shots in Brian De Palma’s “The Bonfire of the Vanities” and Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas” seem elegant and artificial, and they move us away from the immediacy of the handheld shot, providing elegance and style over dramatic gravitas.
One additional point should be made about the handheld shot. Certain film movements, such as Cinéma Vérité, New Wave, and Dogme 95, have maintained the handheld shot as a central tenet of their cinematic goals; for example, Thomas Vinterberg’s “The Celebration” was shot entirely using handheld cameras. On the other hand, most feature films around the world are photographed using cameras mounted on tripods.
Movement from a Fixed Point
Camera movement from a fixed point takes three forms: tilt, pan, or zoom. The tilt shot is a vertical movement, up–down or down–up. Generally, the tilt shot is used to follow action or to transition from one location to another. The tilt shot can also simulate the eye movement of a character as that character looks up or down. The tilt shot is rarely used for dramatic emphasis.
The pan, or panning, shot follows movement along a horizontal axis, left to right or right to left. As in the case of the tilt, the pan follows action or simulates eye movement. In both the tilt and the pan, the camera is on a tripod, which remains stationary. The camera pivots are guided by the hand of the skilled camera operator; consequently, the movement tends to be smooth. More rapid movement can be used, but the visual information in the shot tends to blur. The more rapid the movement, the lower the actual visual information and the greater the blur. The illusion of movement is all that results when the cameraman uses a swish pan, a very rapid movement. This shot has been used as a transition from one location to another. It has also been used to simulate the excitement within a scene. Richard Lester used numerous swish pans in the performance sequence that concludes his “A Hard Day’s Night.” The excitement of the audience for The Beatles is emphasized by the use of swish pans.
The zoom shot relies on a lens that can be moved from a wide-angle shot to telephoto or the reverse. In both cases, the zoom is used to avoid cutting from a long shot to a close-up. Aside from the economic benefit of one setup instead of two, numerous directors from Visconti to Altman, from Kubrick to Peckinpah have used the zoom shot to lengthen a shot. Each had an aesthetic goal. In Kubrick’s case (for example, in “Barry Lyndon”), he wanted to slow down our sense of time. “Barry Lyndon” is a film about an 18th-century character made by a 20th-century filmmaker aware that slowing down the film by using zooms will slow down the experience of the film. It may even transport the audience into a sense of the 18th century, at least in terms of time.
Movement from Movement
To move the camera physically, thereby capturing movement while the camera is moving, often requires that a track be built so the movement is smooth. The mounted camera is then moved along the track. Such tracks can be quite elaborate, such as the one used to film an attack on a train in David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia.” Another means of recording movement is to put the camera on a truck or car. A truck with a hoist will give the camera lateral as well as vertical mobility. Orson Welles used just such a trucking setup for the famous three-minute shot that opens “Touch of Evil.” Other devices can be as simple as a car, or even a wheelchair. In each case, the technical operation of the car or truck or trestle smooths the camera movement.
Numerous directors have made the moving shot their signature shot. Alfred Hitchcock, Fred Murnau, Max Ophuls, Stanley Kubrick, Luchino Visconti, and Steven Spielberg each has helped define the aesthetic parameters of the moving shot. There are two camps in the use of the moving shot: those who use the shot objectively (e.g., as a means to avoid later editing) and those who use the shot subjectively to enhance identification. One of the most famous objective camera motion shots is the car accident sequence in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Weekend.” The camera simply records the traffic jam caused by the accident and finally after about five minutes of traffic the camera comes upon the victims. There are no close-ups here, only the objectively rendered traffic jam and accident. Objective movement is also often used to give an overview of a scene. The Omaha Beach D-Day battle scene in Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” is an example of this type of movement.
Subjective motion shots, on the other hand, lend a scene intensity and dramatic tension. Whether the movement simulates the point of view of Dr. Jekyll in Reuben Mamoulian’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” or whether it precedes a running Cary Grant as a biplane in the background tries to kill him in Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest,” the goal of each shot is to put the audience in the position of the character. Subjective camera movement is perhaps the most powerful tool a director can use to link screen characters and the audience. Motion promotes energy, identification, and excitement. It is no wonder that subjective camera movement is the core shot of thrillers and horror films, two genres where victimization of a character is the core narrative goal.
Lighting
Of the various components of a shot that add to the overall character of the shot, the most critical is lighting. What does a director have to know about lighting? The best cinematographers are well acquainted with lighting issues. In fact, the director should have both “macro” and “micro” ideas about the mood he is looking for in his film.
At the macro level, the decision is essentially natural versus dramatic. Film stock, lab instructions, and lighting design decisions can all emanate from this directorial notion about the film. With the dramatic approach, it is important to decide on a romantic tone in the narrative when characters move toward successful achievement of their goal or on an expressionistic tone when outcomes are in question or are darker. An example will illustrate the point. Although Pedro Almodovar’s “Talk to Her” is a dark tale about difficult male–female relationships (the women in the two relationships are both in a coma), the filmmaker is really interested in how characters can help each other overcome difficulty, even tragedy, in relationships. Consequently, Almodovar used a bright light to lighten the heaviness of the narrative and to foreshadow a positive outcome. Mike Leigh used a similar lighting strategy to warm up “Vera Drake,” a 1950s abortion story; one can imagine how much more uptight a naturalistic or cooler lighting design might have made the experience of this film. On the other hand, the option of natural lighting can yield a documentary realism to a film, such as Joshua Marston’s “Maria Full of Grace.” This story about a Colombian woman who becomes a “mule” (someone who smuggles heroin into the United States) benefits from the realism of the lighting.
On a micro level lighting can characterize and can foreshadow intention; it can be used to soften or toughen the audience’s response to a character or situation. Anthony Mann, a director who worked with the cinematographer John Alton in the late 1940s, liked to use high key light in films such as “T-Men.” These stories about gangsters and the police who pursued them benefited from a highly dramatic lighting design.
Lighting can be used to focus on victims and victimizers long before the narrative acknowledges the fate of these characters. Mann is, in fact, part of a tradition of directors who are interested in the psychological complexity light can lend to their characters. Joseph Von Sternberg was interested in using lighting to create a sexual aura around his characters. Michael Mann, on the other hand, used lighting to either question or confirm the honesty of his characters in “Thief” and “Collateral.” William Wyler used lighting to reflect the power or powerlessness of his characters in “The Little Foxes.” Directors who are interested in using lighting for a particular purpose need to be as specific as they can be when setting guidelines for interpretation of characters and the narrative. In this sense, lighting can be a very important tool for executing the director’s idea.
Art Direction
After lighting, art direction is the most critical area that supports the director’s idea as it plays out shot after shot. Art direction refers to the nature and organization of all the physical content of the shot. This includes the artifacts in the shot, their organization, and the look of the room that holds the contents, down to the color of the walls. Art direction also refers to the costumes of the actors. All of these elements contribute not only to the veracity of a shot but also to the mood conjured up in the shot.
Yann Samuell’s “Love Me If You Dare” is a bold interpretation of a male–female relationship over the 30 years of their relationship. The two characters, who meet as preadolescents, see life and their relationship as a game between only the two of them; consequently, there is a constant sense of provocation, desire, and exclusivity. The film is almost operatic in the mood swings it portrays. The art direction had to reflect all of these moods, which it did through the use of bold colors that are extreme and unnatural.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s work in “Delicatessen” and “City of Lost Children” is a tribute to the power of art direction. These postapocalyptic fables are frightening and exciting as they capture an imaginative world where humans have either come to their end or in the darkness have found a new beginning.
Samuell and Jeunet represent one extreme in the use of art direction. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the realist option. Lynne Ramsay’s “Ratcatcher,” a portrait of hellish poverty in 1970s Glasgow, emphasizes the harshness of poverty and the entrapment it represents, particularly for the young main character. Life is a drab gray-blue, except for accidental color or the color of a new suburban home that is too elusive for the main character and his family; otherwise, flatness, grays, and blues pervade the objects, the rooms, and the life of the main character.
Of course, most directors choose an art direction strategy somewhere in between Jeunet and Ramsay, but the more defined and specific the art direction strategy, the more powerful the nonverbal impact of the director’s film. Consider the ennobling sense of the land and the people in Walter Salles’ “The Motorcycle Diaries” or the flat television sitcom look of Los Angeles in David Russell’s “I Heart Huckabees,” a perfect metaphor for the existentially despairing main character. The key here is that the director must have an idea of his narrative goal. From that point, the look of the environments and the appearance of the characters contribute to the nonverbal expression of the character’s idea. When directors ignore art direction, they deny the audience the richly layered narrative experience they deserve.
Sound
Sound is a production and post-production consideration. Although many of the creative sound decisions are generated in post-production, it is nevertheless important for the director to be aware of how sound can further the director’s idea. As in the case of light and art direction, it is useful to think of sound on a natural versus dramatic continuum. Sound in the first case is used to support the recognizability and veracity of the characters and settings. At the dramatic end of the spectrum, sound is used to deepen the emotions surrounding a narrative event or character.
To elaborate what sound is, consider the three broad categories of voice, sound effects, and music. Pitch, amplitude, and the juxtaposition of sounds will all impact the feelings of the audience. Also, consider that sound works with the visual images to affect how the audience processes their experience; consequently, sound is critical to the audience’s interpretation of the events in the film. Sound can define or alter meaning but above all leads us to meaning when compared to the visual.
The greatest proponent of the importance of sound over the last 30 years has been Walter Murch. His sound work with Francis Ford Coppola on “The Conversation” and “Apocalypse Now” is classic in its focus on the complex, creative deployment of sound. More recently, Murch was the editor on Anthony Minghella’s “The English Patient” and “Cold Mountain” (2003), and the sound in each of these films is as impressive as his earlier work with Francis Ford Coppola. Other directors who have employed sound to great effect include Christopher Nolan in “Memento” and “Insomnia,” Krystof Kieslowski in “Red,” and Danny Boyle in “Trainspotting.” Sound, whether deployed naturalistically or dramatically, can powerfully highlight the director’s idea.
The Edit
Directors must keep in mind that the shots they orchestrate in production must give the editor the material necessary to execute the director’s idea. That means producing adequate coverage to make sure the film can be edited, in addition to shots that provide the performances and elements additional to the performances that contribute to the director’s idea. Key to achieving that idea are ten important editing ideas, which are addressed in the following discussion.
Continuity
The issue of editing for continuity can be addressed by having several ideas operational during the production. Whenever a new location is introduced, a location shot (generally a long or extreme long shot) should be taken. This master shot will provide general coverage for anything more specific that happens within the scene. Within the scene, the director should film mid shots and close-ups of the actors and dialogue that are important in the scene. Reaction shots should be filmed as separate shots even if they have already been recorded in a mid shot of two or more characters. This variety of shots will ensure match cutting of the long shots with mid shots or close-ups is achievable. Continuity also requires a respect for the use of screen direction within shots. When the director is filming a chase scene where one character is moving from left to right, then shots of the character who is chasing this character must also be filmed using a left-to-right movement. Screen direction has to be consistent, whether filming long shots or close-ups. Alternatively, when two characters will meet each other in a scene, the first character could be filmed moving from left to right, for example, and the second character could be filmed moving from right to left, implying that these two characters are eventually going to meet.
Clarity
Stories can be confusing. It is the director’s job to provide those crucial shots that keep the story progression clear. Think of complex narratives such as Fred Zinnemann’s “The Day of the Jackal” and Robert Zemeckis’ “Back to the Future.” Two principles can help maintain the clarity of a narrative, the first of which is point of view. When a director provides a clear point of view throughout a scene, the audience will know how to interpret that scene. Think of all of those gunfights in Serge Leoni’s Westerns! In “Once Upon a Time in the West,” we are constantly put in the position of Charles Bronson’s character, who is facing Jack Elam and friends. From Bronson’s foreground point of view, we see Elam and colleagues in the background of the deep-focus shot. In the next shot, the point of view is Elam’s, or his holster, and in the background Bronson’s character awaits his fate. A clear point of view helps the audience move through a scene without confusion. A second principle that promotes clarity is the use of specific shots that tell us the true nature of a scene. The clock close-up in Zinnemann’s “High Noon” tells us that time is critical to the fate of our main character. The close-up of the missing index finger tells us we are in the presence of the antagonist in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Thirty-Nine Steps.” The shot of what the James Stewart character sees when he looks down from great heights (an unstable sense of the ground—it seems to move) is all we need to understand the character’s fear of heights, a state central to the plot of Hitchcock’s “Vertigo.” The key here is planning specific shots that help keep the motivation, plot, and character clear.
Dramatic Emphasis
Dramatic emphasis can be achieved in a number of ways. The most obvious is to use a close-up rather than a mid or long shot. The close-up has the greatest emotional impact, a core notion for dramatic impact. A second strategy to suggest dramatic emphasis is to move the camera closer to the action of the scene—the closer to the action, the more intense our response to the content of the scene. An alternative strategy here is to consider the shift from objective to subjective placement or the reverse. Such a change will get the audience’s attention. A fourth strategy, if shots have been static, is to shift to moving shots or vice versa; in this way, the audience will be alerted to changes in the scene. Finally, dramatic emphasis can be achieved by changing the pace of a scene. When the pace has been slow and deliberate, a shift to a faster pace can cue in the audience that what they are now seeing is more important to the narrative than the shots that preceded it.
New Ideas
New ideas are introduced in a scene by the use of cutaways. Cutaways can be used to foreshadow what is to come, to introduce a new character into the story, or to introduce a new possibility into a character’s life. Think of the shot of a hatted Andie McDowell in “Four Weddings and a Funeral” or the first murderous dream of the Annette Bening character in Neil Jordan’s “In Dreams.” In both cases, a new person or new reality is being introduced in the narrative. The cutaway is a classic shot that introduces new ideas into the narrative.
Parallel Action
The use of parallel action has been around as an editing idea since Porter and Griffith—over a hundred years. The best way to explain it is to suggest that separate strands of a narrative will eventually come together. Think of Yuri and Lara in David Lean’s “Doctor Zhivago” and the outlaw gang known as the Wild Bunch and the vigilantes who are hunting them down in Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch.” To provide some hint that these disparate characters will come together, some directors use screen direction and others use specific actions. Whatever the strategy adopted, the director must have specific ideas regarding how the audience should feel about the two parties’ eventually meeting. Clearly, we want Yuri and Lara to meet, as they are soul mates who represent a romantic ideal in a time and place that had no tolerance for love; however, the feelings evoked with regard to the Wild Bunch and their pursuers are different. Tension and the potential violence that will ensue are the directorial motifs for the Wild Bunch and the vigilantes. Peckinpah nevertheless imbued the Wild Bunch with a sense of friendship absent from the vigilantes. In this sense, he created nobles among the savages, relegating the law-supported vigilantes to savages, an ethos appropriate to the deadly romanticism that roams through “The Wild Bunch.”
Emotional Guidelines
The edit of a film is the emotional guideline of a film. A director forgets this at his peril. The director must encourage modulated performances and provide the juxtapositions and compositions necessary to create the context for how the audience should feel. Ridley Scott in “Gladiator” particularly understood this requirement. Maximus may be the general of all the Roman legions but he is also a husband and a father, roles critical to his identity. Those roles motivate his actions throughout the film, even his actions to kill Commodus, his emperor.
Tone
The tone of a film is critical to the emotional character and credibility just mentioned. Tone can be genre specific or it can challenge the genre. Whichever stance, tone is all about specific images. The baptism in the Coen brothers’ “O Brother, Where Art Thou” and the shattering of glass in Volker Schlondorff’s “The Tin Drum” both go the heart of the narrative—the religiosity of the American character in the Coen brothers’ film and the arch response of Oscar, the main character, to the rise of Nazism in Schlondorff’s film (his response is, in fact, a primal scream). Tone is all about the specific images that create the romanticism or terror so central to the narrative. As is so often the case in literature, metaphor can make a point more powerfully than can more obvious shots. This is why directors such as the Coen brothers and Schlondorff so often utilize it.
The Main Character
It is important for the director to realize that the audience experiences the narrative through a main character. That means the director must decide how he wants us to feel about that character. It may be ambivalence—such as for George Clooney’s character in “O Brother, Where Art Thou”—or it may be understanding and compassion—such as for the two main characters in Alexander Payne’s “Sideways.” In both cases, the characters are mischievous, manipulative, mopey, even dopey, but in each case the director has moved us toward a very different relationship with the main character. What if a choice is not made? Films for which this is the case include Michael Winner’s “Lawman” or Michael Anderson’s “Force 10 to Navarone.” In neither film is the audience able to establish an emotional relationship with the main character, and the result is indifference to the screen story. For an audience to be fully engaged in a director’s film, understanding or even loving the main character is key.
Conflict
Drama is conflict; without conflict, an audience is put in the detached position of observing rather than becoming involved; consequently, a director must be mindful of providing sources of conflict in the story. This sense of conflict can be generated between characters or between characters and the environment. Conflict goes to the heart of the dramatization of the director’s story.
Story Form
Finally, shooting with a distinct sense of genre is important to the final edit. Every story form has a particular character who serves as a signpost for the audience. The stylized quality of film noir, the romanticism of the Western, the dark expressionism that chokes off hope in the horror film—all of these characteristics identify and breathe life into a film. By understanding story forms, the director can provide signposts of the chosen genre for the audience. I am not suggesting that these signposts are the be all and end all of story form. Directors such as the Coen brothers and Stanley Kubrick elaborate, push, and pull the story form. These directors work with the baselines but are not constrained by them. When the director understands and works with these baselines, the director’s idea can be fully realized during the edit of the film.
Now, on to working with the actors.