Smaller is better – at least for now

 

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

 

I continue to marvel at actors’ ability to keep in character.

During my latest effort, I actually shot at five different angles, thinking I could mix and match shots. It didn’t work.

Each series came out with a slightly different tone that didn’t mix well with the others. The character was the same for the most part, but there was a subtle difference in tone that did not fit well with the others. Some didn’t work at all and I rejected them entirely.  Some worked very well, but not in conjunction. In fact, I shoot the same scene twice, and in this case, spliced together shots from the same angle when a particular phrasing didn’t work right.

I just couldn’t spice the other successful sequence in with the first. Part of the problem is that the very close up shots worked better than the sequence I used, but did not serve the environmental purpose I wanted, which was to show some background.

Short of shooting the same scene with two cameras at the same time, I’m going to have to resolve this conflict of tone if I expect to mix and match shots in the future.

 

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I’m working on a series of shorter films – monologues for the most part – rather than trying to parody entire films.

I’m no great actor. But even I need space to breathe. In the longer works, I was so cramped for time, I couldn’t actually act.

The shorter films – perhaps not so much shorter in time as in content – I can shape a character in my mind and work out some of the kinks without being afraid I might run out of time.

In a short piece, I can actually memorize the whole speech, acting it out as one piece – even if I flub it in places and have to shoot it again.

The monologue feels like a whole self-contained unit and I can envision a beginning, middle and end, both as the actor and as the film maker.

One very important lesson I’ve learned from the early monologues is the need to keep to structure – to use establishing, master and other shots.

By filming the whole monologue in one long shot, I can later cut in what I need as incidentals. In my past parodies, I was copying shot by shot rather than having a base to build on.

 

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I’m still doing a study of Schindler’s List – although I took a side trip through the Indiana Jones movies because I finally got copies of the scripts.

The changes are startling, and I have to wonder how much actually got shot then cut later.

Spielberg did much to tighten the language. The sequence with the dates in the first movie is remarkable, introducing the date during the conversation with Marion, and later, when introducing the poison. The changes from script to shooting are significant.

Spielberg tightens the dialogue to the most essential and the images. We do not see the monkey in its death throes, we see it dead.

“Bad dates.”

Another change in the first movie involves the head piece. I suppose it was a practical matter of shortening the movie that caused the change from having the head piece in two parts. In the script, the head piece was in two pieces, one held in Shanghai, the other Marion had. This is why the script used the opening sequence from the second movie. Instead of the ashes of some dead emperor, Indiana was to recover that half of the head piece – complete with the gong and the jump into the fleeing car. We don’t get the kid, but the scene plays out the same way.

The Nazis manage to make a copy of their half prior to the theft.

In the movie, Marion has the entire head piece. While the Nazis pursue it in the same way both in the film and the script, they get the impression of the head piece from the burned hand in the film, one of those many small ironic twists Spielberg gives the plot.