Moviewise channel on Youtube
Here's its most recent vid. (on aspect ratios and their relation to composition, staging, etc.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJeSyVSdbYo
Lots of good examples and an interesting overall argument. Recommended.
Very interesting stuff. It gave me newfound respect for the artistry to be found within the "square box" image of the Academy ratio. How many scenes were staged "vertically" with people up on stairs looking down, etc.
It had me wondering though: were a lot of Hollywood directors (starting at the top with Hitchcock and Ford and Welles and Hawks and then heading on down to the journeymen) REALLY that well trained in art and composition to create the visual content within those frames? Or was it just "instinct"? Rod Taylor worked with Hitchcock on The Birds and with John Ford(before he was replaced) on "Young Cassidy" and he said that while Hitchcock had his detailed storyboards, Ford "just seemed to have a natural eye for composition." No storyboards. Just picked a place for the camera and got his shot.
The best scene in The Fabelmans is when "young Spielberg meets old John Ford." David Lynch is superb as Ford...I've watched the clip and Lynch takes FOREVER to get his cigar lit, and its quite hypnotic. Anyway, Ford basically gives Spielberg a lesson on the horizon in a shot(using paintings on his wall) and "The Fabelmans" ends with Spielberg shifting the horizon of THIS movie in a witty last bit. I just wish the rest of the movie had been as knowledgeable and witty.
So Ford knew from horizons. Hitchcock definitely knew from lenses -- its why so many of his shots of characters look like 3-D even when the movie is NOT in 3-D(the low angle side shots of Norman in the parlor talking to Marion.)
But all those other guys -- did they REALLY elect to film their frames like that based on artistic training or "just how it looks good."
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Now the narrator made a great case -- with the shot to look at -- of the composition of a diner scene with Sterling Hayden and James Whitmore in The Asphalt Jungle. Gave me a new appreciation for Huston. I do remember how Huston perfectly framed Richard Boone in The Kremlin Letter so that Boone could move his expressive hands through the air and make his entertaining verbal points as if conducting them.
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But we move on to the Main Event: wide screen.
We know that wide screen was invented to "fight the television small box image." And I've lost track of how many different types of wide screen there are/were. Cinemascope was the big one -- but I think "Panavision" -- my "all purpose term for a wide screen" is what survived forever after.
And from late childhood on, I had this bias: if a movie was in Panavision -- it was somehow BETTER to me. Panavision meant 'bigger budget." Bigger vistas(especially in Westerns.) Panavision even made actors look more god-like.
I can pinpoint the first time a Panavision movie enthralled me. A Western-Adventure: Richard Brooks' "The Professionals" starring Burt Lancaster and Lee Marvin and Robert Ryan and Woody Strode as the Team of Four. I saw it on Christmas Day 1966 and I remember thinking: "Cool, look at the size of this screen. This is gonna be GREAT."
The Panavision wide screen of The Professionals made all Westerns WITHOUT wide screen seem "lesser" to me when I saw them. In 1969, the Westerns Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and The Wild Bunch, seemed "better" to me than True Grit, with its "semi-Academy ratio." Over the years, True Grit has moved up ahead of Butch, which seems a handsome Panavision movie in which not much happens other than some good one-liners.
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I did a mental review of my favorite movies of the 70s, and the majority are in Panavision wide screen:
1970: MASH the movie(Panavision)
1971: Dirty Harry(Panavision)
1972: The Godfather(NOT Panavision? I don't think so).
1973: American Graffiti(SPECIAL DEAL -- Lucas shot it in "Technoscope," this cheesy, grainy American-International fake Panavision -- and it looks perfect.)
1974: Chinatown (Panavision -- handsome gleaming images of 1934 LA.)
1975: Jaws (Panavision -- ocean HORIZONS.)
1976: The Shootist(not Panavision -- even from the director of Dirty Harry...but then his Charley Varrick wasn't in Panavision, either.)
1977: Black Sunday(Panavision -- all the better for the blimp attacks the Super Bowl finale.)
1978: Animal House(not Panavision -- low budget, no need for it.)
1979: North Dallas Forty(Panavision for football scenes and the human drama.)
So what's the deal here? I had a bias for Panavision? I guess the answer is yes, but I thought about some of these non-Panavision favorites of mine of the 70's:
The Godfather
Charley Varrick
The Sting(meant to emulate old movies)
Frenzy
Family Plot
The Shootist
Animal House
I didn't HAVE to have Panavision to love a movie.
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I used to have a 1975 issue of Film Comment that had two interviews with two major directors:
One was Sydney Pollack - promoting his new movie in release, "Three Days of the Condor."
The other was Alfred Hitchcock -- on the set of his upcoming movie, "Family Plot."
In his interview, Hitchcock said "I NEVER work in wide screen, because I like close ups and in close ups, you waste half of the screen in wide screen."
In his interview, Pollack said "I ALWAYS try to work in Panavision -- because then you can't cheat close-ups, you have to show where everyone is positioned to each other on the screen."
I think history has shown that Pollack SOMETIMES worked in a smaller screen size, but Hitchcock NEVER worked in Panavision.
And still this Panavision lover(me) has Hitchocck as a favorite director. Go figure.
I'm not sure many Hitchcock movies would have benefitted from Panavision. North by Northwest the most -- the wide open spaces of the crop duster scene and Mount Rushmore...The Birds with its open air and indoors attacks. Maybe Strangers on a Train for its fairground and berserk carousel set-pieces. Maybe Foreign Correspondent(Plane crash in the sea) and Saboteur(Lady Liberty) but they were conceived long before wide screen.
And Psycho in Panavision ?: Well...Jaws was. I'm sure Psycho would have been great in Panavision but Hitchocck's composition(as he told Truffaut) was "vertical house versus horizontal motel.)
We've discussed here recently that while Psycho was NOT made wide screen, there was a "boxy" print on Netflix recently and yet I recall seeing Psycho in re-release in a kind of "somehwere between Academy and Panavision" print: rather a rectangle that didnd't stretch as far as Panavision. THAT felt right. Not a box image. Not a wide screen image.
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A side-bar on two movies that used Panavision in a weird way:
The Way We Were. My favorite sad love story and it was from Sydney Pollack so you can bet it was in Panavision. A LOVE STORY in Panavision. But Panavision make the movie look as expensive as its two stars -- Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford. Panavision the two-shots of Streisand next to Redford look BIG. Panavision made the close-ups of Redford(so gorgeous, even this straight guy saw it) and Streisand(glamoured up with forties lipstick and hair) look loveable to the max. And Panavision outside the Plaza Hotel in NYC(where Cary Grant got kidnapped in NXNW and Walter Matthau hung out a window in Plaza Suite) only made that sad ending...sadder.
The Hateful Eight: Tarantino made a big deal out of how wide screen this one was going to be. Super Panavision? Todd-AO? Using camera lenses last used on the Cinerama(but not) production of Khartoum?(1966.)
And then -- squawked critics - he used that super wide screen to film 8 people(plus some add ons) INDOORS all the time.
Balderdash.
First off, QT managed to get about 10 minutes of rugged, crystalline, snowy outdoor footage into The Hateful Eight so that was "fine and usual."
But INSIDE the main building of the story -- "Minnie's Haberdashery"(and bar and diner) was "eye candy" of crystalline blues and grays and golds(from the fireplace) with a clarity of image that renders The Hateful Eight as the most visually gorgeous movie QT ever made(and he's only got one more left to best it.) Like the best cinemtagraphy in Hitchcock, the images were "3-D without being 3'D" and the rugged Western charcters brought back memories of Leone AND The Professionals AND The Wild Bunch.
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One more thing about Hitchcock and wide screen:
In the fifties for Paramount -- NOT starting with Rear Window but running from To Catch a Thief to The Trouble with Harry to The Man Who Knew Too Much to Vertigo -- Hitchcock worked in VistaVision which came sailing out as a brand logo with theme song right at the start of those movies. He even took VistaVision with him to MGM to make North by Northwest.
But what WAS VistaVision? I've seen North by Northwest and Vertigo To Catch a Thief on the big screen in revival and I can tell you it is NOT wide screen.
I think we have had technical discussions of VistaVision here before and I still only partially understand it. I think it is an overall BIGGER image that still isn't wide screen. More clarity within the shot. But Hitchocck said in some interview "what that has to do with making a movie, I have no idea." He was grumbling because if you used the VistaVision camera "the wrong way" the image went out of focus, so Hitch was restricted in his photography/lens choices.
In any event, Hitch never used VistaVision again after North by Northwest, so Psycho, The Birds, Marnie, Torn Curtain, Topaz, Frenzy and Family Plot seemed to use a basic "non-wide screen rectangle" to get the job done.
were a lot of Hollywood directors...REALLY that well trained in art and composition to create the visual content within those frames? Or was it just "instinct"?
In my very limited experience, having worked mostly on indie and student films, the directors with the best eye for composition seemed to have an instinct for it. The film-school technician types could rattle off numbers and tech specs for cameras and lenses, but most could not frame and/or compose a shot in an artistic way that supported the story. I did, of course, run into some directors that were both, great technicians and artists, however, their flair for artistic flourishes in shot composition still seemed largely intuitive and instinctual.
I should also mention that arguments between a technician DP and a more artistically inclined instinctual director were not uncommon.
Again, that's just my anecdotal experience, so take it with a grain of salt.
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I should also mention that arguments between a technician DP and a more artistically inclined instinctual director were not uncommon.
Again, that's just my anecdotal experience, so take it with a grain of salt.
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That's great anecdotal experience and "the real thing." Thank you for it.
On the "technian DP and instinctive director" aspect, I offer this:
I went to a seminar in the 70's where the guest was DP John Alonzo. He'd actually started as an actor(he is one of the peasants in The Magnificent Seven) but had shifted more to cinematography.
This was 1975. Alonzo had just done the great Panavision cinematography for Polanski's Chinatown the year before, and was promoting his new movie(not Panavision) Director Dick Richards' Farewell My Lovely(with Bob Mitchum) for 1975.
At a certain point, Alonzo revealed that he could pretty much "persuade, manipulate and bully" the lesser known director Dick Richards to "do it Alonzo's way" on compositions and camera angles BUT....NO WAY would Polanski allow him to intrude on Polanski's own technical knowledge and shot selection at all.
I did, of course, run into some directors that were both, great technicians and artists, however, their flair for artistic flourishes in shot composition still seemed largely intuitive and instinctual.That sounds right to me (with a couple of provisos about whether proper shotlists or even full storyboards are used). The simple fact of the matter is that while there are lots of technical rules and guidelines for things like composition, lighting, etc. most of them only kick in *after* you've decided what it is you want a given shot to be and to do, and that in turn requires knowing in detail what overall story it is you are trying to tell. Any director has enormous power and responsibility for answering all those questions for every shot and setup and for consistently developing their overall vision which hopefully will be an interesting one. Someone's instincts for story, beauty, pace, what an audience can wants, etc. and lots more will be crucial background factors in what sort of film they end up making, or even whether they can really do the job well. share
Since I started this thread with a youtube link, I want to recommend a few others.
On Spielberg's blocking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItbCLh4Auoo
On movie lighting basics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtA5IofeMvk
On making the Do Lung Bridge scene in Apocalypse Now (lighting isn't basic on location in a jungle!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK-jsmFWv7Q
Any director has enormous power and responsibility for answering all those questions for every shot and setup and for consistently developing their overall vision which hopefully will be an interesting one.
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Hitchcock "da man" here, I think. I keep finding Youtube clips where Tarantino grouses about Hitchcock being considered "a God" or "a saint not to be trifled with." On the one hand, I get it, but on the other hand, you've got Friedkin saying that he told film school classes "don't go to film school...just watch some Hitchcock pictures. He wil teach you everything." Or DePalma saying that outside of his thrillermaker status "Hitchcock invented the grammar of film." I honestly think QT simply can't see that. Or maybe he's just jealous.
Consider Hitchcock's various shot decisions in Psycho:
The long , side to side then downwards pan into the Phoenix hotel window.
The camera move to the money on Marion's bed at her Phoenix home.
The ultra-tight close up on the Highway patrol's face and sunglasses. Its like a punch to us.
The camera move down the cars and license plates at California Charlies.
POV shots of the highway ahead as day turns to dusk turns to dark and rain falls as Marion drives.
Norman's eye at the peephole.
The montage edits of the shower murder
The camera move from drain to eye at the end of the shower murder
The overhead shot on Mother coming at Arbogast
The camera following Norman up the stairs and then over his head as he carries Mother out and down.
"And more." That's Friedkin's theorem right there. Any and all of those shots can be incorporated into one's own direction.
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Someone's instincts for story, beauty, pace, what an audience can wants, etc. and lots more will be crucial background factors in what sort of film they end up making, or even whether they can really do the job well.
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Yes...but suddenly I thought of Kubrick and how so many of his movies feature so many shots staged the same way: with people at the center of the frame and everything "shooting out to the sides" in perspective around them. Someone did a clips package of these shots on YouTube, I think, and its like how Kubrick's mind "locked in." Example: Nicholson in the red/white bathroom talking to the butler in The Shining.
I think sometimes Wes Anderson frames his shots that way, too.
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On "what the audience wants" I think I will always love how Hitchcock always added those "frission" shots -- usually close-ups, to set the audience up for sudden excitement ahead:
The door slowly opening at the top of the stairs as Arbogast climbs.
A lone sparrow in the fireplace (Tippi Hedren says: "Mitch?")
"That's funny...what?...that crop duster's dusting crops where there ain't no crops."
The wine bottle slowly being pulled to the edge of the shelf and then falling.
Thorwald sees the ring on Lisa's finger and then looks at US.
Rusk plucks the tiepin from out of his tie and moves it to his lapel.
As Fry hangs from Lady Liberty --- the threads on his suit shoulder start to pull apart...
Yep, Hitchcock sure to deliver those chills...
I think I will always love how Hitchcock always added those "frisson" shots -- usually close-ups, to set the audience up for sudden excitement aheadOne of the cardinal sins of modern film-making is what I call 'close-up abuse'. Closeups are used profligately everywhere these days, e.g., in scenes where two characters are having breakfast together, without any particular regard for the information content of such shots. 'Frisson' close-ups of the sort you describe *depend* on there *not* having been hordes of prior content-less closeups. One could say the same thing about moving cameras and frenetic editing, both of which are typically grossly overused these days. It's funny that Hitchcock, Leone, Scorsese, Tarantino were all accused of being excessive in their day but all know how to not overdo things, to hold back, to flirt with boredom, to save closeups or dramatic push-ins or whatever it might be for big moments. share
One of the cardinal sins of modern film-making is what I call 'close-up abuse'. Closeups are used profligately everywhere these days, e.g., in scenes where two characters are having breakfast together, without any particular regard for the information content of such shots.
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Yes. If as DePalma noted(and QT seems to have utterly forgotten), Hitchcock "invented the grammar of film(perhaps after DW Griffith laid the groundwork) he ALSO gave lessons on how to USE that grammar and when to use those shots.
Another overused cinemative concept these days is..."the overhead shot," and Psycho has a great lesson about THAT.
The first overhead shot is Psycho is a lollapalooza -- Mother rushing out to slash Arbogast. One internet commenter wrote of the shot "This is the greatest moment in the history of horror movies," and I'm inclined to agree. (Which opens up TONS of "but waddabouts"?) I think it is great not only because it is one of the greatest "jump shocks" in movie history(early on in movies, too), not only because "we don't ask why we can't see Mother's face"(misdirection, or as Hitchcock said, "playing the audience like an organ) but because the suspenseful threat of Mother has been withheld -- since the shower murder-- a long, long, LONG time - and when she bursts out AGAIN, we are not only terrified again, but in a NEW WAY. She comes stomping out of there in a robotic, inhuman way -- and I, for one, never think of that being Anthony Perkins at all(it wasn't, it was a double, but I mean I think of Mother as a separate being.)
It turns out that the original script by Joe Stefano brought in that overhead shot of the upstairs landing much earlier -- and not even to look down on Mother. Norman went up there after the swamp burial and found Mother's bloody clothes on the landing in front of her door(and then burned them in the cellar allowing for the sequence to end with smoke emerging from a chimney at the Bates House.)
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That might have been a nice shot and we DID lose the smoking chimney shot(kind of a Citizen Kane reference), but Hitchcock KNEW, he couldn't WASTE that overhead shot. He had to SAVE it , for the second big murder, and THEN he could return to it later, in another great shot(the camera twisting over Norman mounting the stairs) that dazzled us in a different way AND hid Mother's face yet again. (I'll guess some folks figure out the truth then, but not everyone.)
Overhead shots pop up willy nilly in movies , these days. I watch Charlie Wilson's War(2007) from time to time and there is a sudden overhead shot of three men meeting in a park to talk and -- its just wasted. Why NOW?
Hitchcock used his overhead shots pretty well a few times after Psycho. The Birds has that great "overhead from the sky" shot of seagulls diving down on Bodega Bay. Torn Curtain has an overhead of Newman and the farmer's wife holding Gromek's head in an oven as his hands flutter in death. Topaz has "the death of Juanita" with her "flowing dress" like purple blood. Frenzy has a direct overhead of Blaney in his holding cell at the Old Bailey. And Family Plot has a high shot of figures criss-crossing a cemetary like pieces on a chessboard.
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'Frisson' close-ups of the sort you describe *depend* on there *not* having been hordes of prior content-less closeups.
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That's right. He saves the close-ups for meaningful action -- though I find the "frisson" shots a very tasting bit of icing on the suspense cake. We remember HITCHCOCK'S frissons because they tip the hat towards a sudden accleration in action or terror.
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One could say the same thing about moving cameras and frenetic editing, both of which are typically grossly overused these days. It's funny that Hitchcock, Leone, Scorsese, Tarantino were all accused of being excessive in their day but all know how to not overdo things, to hold back, to flirt with boredom, to save closeups or dramatic push-ins or whatever it might be for big moments.
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Well, to get all "Hitchcock-centric" here I will note that he conceived of moving camera shots(and CLIMBING camera shots, ala Norman ascending the stairs) with much heavier equipment and unwieldy lighting. DePalma and Scorsese had much more lightweight cameras to do such single take scenes as Liotta and his girlfriend entering the nightclub through the kitchen, or (in The Untouchables), Costner and Connery walking down halls and taking an elevator ride.
And HIGH overhead shots? A dime a dozen in streaming movies these days -- because of lightweight DRONES.
Think of poor Hitchcock not able to get a helicopter shot to begin Psycho -- his crew tried but the images were too wobbly. A mere 12 years later, "the Tyler mount" allowed a helicopter shot to open Frenzy.