Entertainment For Lively Minds
Documenting vs Directing
I watched two Scene By Scene interviews with Mark Cousins.
1998 - Brian DePalma says he hates it when the camera just sits there recording what's going on in front of it. According to him its not directing.
1997 - Martin Scorsese talks about a documentary he made about his parents called Italianamerican in 1974. He says that he loved the way the camera just sat there documenting what's going on in front of it. He then applied this to the domestic scenes in Raging Bull which are very static visually. He mentions being concerned that his constantly moving camera might be getting in the way in some of his other movies.
The best Spielberg movie is Jaws, in my opinion. Notice how little the camera movies in the first half hour when on land. The camera is almost always static. The film has a curious documentary tone to it due to this.
The point of this post? I thought it was interesting. Beyond that I can't say.
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Instinctively, I disagree with DePalma.
For me, the 'art' of directing is all about translating and interpreting what is on the written pages of the screenplay, both narrative and 'stage direction', into a moving picture that conveys most accurately and truthfully the message contained therein. And in motivating and cajoling the actors into producing the best work they can.
If that requires the camera to 'just sit there recording what's going on in front of it', then that is - by definition, almost - good directing. When I'm as conscious of the directing as I am of the acting, then I think the film suffers. And that is bad directing.
It's like music production. I instinctively shy away from producers with instantly recognisable sounds - the Roy Thomas Bakers, Jeff Lynnes and Trevor Horns of this world - because I want to listen to the artist, not the producer.
So...
presumably you don't like Stanley Kubrick?
Not particularly, no
as it happens.
I agree with De Palma
I like crane shots and tracking shots (and in his case, split-screens) etc. To me they are cinematic things. Otherwise you might as well be watching theatre.
And yet
Hitchcock's 'theatrical films' - eg Rope, Rear Window - I find incredibly gripping and curiously cinematic.
Horses for courses, innit?
There's no single good or bad way to tell a story in film, the director should always be in the service of the script and aim to tell it in the most "appropriate" manner, which might be static single takes at one end of the spectrum, and "Avatar" at the other.
Film is an artificial and enhanced storytelling medium anyway - from the moment the director decides to shoot in black & white or colour, with film or video, handheld or fixed camera, more or less edits etc., he (or she) is already starting to surrender to technique (and we all end up watching it on a 30-foot screen, hardly a "natural" viewing experience!)
"Naturalistic" filmmaking will always retain the kind of respect granted to musicians who can just perform with an acoustic guitar and still entertain a crowd, perhaps seen as more "real" and "authentic", and the Dogme 95 "vow of chastity" took this to an interesting extreme, but (to keep the music analogy going) sometimes I want to see a 20-piece band, costume changes, dancers and fireworks, and sometimes I want a bloke on a stool in a pub, it's all good.