Schindler's List on the cinematography of foils

Schindler's List is, in my opinion, Spielberg's greatest film. We've got some Liam Neeson in there, Ralph (pronounced RAIF thanks Laura) Fiennes who is awesome, and Ben Kingsley. Was released 1993, and at the 1994 Academy Awards it had 12 Oscar nominations. It won 7 of them. Wins for Best Picture, Best Original Score, Best Director. Both the leading men were nominated for acting Oscars in it, Neeson for best actor in a leading role, Fiennes for best actor in a supporting role. Neither won, but you can tell from the two nominations how strong pairing it was. Wins also for Best cinematography to Janusz Kaminski as Director of Photography and Best Editing to Michael Kahn.

During World War II, Schindler (Neeson) is a war profiteer who uses the Jews confined to the Krakow ghetto and later Plaszow labor camp for essentially slave labor in his enamelware factory and then a munitions plant. During the liquidation of the ghetto, when the Jews are being moved into the labor camps, concentration camps, and death camps, Schindler begins to have a change of heart. By the end of the film he is bankrupt. He used his money and his friendship with the commandant of Plaszow labor camp, Unterschaftfuhrer Amon Goeth (Fiennes) to buy back the lives of his workers, to buy them from death. He saved 1100 people that way. Oh, and this is a true story.

An interesting plot and stylistic element is the interaction of Schindler and Goeth. They are set up as foils to each other almost from the outset of Goeth's introduction further into the film. From Schindler's point of view Goeth could even be considered a doppelganger, a sinister reflection of Schindler himself, who he notices and fears he will become. Lots of interesting handheld camera work in this film. Possibly Kaminski's influence there. Spielberg doesn't use it much. It always seems to crop up, in this film, when something particularly dramatic is happening. Anyways let's get to it. Look at these four shots.

Clearly similar and opposite, symmetrical reflections of each other. Simple what they're doing, but telling in terms of story.

When I say sinister version, this is what I mean. The camera starts to shake and Goeth, on the balcony, leans down to grab something we can't see, and then...

This next scene really drives home the point about Schindler's and Goeth's parallelism. They are so totally symmetrical in almost every way. As soon as Goeth leans forward and breaks the symmetry, they go to another shot, so as not to show them asymmetrically.

The devil is in the computer-generated details.

If you want to follow along this time, http://www.starcraft2.com/movies.xml and scroll down to cinematic trailer, then choose your OS poison. That's the straight-from-the horse's-mouth high-quality version. It's also on Youtube, labelled "Starcraft 2 - Official Cinematic Trailer." I highly recommend the high-quality if you can stand it. The extra resolution is necessary in some parts. Read the next paragraph before you watch the video.

What we've got here is the trailer for Blizzard Software's Starcraft II. Starcraft I came out all the way back in 1998 and was a revolutionary franchise for Blizzard and all real-time strategy games. Blizzard managed to keep announcement (read as: nerd crack) under wraps completely. At Blizzcon 2007 in Seoul the auditorium goes dark. It had been 9 years since Starcraft. To put that in perspective, there's never been more than a 3 year separation between any installments of the Warcraft franchise, and only 2 years to get from Warcraft III to WoW. By the time Starcraft II is available for purchase, it will have been over a decade of waiting. No introduction is made for the video, no qualifications, only this starts to play on the widescreen. OK now go watch it.

Fun, isn't it? This is really short, so we can get really detailed in our analysis of it.

The realism and attention to detail in this is astounding. Down to the fluorescent bulbs flickering as they power on and heat waves rising over the jet engine (?) in the guy's shoulder. If you can, go back and watch the reluctance in the turning of the doorknob. If we can call it a doorknob. It turns almost imperceptibly, stops, and then continues the turn all the way around. Good emotion there. The guy is not in a position to even be able to change his mind, but there's some feeling there, and we get more of it later in his flashbacks.

Notice that we never get a really good look at the man's face until the very end. It's always at an extreme angle, from far away, or dark, like in this one. Blizzard is such a tease.We've arrived at the main point I like about this video: The cut-in shot reigns supreme. This trailer shows how cut-in shots aren't just convenient little things to throw into a scene to break the wide shot up because we have the attention spans of squirrels. You can tell a story with cut-ins. This one with the ankle-cuffs is a good example. Restraints. Orange pants. This man is a convict. I wonder what he's doing here. Another close-up later of the facility's screen read-out. Says 'INMATE,' driving home the convict point, and then an even closer-up of the bottom right, that goes from idle to '--ACTIVE--.' That's right. The cut-ins say that it's GO time.

Next big item: the shots here at times empower the man, and at times disempower him. In this way, it reflects the reality of the situation. I think some back story is necessary for this. In this futuristic vision, convicts are enlisted to fight humanity's military battles, and this is the man's uniform. The suit, an extension of his form, multiplies his physical power many times over, and protects him also. However, as an unwilling participant in the conflict, he is still being forced to fight for the society that has imprisoned him. An ironic situation, and the cinematography reflects it. For example, there's some clear commentary going on in this shot from inside the tunnel, as the door seals behind our suspicious hero. In another shot, after the platform he's locked into rises out of the floor, in front of all the robotic arms that will outfit him, we get this low angle shot of the man, at the center of it all. Immediately after, however, the man dwindles amid the scenery again. The machine gently takes his arms, and with no resistance the man's arms are spread wide, allowing the robotic arms to come forward and crucify him. (Cue indignant Christian.) It's just an image, people. Get over it. We even get some camera shake in that shot, something you wouldn't normally think to have in a CGI sequence, because there essentially IS NO camera. Talked about camera shake a lot in the previous entry. Check it out.

Next we get the suit-up sequence. It really is go time now. The arms close in around the hero, the music starts to thump as turbines whine into life, some of the shots are even POV, like with the different shots of his mechanically-gloved hand. Then we get the first lines of the video. "All Marines: prepare to drop." At that we get a cross-cutting sequence of an upward-panning close up of this massive human shell cut against the man's memories, flashbacks from previous conflicts of which he is a veteran. The musical thumps are even timed with the nervous shifting of his steel-encased feet. We arrive at the top of the mechanical man, and get the first real look at his whole form and face. He looks forward and says "Hell, it's about time," showing his thirst for battle, as well as speaking to the assembled representatives of nerd-dom who've waited a decade for his return to war.

Hope that wasn't too heavy. A little testosterone is good for you.

Big Willie Camera Style

I Am Legend came out in 2007, actually the third movie rendition of a novel by Richard Matheson with the same name, published way back in 1954. Francis Lawrence directs it. His first real deal directing job was Constantine, and he appears to have learned a hell of a lot of things in the two years since then. Before that he directed a lot of music videos, some for Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez. That explains his making a movie in which the majority of the human race is dead.

Two distinct styles of camera use that the film switches between that I'm going to call (1) Documentary camera style and (2) Steadycam style, but that second style also includes crane shots, helicopter shots, all kinds of things that are basically the opposite of a documentary feel. Steadycam? A very heavy and expensive contraption that a steadycam operator (now the cameraman) wears. It holds the camera steady no matter what the operator does, essentially. You can jump up and down, run the 100-meter dash, but through the eyes of the camera it will feel like gliding over a pond, hence STEADYcam. Documentary crews, real ones, can't bring steadycams everywhere they go, trying to catch real life on film, because the operator passes out. Steadycams are VERY heavy and uncomfortable. So when Michael Moore is harassing someone, chasing them down the street probably, in his latest steaming pile of box office crap, the cameraman is just a man with a camera, probably resting on his shoulder, and the image is accordingly shaky.

Recently, some feature films have started to use documentary camera work like that to create a realistic feel in their films. Traffic was the first that I know of, shot entirely with a comparatively cheap HANDHELD camera. All the shooting portion was director Steven Soderbergh just walking around holding the camera in his hands. That's amazing. And the film still starred Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Don Cheadle, Dennis Quaid, and the whole rest of an ensemble cast! Another notable film in this category is Cloverfield. Such realistic camera work that people get motion sickness in the theatres. I haven't seen it, though. I may be wrong about Traffic being the first. Technically The Blair Witch Project came out first, but that film is such an anomaly that I can't include it. They used shaky camerawork because it was important to the story that they fake a documentary, and in terms of money they had no other choice anyway. What distinguishes Traffic in this way is that the film easily had the resources for big, expensive, high-quality camaras, but opted against them for a very important reason.

The opposite of documentary, shaky camerawork would be any of the Pirates of the Caribbean films, or say, Jurassic Park. All very steady films, just as examples. Nothing bumpy about them. Steadycams and crane shots and so forth.

Dang, lets get back to I Am Legend already. This movie is big budget, and it has both styles that I've talked about, and the selection of when to use one or the other is well thought out. I'm going to look at places in the film that use the shaky feel, and talk about if it works and why it works.

So look at this shot. This is a shaky shot, and the framing of it even feels like an war correspondent, embedded with troops shot, as we follow Will Smith through an urban battlefield. What's effect? We feel like we're there, or at the very least we feel that it is actually happening. We remember at a deep, deep level that cameras shaking means things unplanned and unchoreographed, which is totally at odds with most Hollywood films, we remember what war looks like through news cameras, and this film capitalizes on that, and receives the residual realism of other works. Well done. Just before it: a high-angle crane shot with deep focus, rising over Will Smith and the New York jungle surrounding him.

And these. That's Robert Neville's (Smith) dog. He's giving the dog a bath, and without warning just zones completely out, stops what he's doing, and just stares. The camera gets shaky on the close-ups of Smith's face, and even shakes in reaction to the dog barking, trying to snap Smith out of it. It's the camera performing the literal reacion that a person would have to the dog. The other shot is intended to heighten the emotion in the shot. There's a sense of loss on Smith's face, and camera makes it real to us.

This next one is especially cool, and not just because of the Mustang. How do you create a realistic feel to a shot from inside a car? The shaking action while driving straight is obvious, but what about that turn coming up? Well think about what people do, that's the question behind this particular camera theory. So what do you do? Lean into it, and that's what the camera does, too. This technique puts us solidly in the...well, the rear passenger seat. The dog has shotgun.

Here's another good one. Dr. Robert Neville feels like he's at the end of his rope. Every attempt to find a cure for the disease only he is immune to has been useless, it seems, and he loses his composure in this scene, shaking a cart in his basement lab. This shot is dual purpose, the shaking is both motion-literal, and intended to strengthen emotion.
I can't go shot for shot like this forever. Some interesting and timely news from 2 days ago, the 25th of September: Will Smith has signed on for, and Warner Brothers has green-lighted a prequel to I Am Legend. Outstanding.

I've gotten one follower. Hoorays! Thanks Busbarista. All my posts are ripe for commenting. Like say, if anyone actually reads them, or if you just vote in polls when I have them. I want to know who reads this and if it helps your learning of film concepts. 'Til next time.

(Yes he is)

The "News on the March" sequence: possibly the most heavy-handed obituary in history. It also uses both text and subtext to present Kane as an incredibly contradictory, self-contradictory, ambiguous character.

Walter Parks Thatcher: Kane is a communist
Random Stuttering Guy: Kane is a fascist
Kane: I'm ambiguous (read as: American)

Even the shot angles show the three different opinions. Thacher from a high angle, a classically disempowering method. Thatcher, in his first appearance in the film, looks decrepit, his shoulders shrugged under the weight of his holdings. It is a far cry from his appearance as a young man when he meets the child Kane. The nameless speaker is the opposite, shot from a low angle, an empowering accent. Kane's shot, to match his inscrutable response to their criticism, is maddeningly shot from a normal, middle-height angle. Flip-flopper.

"Kane urged his country's entrance into one war, opposed another": It's no accident that the war Kane supported appears triumphant (1898) and that the one he opposed appears less optimistically fought. Remember , however, that this entire sequence must be filtered through more than the normal amount of artistic influence. "News on the March" is created by the news mogul characters in the screening room, created by Orson Welles. We cannot know if the implications about the two wars are Welles' influence or the text's influence.

"[Kane] spoke for millions of Americans [and] was hated by as many more."

"There was no public man whom Kane himself did not support or denounce, or often support, then denounce."

"Twice married, twice divorced, first to a president's niece...Sixteen years after his first marriage...Kane married Suzan Alexander, singer.

Those were the more obvious things, and some sneaky things mixed into them. Let's be sneaky from now on:

In case any one was wondering, the name for Kane's mansion, Xanadu, is a reference to a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge: "Kubla Khan" (alternate spellings). The reference is a nice choice. The quote that the newsreel shows at the beginning: "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree," is the first two lines, and as far as most readers' understanding can extend. Try for yourself. The poem is just as undecipherable as Kane is to any other character in the film.

In the newsreel's montage of Xanadu, there is a mix between extreme low angle shots of the structures, from below, almost right up against the stones, and bird's eye view shots from a helicopter. I smell significance. I'm running heavy on pics already so just take my word for it.

I don't know if it's a stretch or not, but during the animals montage, they show an elephant and then a donkey being unloaded from ships, both with identical shot compositions. Underlines his fence-splitting?

One final, random note. Look at this octopus. Oh CGI...I love you...

A film needs craft to stay afloat

Hello everyone. First post for a first-time blogger. I think that means I'm supposed to say something emo now. But I won't because...what's the point?

Let's get to it. Citizen Kane. I like it. This is the third time I have studied it in the past year, so there's clearly something important about it:

Citizen Kane has a problem. Universally recognized with few exceptions as the greatest American film in history. Just ask the AFI. On the other hand, it's possible the new generation of movie-going public doesn't enjoy it, and it will be replaced as the greatest once the current AFI judges finally go to that silver screen in the sky. Someone asked me, "If it's such a great film, why do you have to be taught in a class why it's so great?" Good question. Either because education is necessary to grasp its depth, or because a certain mindset (rather than a certain education) is required to appreciate it, a mindset that no longer exists naturally, must be taught, and is now irrelevant.

Now, I've completely glossed over the issue of "greatest film" versus "enjoy." I'm sure some critics would say that enjoyment has nothing to do with great films, but that'a an entry for another day. SPOILER ALERT: To get the thrust of the dissenting opinion on this film, find the Citizen Kane reference in the Family Guy episode "Screwed the Pooch"

Cinematography is one the film's strong points. The film's worth as a whole may be arguable, but its craft is undeniable. I've talked to another film student whose instructor asserted that Citizen Kane uses every type of camera angle and shot combination in existence. I don't know about that, but we get an example of Orson Welles' camera cleverness pretty early in the film with his ridiculous affinity for graphic match cuts. Once we pass over the wire into Xanadu, we see a montage of its now-overgrown attractions: Monkeys, gondolas, a golf course...but the background remains...consistent. The castle's position stays the same in every shot, despite that the shots are from different positions on set, and the little point of light in one of its windows never moves, even when reflected in the water with the castle is upside-down (Xanadu Intro 3). Seven shots in uninterrupted succession are like that.

Nothing but graphically-matched lap dissolves in the intro scene, and they happen so quickly that its actually difficult to grab snapshots that aren't a blend of at least two shots. I can tell from all this that there's a clear theory behind the scene, but what? Symbolism isn't impossible, but it doesn't closely match anything about the rest of the film that I can think of.

Rosebud. I'm not a spoiler. If you haven't seen it before, just be sure you pay attention, although, honestly, it probably won't matter. You'll find out everything you want to, but it's tough to grasp how the realization at the end of the film gets set up. Dr. Jackson of LBST 1102 says to understand any film you need to watch it at least twice. Definitely true of Citizen Kane.

Time to rest. This film is as thick as Welles was in his late career, and looking at it from every angle is just as time-consuming. Next time I'll concentrate on the NEWS ON THE MARCH sequence.