Storytelling Through Cuts
|
|
By: Patrick Kriwanek
|
Biography
Patrick Kriwanek is the CEO of The Berkeley Digital Film Institute, the nation's first all-high-definition film school. Prior to Berkeley Digital, Patrick was the Chair of the nation's largest and most digitally advanced undergraduate film and video program, at the Academy of Art University, where he grew his program from 80 students to over 900 students in a six year period.
Patrick's students have won 3 Gold Clio awards, more than 40 national and international awards, and currently work for more than 150 of the nation's most prestigious content creation companies.
His most recent thrill was when his student, Chris Milk, won for his client Kanye West "Best Male Performance Video" at the MTV Music Video Awards for the video of "Jesus Walks."
Patrick has produced and directed 57 music videos, and has sold two pilots to Fox Television.
Storytelling Through Cuts
Dear Budding Animators.
Bobby Beck has asked me to do a series of articles entitled "Storytelling Through Cuts," and I am honored to do this. Perfect title too, because our stories are told in pieces, cuts of the perfect view on things, created by the shooters and directors, and massaged by the editors into a perfect flow of images sweeping us up into the story, and carrying us forward in a seamless experience of interest and delight.
In the next few newsletters, I am going to attempt to make you aware of the real process by which major motion pictures are constructed, shot by shot, how we conceive those shots, and why we as Directors make the cinematic choices we make.
The Big Picture
The Big Picture of the creative process for film can be broken down into two main areas of creative choice-making, "Coverage," which is the series of shots chosen and shot during production, and "Editorial Ballistics," which is the boundary massaging of those shots in editorial to smooth the images together.
In these first few articles, I am going to concentrate on Coverage, which describes the choices we make in camera placement and movement to tell the story. In later articles, I will move on to how the raw footage, or coverage, is handled by the editing team, and how those images are massaged together to make a smooth, invisible, flowing edit, in picture and in sound.
Coverage
Coverage is the term we use in the film business to describe the choices we make in the positioning of the camera--choices we make in each setup. These choices include basic framing, composition, lens choice, camera height, shot size, screen direction, matching of shots between two people, continuity, camera movement and all the other elements which go into choosing "where we are" for the shot, and WHY.
These articles are designed to make you understand the WHY on these coverage choices, because there is a Language of Film, which has been created through more than 140 years of screen "conventions," and these conventions are what your audience expects you to pay attention to when you deliver your story to them.
Coverage is what I call Hollywood 101, because your audience has been watching these conventions for all of their lives, and they expect you to know them by heart. In fact, you have been watching them all of your lives as well, but you are probably not aware of the GRAMMAR which these shot setups and editorial choices really mean to an audience.
We're going to fix that.
Film coverage is a Language, and just like a language, it has subjects, verbs, and objects, in the following way: Certain shots MEAN certain things; they convey a certain universal underlying meaning to your audience, they will always think you MEANT to use that shot for a reason.
For example, when we feature our lead actor in a close-up, it is usually meant that we need to see their eyes, their facial intensity, very very clearly. When the actor becomes more physical, we need to frame back far enough to capture all of that physicality, and to not let hands and limbs go out of the frame.
Your audience wants information which forwards the story delivered to them in a very precise, linear, and understandable way. Remember, they are not in the room with you, you need to show them the geography of where we are, who else is with them, what is the geographic relationship in the space with the other character, etc.
The convention I teach my young students is this: If you were an angel, and you could be in the most perfect place, "The Best Seat in the House," for every single micro-second of your script, where would that position be, so that you could see EVERYTHING you need to know to understand what is emotionally happening in that moment of the story?
Honestly, that is the SECRET of great coverage.
Think of yourself as a cosmic flea, able to jump in a millionth-of-a-second to any place you want to be in that scene, the ultimate flying theater seat, so you could position yourself to see everything, in real time, and you will be on the wavelength of what is probably the best seat in the house for that moment.
That is what great coverage is: choosing that one spot and putting that shot into the movie. And you, as animators, have the gift of total creative control of that shot.
Now there are certain conventions which will prevent you from getting crossed-up when you jump around, and we will cover these more precisely in future articles. For now, I want to begin to make you more aware of what coverage looks and feels like.
One of the best exercises you can do for this understanding is to take one of your favorite movies, load it into your DVD player, and turn the sound off. Just watch the camera placement choices on one of your favorite directors, and you will begin to see the pattern of different shots, which we call "the shot mix."
You will notice that scenes typically open wide, allowing you to get a sense of the geography of where we are, especially in a setting we are seeing for the first time.
How big is it, where are we, what is the weather, time of day, how does it feel?
As the scene progresses, you will see your director move in to medium-sized shots, and eventually, into close-ups.
Then, within the same scene, the director will go wide again, and move closer through cuts, and then into close-ups again.
These shot choices reflect the ebb and flow of emotional intensity in the scene. As things become more emotional, more revealing, we tend to move in, to see that emotion.
These shot choices can be sensed from a careful "intensity-read" of the script.
For all of us as directors, the good news is that the "cues" for the various shots are actually embedded in the script, and that is the first place we look to do our breakdown, using thumbnails of our shot choices. I usually mark them on the script, on the blank back side of the page opposite.
This is the first of a three step process of advanced pre-visualization for your film.
The second step, for us, is to continue to refine these mental thumbnails during rehearsal. As blocking progresses, the presence of the actors and their blocking will begin to lead us to a certain condensing of shots, such as having two people in one shot, front to back, and other visual shorthanding. Steven Spielberg and David Fincher are two directors especially gifted at these elements. Watch "Schindler's List" or "Se7en." These two guys are two of the most gifted "coverage" directors in the world today.
The final step comes during shooting, where your location actually becomes a "cast member" and modifies some of your shooting plan because of physical logistics and reveals to us opportunities which couldn't be seen until we are in our actual location.
The Informed Storyboard
As animators, you are used to creating storyboards for your own projects, or working with other directors who have created storyboards for your project. An important point I want to make is towards the creation of what I call the Informed Storyboard.
Film storyboards are not graphic novels, and this is an important distinction. The images in graphic novels have no commitment to dovetail from the shot before into the shot after. In film, no shot exists alone; it is a sister to the incoming shot, and must flow into the next shot. It exists as part of a full-motion continuum, and it has to be pre-visualized that way.
Shot size, lens choice, camera placement, depth-of-field, screen direction, background motion and speed, all have to match from the prior, to the present, to the next shot.
So there are at least 20 elements which must match as we move across the timeline from shot to shot.
Great storyboard artists understand this, and that is why the boards for Finding Nemo or Toy Story look exactly like the boards for Indiana Jones, because those boards were created by filmmakers, thinking and visualizing the shots in continuity, in service of the greater flow. And this is what I call an "Informed Story Board" because it is "informed" in its creation as to how images serve one another in a flowing pattern.
Graphic novels have the luxury of creating extraordinarily arresting moments in time, but they do not have to "edit" together in a continuum.
I know this is a lot to chew on for the first pass, but I promise you, in another few months, you will be reading these words again, with a pretty full understanding of what I mean, and you will be able to deconstruct your favorite projects to see the magic of your favorite director, serving up the perfect shots, to pull you into, and keep you in, the movie.
The greatest animated films of our time are great because they "feel" like a real movie, they have been constructed by "filmmakers" using the same guidelines we use to create powerful live-action narratives.
In the next few articles, I will try to demonstrate to you how you can become a better filmmaker as well as an animator, because that's what the good companies are looking for; animators who think like filmmakers. Bobby rules.
Patrick Kriwanek is the CEO of The Berkeley Digital Film Institute, the nation's first all-high-definition film school. Prior to Berkeley Digital, Patrick was the Chair of the nation's largest and most digitally advanced undergraduate film and video program, at the Academy of Art University, where he grew his program from 80 students to over 900 students in a six year period.
Patrick's students have won 3 Gold Clio awards, more than 40 national and international awards, and currently work for more than 150 of the nation's most prestigious content creation companies.
His most recent thrill was when his student, Chris Milk, won for his client Kanye West "Best Male Performance Video" at the MTV Music Video Awards for the video of "Jesus Walks."
Patrick has produced and directed 57 music videos, and has sold two pilots to Fox Television.
Storytelling Through Cuts
Dear Budding Animators.
Bobby Beck has asked me to do a series of articles entitled "Storytelling Through Cuts," and I am honored to do this. Perfect title too, because our stories are told in pieces, cuts of the perfect view on things, created by the shooters and directors, and massaged by the editors into a perfect flow of images sweeping us up into the story, and carrying us forward in a seamless experience of interest and delight.
In the next few newsletters, I am going to attempt to make you aware of the real process by which major motion pictures are constructed, shot by shot, how we conceive those shots, and why we as Directors make the cinematic choices we make.
The Big Picture
The Big Picture of the creative process for film can be broken down into two main areas of creative choice-making, "Coverage," which is the series of shots chosen and shot during production, and "Editorial Ballistics," which is the boundary massaging of those shots in editorial to smooth the images together.
In these first few articles, I am going to concentrate on Coverage, which describes the choices we make in camera placement and movement to tell the story. In later articles, I will move on to how the raw footage, or coverage, is handled by the editing team, and how those images are massaged together to make a smooth, invisible, flowing edit, in picture and in sound.
Coverage
Coverage is the term we use in the film business to describe the choices we make in the positioning of the camera--choices we make in each setup. These choices include basic framing, composition, lens choice, camera height, shot size, screen direction, matching of shots between two people, continuity, camera movement and all the other elements which go into choosing "where we are" for the shot, and WHY.
These articles are designed to make you understand the WHY on these coverage choices, because there is a Language of Film, which has been created through more than 140 years of screen "conventions," and these conventions are what your audience expects you to pay attention to when you deliver your story to them.
Coverage is what I call Hollywood 101, because your audience has been watching these conventions for all of their lives, and they expect you to know them by heart. In fact, you have been watching them all of your lives as well, but you are probably not aware of the GRAMMAR which these shot setups and editorial choices really mean to an audience.
We're going to fix that.
Film coverage is a Language, and just like a language, it has subjects, verbs, and objects, in the following way: Certain shots MEAN certain things; they convey a certain universal underlying meaning to your audience, they will always think you MEANT to use that shot for a reason.
For example, when we feature our lead actor in a close-up, it is usually meant that we need to see their eyes, their facial intensity, very very clearly. When the actor becomes more physical, we need to frame back far enough to capture all of that physicality, and to not let hands and limbs go out of the frame.
Your audience wants information which forwards the story delivered to them in a very precise, linear, and understandable way. Remember, they are not in the room with you, you need to show them the geography of where we are, who else is with them, what is the geographic relationship in the space with the other character, etc.
The convention I teach my young students is this: If you were an angel, and you could be in the most perfect place, "The Best Seat in the House," for every single micro-second of your script, where would that position be, so that you could see EVERYTHING you need to know to understand what is emotionally happening in that moment of the story?
Honestly, that is the SECRET of great coverage.
Think of yourself as a cosmic flea, able to jump in a millionth-of-a-second to any place you want to be in that scene, the ultimate flying theater seat, so you could position yourself to see everything, in real time, and you will be on the wavelength of what is probably the best seat in the house for that moment.
That is what great coverage is: choosing that one spot and putting that shot into the movie. And you, as animators, have the gift of total creative control of that shot.
Now there are certain conventions which will prevent you from getting crossed-up when you jump around, and we will cover these more precisely in future articles. For now, I want to begin to make you more aware of what coverage looks and feels like.
One of the best exercises you can do for this understanding is to take one of your favorite movies, load it into your DVD player, and turn the sound off. Just watch the camera placement choices on one of your favorite directors, and you will begin to see the pattern of different shots, which we call "the shot mix."
You will notice that scenes typically open wide, allowing you to get a sense of the geography of where we are, especially in a setting we are seeing for the first time.
How big is it, where are we, what is the weather, time of day, how does it feel?
As the scene progresses, you will see your director move in to medium-sized shots, and eventually, into close-ups.
Then, within the same scene, the director will go wide again, and move closer through cuts, and then into close-ups again.
These shot choices reflect the ebb and flow of emotional intensity in the scene. As things become more emotional, more revealing, we tend to move in, to see that emotion.
These shot choices can be sensed from a careful "intensity-read" of the script.
For all of us as directors, the good news is that the "cues" for the various shots are actually embedded in the script, and that is the first place we look to do our breakdown, using thumbnails of our shot choices. I usually mark them on the script, on the blank back side of the page opposite.
This is the first of a three step process of advanced pre-visualization for your film.
The second step, for us, is to continue to refine these mental thumbnails during rehearsal. As blocking progresses, the presence of the actors and their blocking will begin to lead us to a certain condensing of shots, such as having two people in one shot, front to back, and other visual shorthanding. Steven Spielberg and David Fincher are two directors especially gifted at these elements. Watch "Schindler's List" or "Se7en." These two guys are two of the most gifted "coverage" directors in the world today.
The final step comes during shooting, where your location actually becomes a "cast member" and modifies some of your shooting plan because of physical logistics and reveals to us opportunities which couldn't be seen until we are in our actual location.
The Informed Storyboard
As animators, you are used to creating storyboards for your own projects, or working with other directors who have created storyboards for your project. An important point I want to make is towards the creation of what I call the Informed Storyboard.
Film storyboards are not graphic novels, and this is an important distinction. The images in graphic novels have no commitment to dovetail from the shot before into the shot after. In film, no shot exists alone; it is a sister to the incoming shot, and must flow into the next shot. It exists as part of a full-motion continuum, and it has to be pre-visualized that way.
Shot size, lens choice, camera placement, depth-of-field, screen direction, background motion and speed, all have to match from the prior, to the present, to the next shot.
So there are at least 20 elements which must match as we move across the timeline from shot to shot.
Great storyboard artists understand this, and that is why the boards for Finding Nemo or Toy Story look exactly like the boards for Indiana Jones, because those boards were created by filmmakers, thinking and visualizing the shots in continuity, in service of the greater flow. And this is what I call an "Informed Story Board" because it is "informed" in its creation as to how images serve one another in a flowing pattern.
Graphic novels have the luxury of creating extraordinarily arresting moments in time, but they do not have to "edit" together in a continuum.
I know this is a lot to chew on for the first pass, but I promise you, in another few months, you will be reading these words again, with a pretty full understanding of what I mean, and you will be able to deconstruct your favorite projects to see the magic of your favorite director, serving up the perfect shots, to pull you into, and keep you in, the movie.
The greatest animated films of our time are great because they "feel" like a real movie, they have been constructed by "filmmakers" using the same guidelines we use to create powerful live-action narratives.
In the next few articles, I will try to demonstrate to you how you can become a better filmmaker as well as an animator, because that's what the good companies are looking for; animators who think like filmmakers. Bobby rules.