Blog site for the production company Sunspot Pictures consisting of general industry opinions, production experiences, writing/shooting tips & tricks, intros, events, and notes on business & networking.
I can't remember when when someone first uttered the term "depth of field," to me in a conversation. But I remember it sounded
holy; it seemed to automatically consecrate it’s speaker to a higher level of filmmaking.
It was intimidating at first; that term you’d smile and nod your head at, pretending you knew
precisely what the other filmmaker was talking about. Then it became that thing
you said to sound like you knew what you were talking about.
Later, after a couple days of looking at the results
on the monitor of my first short film, depth of field became the difference between crap and
Scorsese. It was the secret
separating the wanabees from the professionals, and if you had it, it gave that
image in the frame a quality which separated it from all the other “video” out
there.
Back then, it was all about the Red Rock Adapter, and we
embraced it in spite of it’s many flaws just for a taste of that shallow depth of
field. Nevermind the inverted image you
had to fix in post, or the soft corners of your frame. Nevermind that depth of field is one variable effect depending on the focal length of the lens you use -- this was a revolution, and shallow DOF was
the official religion.
After that came impressive, yet inexpensive camera bodies, the Red with it's vaunted, but unusable 4k resolution, then the DSLRs with 35mm image sensors that can fully utilize cinema prime lenses without cropping any imagery, which is now everything. -- Maybe even more than "depth of field," "35mm" is another one of those holy things that endow a filmmaking product as a must have.
But what does any of it mean? Depth of field particularly is rarely spoken of in terms of meaning; what
it actually achieves, how it can be used, or what it accentuates. At best it’s
all about how pretty it makes the image; or it's just a matter of preference. How many filmmakers see beyond the bullet on the pamphlet as
that fantastic must have feature, or as the thing that will make their film
look like a “real” film, and actually see the tool and all the tricks they can do with it? After all, two films shot at two different focal lengths, are two very different films...
Directors are idolized with the same labels. Haven't you heard? The Coen Brothers like using wide lenses, and Michael Bay likes long lenses. As though the prescription for becoming Tim
Burton, is fundamentally determined by the lenses you use. (Incidentally he likes the 21mm and goes up to
50mm, but never beyond.)
Cronenberg likes shooting entire films with one lens. David Lynch is a shallow depth of field, long lens man, while
Scorsese prefers wide angle lenses – “25mm and wider” for “crispness, and for a
dramatic use of the lines." Meanwhile Woody Allen likes to use the zoom lens a lot as a means of breaking up a scene without cuts... All of these filmmakers have reasons they keep coming back to these conventions, why don't we hear more about the reasons?
In the end, it's about the movie. It's about the story and the images, and how those images are manipulated to achieve amazing effects. "Was the image sensor a 35mm image sensor?" isn't a really a thought if those images are composed with mastery. "Depth of field," "35mm," are elements in a greater language. Use the tools, use them creatively, and tell a story.
This piece is written by our friend & writer Jonathan Tsuneishi who has been so kind to allow us to share it. It's a short and sweet ode to the great Sidney Lumet. His talent will surely be missed! - TKS
For my money, he was one of the great American Directors. Sidney Lumet was that, not because he directed with the visual vibrato of John Ford or Howard Hawks, but because he recognized the human spirit and could break your heart with a scene.
He directed fourteen films, receiving an Oscar nom as a director for “12 Angry Men”, “Dog Day Afternoon”, “Network”, and one of my favorites, “The Verdict”, which incidentally was a film by Twentieth Century Fox.
He gave being liberal a good name, not by standing on a soap box, but by directing scenes and getting performances out of actors they sometimes didn’t know they had in them. It’s been many years, but before “The Verdict”, Paul Newman was considered a matinee idol, a good looking hunk. “The Verdict” shows he could act. A drunk, washed up attorney who takes on the catholic church represented by powerful and supremely smart Boston attorney, James Mason, over a medical malpractice case. But instead of accepting a settlement, Newman does the right thing and fights to expose the church’s greed for the dignity and life of a young woman.
It is surprising Lumet never won a Best Director Oscar though he was nominated four times. Unlike recent years, where one had to question the eventual winner of films considered but left behind, the films that did win in the years Lumet was nominated were David Leans’ "Bridge on the River Kwai", Milos Forman’s "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", John Avildsen’s"Rocky", and Richard Attenborough for "Gandhi."
You could argue that “Rocky” doesn’t belong, but the point I’m making is compare that group of films by Lumet and those Oscar winners to what we’ve had the last few years and you come away believing that in Hollywood’s obsession for box office share and weekend grosses, they have forgotten how to make a movie that matters.
I've been looking at a lot of older films lately. Older as in 60's and 70's. Movies like The Graduate, Deliverance, Midnight Express, Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, Altered States, Bonnie & Clyde. What I've discovered is that once upon a time in this great industry of ours story was key and dialogue was plentiful. Story, I love. Dialogue? Well, it has to be extremely well written, acted, directed for me to be blown away by it. I like beats and long silences that bring out emotion or visual stimulation in film. I'm finding, though, that the 60's and 70's didn't have a whole lot of that. Movies from that era had ridiculous amounts of conversation for a good 2 hours that really made the actor or actress a focal point that seems to be missing in recent movies.
Let's take the movie 'Network' for example. Charles saw it a couple weeks ago and wouldn't stop raving about it. I'd seen it years ago so had a foggy memory of what it was like. 'Network' was streaming on Netflix so I figured I should take advantage of that before it went away. And I'm really glad I did. What a fantastic piece of work! Brilliant acting and one very prophetic and daring screenplay.
Network was 121 minutes of conversation. When there wasn't conversation there was narration. I think the only time there was a beat or pause was during the breakup speech from William Holden to Faye Dunaway. There were 3 profound and unforgettable speeches in this movie and so much hidden meaning blatantly discussed in front of what is considered now to be an impressionable and sensitive film audience. Subjects such as media exploitation, creating story for ratings rather than reporting the truth, sensationalism, corporatism, communism, and fascism were all covered in this movie quite well. The live footage of a militant guerrilla group (who would today be labeled terrorist) sets Faye Dunaway's character, Diana Christensen, on a wild ride as she, the heartless TV programmer who'll stop at nothing to be number 1, comes up with the idea to exploit the leftist groups and individuals by putting them on TV. Her pitch to them is to offer up an audience of millions who will hear their radical message.
They buy. Peter Finch's character, the nutty Howard Beale, buys into it. Laureen Hobbs, ("
I'm Laureen Hobbs, a badass commie nigger.") played by Marlene Warfield, buys into it and buys into it hard as she yells her head off at one point realizing that all of the money supposed to go to her guerrilla group is being spread out to different network interests in the form of profit percentages. That speech is one of my three faves. As negotiations are being worked out Laureen Hobbs blows her stack saying not at all what one would expect from such a militant.
140. INT. THE FARMHOUSE - LIVING ROOM
STEIN
(a nervous man, to the new
arrivals, now entering)
Where the hell have you been?
MIGGS
(embracing the
GREAT KHAN)
Ahmed, sweet, that dodo you sent
for a driver couldn't find this
fucking place.
There is a genial exchange of helloes and waves between
the phalanxes of AGENTS --
STEIN
Let's get on with this before
they raid this place, and we all
wind up in the joint.
ED
(to FREDDIE now
pulling up a crate)
We're on Schedule A, page seven,
small c small i --
MIGGS
(whisking through her
copy of the contract)
Have we settled that sub-licensing
thing? We want a clear definition
here. Gross proceeds should consist
of all funds the sublicensee receives
not merely the net amount remitted
after payment to sublicensee or
distributor.
STEIN
We're not sitting still for over-
head charges as a cost prior to
distribution.
LAUREEN
(whose nerves have
worn thin, explodes:)
Don't fuck with my distribution
costs! I'm getting a lousy two-
fifteen per segment, and I 'm already
deficiting twenty-five grand a week
with Metro. I'm paying William
Morris ten percent off the top!
(indicates the
GREAT KHAN)
-- And I'm giving this turkey ten
thou a segment and another five for
this fruitcake --
(meaning MARY ANN GIFFORD)
And, Helen, don't start no shit
with me about a piece again!
I'm paying Metro twenty percent of
all foreign and Canadian distribution,
and that's after recoupment! The
Communist Party's not going to see
a nickel out of this goddam show
until we go into syndication!
MIGGS
Come on, Laureen, you've got the
party in there for seventy-five
hundred a week production expenses.
LAUREEN
I'm not giving this pseudo in-
surrectionary sectarian a piece
of my show! I'm not giving him
script approval! And I sure as
shit ain't cutting him in on my
distribution charges I
MARY ANN GIFFORD
(screaming in from
the back)
Fuggin fascist! Have you seen the
movies we took at the San Marino
jail break-out demonstrating the
rising up of a seminal prisoner-
class infrastructure!
LAUREEN
You can blow the seminal prisoner-
class infrastructure out your ass!
I'm not knocking down my goddam
distribution charges!
The GREAT KHAN decides to offer an opinion by SHOOTING
his PISTOL off into the air. This gives everybody
something to consider, especially WILLIE STEIN who
almost has a heart attack.
THE GREAT KHAN
Man, give her the fucking over-
head clause.
Then, of course, there is the infamous speech by Peter Finch...
And finally, the daring and frightening honesty that pours forth from the mouth of Jensen...
He leads HOWARD down the steps to the floor level,
himself ascends again to the small stage and the podium.
HOWARD sits in one of the 200 odd seats. JENSEN pushes
a button, and the enormous drapes slowly fall, slicing
away layers of light until the vast room is utterly
dark. Then, the little pinspots at each of the desks,
including the one behind which HOWARD is seated, pop on,
creating a miniature Milky Way effect. A shaft of white
LIGHT shoots out from the rear of the room, spotting
JENSEN on the podium, a sun of its own little galaxy.
Behind him, the shadowed white of the lecture screen.
JENSEN suddenly wheels to his audience of one and roars
out:
JENSEN
You have meddled with the primal
forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I
won't have it, is that clear?! You
think you have merely stopped a
business deal -- that is not the
case! The Arabs have taken billions
of dollars out of this country, and
now they must put it back. It is
ebb and flow, tidal gravity, it is
ecological balance! You are an old
man who thinks in terms of nations
and peoples. There are no nations!
There are no peoples! There are no
Russians. There are no Arabs!
There are no third worlds! There is
no West! There is only one holistic
system of systems, one vast and
immane, interwoven, interacting,
multi-variate, multi-national
dominion of dollars! petro-dollars,
electro-dollars, multi-dollars!,
Reichmarks, rubles, rin, pounds and
shekels! It is the international
system of currency that determines
the totality of life on this planet!
That is the natural order of things
today! That is the atomic,
subatomic and galactic structure of
things today! And you have meddled
with the primal forces of nature,
and you will atone! Am I getting
through to you, Mr. Beale?
(pause)
You get up on your little twenty-
one inch screen, and howl about
America and democracy. There is no
America. There is no democracy.
There is only IBM and ITT and A T
and T and Dupont, Dow, Union Carbide
and Exxon. Those are the nations of
the world today. What do you think
the Russians talk about in their
councils of state -- Karl Marx?
They pull out their linear
programming charts, statistical
decision theories and minimax
solutions and compute the price-cost
probabilities of their transactions
and investments just like we do. We
no longer live in a world of nations
and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The
world is a college of corporations,
inexorably deter- mined by the
immutable by-laws of business. The
world is a business, Mr. Beale! It
has been since man crawled out of
the slime, and our children, Mr.
Beale, will live to see that perfect
world in which there is no war and
famine, oppression and brutality --
one vast and ecumenical holding
company, for whom all men will work
to serve a common profit, in which
all men will hold a share of stock,
all necessities provided, all
anxieties tranquilized, all boredom
amused. And I have chosen you to
preach this evangel, Mr. Beale.
HOWARD
(humble whisper)
Why me?
JENSEN
Because you're on television, dummy.
Sixty million people watch you
every night of the week, Monday
through Friday.
Everything, I mean everything, dialogue in this movie is mind blowing. Not only are these speeches fantastic but so is the everyday conversation...the producers sitting around having a frank discussion about killing Howard Beale, the confrontation between Schumacher & Hackett, the break up between Diana & Max discussed in terms of 'canceling the show'....Pick any part of this movie and you will find the conversation enthralling.
Today we have movement, action, effects, cheap jokes, simplistic dialogue, and restrictions on everything (couldn't share the video clips for 2 of the 3 speeches above...that's how tight everything has become!). Back then they simply told stories and let the viewers formulate their own opinions. They assumed the audience was smart enough to understand. They allowed freedom of expression, freedom of thought, freedom to create like we haven't seen in quite a while. Writers wrote for actors and actresses not for corporations and formulas.
We may never return to that kind of filmmaking again. We may never be given that freedom to say what we as storytellers want to say in a film again. But we will always have those older movies at our disposal to watch and re-watch as many times as we desire and remember that once there was a time when artists could put the business aside and simply be creative. - TKS
