by Gil Bettman
WHERE TO DESIGN THE BEST MOVING MASTER
The very best moving master for a scene can only be formulated in one place: the actual location where the scene will be shot. Therefore, the first-time director on his breakthrough job must go to the actual location where each scene will be shot in advance of the shoot day and decide exactly what he is going to do with his camera. He has to carefully read the scene and determine how the drama unfolds. Then he has to walk around the location, seeing with his own eyes everything that the camera will see as it follows the path that he determines it must follow to strike the perfect balance between the demands of the Five Tasks. These decisions cannot be made with the requisite accuracy anywhere but at the actual location. This is an ironclad rule for first-time directors.
If you do not lay out each moving master at the actual location, the chances are good that your masters will not strike the perfect balance between motion and drama. If you detect a shortcoming on the set the day of the shoot when you are talking the cinematographer through the shot, and then try to correct the problem on the fly, in all likelihood your last-minute solution will not solve the problem. Do not even go there. Your chances of breaking into the ranks of working directors are slim. Do not diminish them further out of laziness. Go to each location before the shoot day and do your homework. You will be glad you did.
NEVER SETTLE — THE KEY TO DESIGNING THE BEST MOVING MASTER
My bottom-line advice on how to become a brilliant visual stylist, such as Zemeckis, is the following: never settle. Be relentless in your pursuit of the perfect solution. Read the scene very carefully several times over and make sure you understand exactly what the audience must take away from the scene, such as the premonition that Norman is probably not telling Claire the complete truth about Madison. Determine how the scene must be staged to make it most believable, such as by having Mrs. Feur in the ladies’ room when Claire accuses her husband of murdering her. And home in on all that is bright and predominantly vertical in the location and figure out how to block the actors and the camera so that the camera moves on the X-axis as much as possible across these vertical objects. Then take the default pattern for the Five Tasks and apply it to the scene and see how far it takes you.
Sometimes, as in the case of the scene from Jerry Maguire, following the default pattern will provide the perfect balance between motion and drama and yield the best master. More frequently, as in the case of all the other masters described in this chapter, it will be necessary to craft a one-of-a-kind master to the specific needs of the scene.
In any case, test your results. Go back and ask yourself if, at any particular point in the scene, the master could be doing a better job of satisfying any one of the Five Tasks. If the answer is yes, then rework your plan in order to achieve that (seemingly) superior end. Then compare the modified master with the initial plan and ask yourself if, taken overall, your modification made the master better or worse. Then, obsessively repeat the process over and over again, until you are absolutely sure you have come up with the very best moving master for the scene. In any case, never settle. Remain dissatisfied and try to tease out every seemingly preferable solution to the problem of how to strike the perfect balance between the Five Tasks.
In the end, you have to rely on your own judgment and your judgment may be off. But even if you are as gifted as Zemeckis, your work will not reflect your superior abilities unless you reexamine it repeatedly with an eye for improvement. Never settle.
CHAPTER 3 SUMMARY POINTS
● The master shot is the template that determines the visual design of a scene. So the key to understanding how to move your camera is learning how to shoot a good moving master.
● The best moving master does five “Tasks” and does them in a way that works best for the scene.
1. It shows the audience everything it needs to see in order to understand and believe what happens next.
2. It generates an esthetic of seamlessness by curtailing the need to cut.
3. It generates eye candy.
4. It concentrates the audience’s attention on the center of the drama.
5. It picks up some coverage.
● Every scene in every film is unique. The way the drama unfolds is unique to that scene, and every scene is shot in a different location at a different time. What makes Spielberg, Cameron, and Iñárritu great visual stylists is that their application of the Five Tasks to the unique demands of each scene yields the best moving master for that scene.
● If somebody on screen is talking, everybody in the audience is looking at that character’s eyes. This is a scientific fact. For this reason, the shot in which the eyes are the biggest — the close-up — has attained its status as the most effective way to convey drama on film.
● Drama is conflict. Human beings who are in conflict face each other. When two human beings are eyeball to eyeball the most effective way to tell the story is by cutting between two, matching, over-the-shoulder shots or close-ups. Therefore, the best way to tell the story is usually with two static shots, not one moving shot.
● Only when the conflict and the drama dissipates enough to allow one of the combatants to turn his back on the other(s) and walk away from or alongside him (them) does it become possible to keep the audience focused on the center of drama — the eyes — while shooting with a moving camera.
● The more dynamic your camera movement, the weaker your drama and vice versa. The key to designing the best moving master for a scene is striking the perfect balance between motion and drama, given the unique characteristics of that scene.
● In most scenes this balancing act is achieved by focusing on motion at the beginning of the scene and drama toward the end of the scene. This is facilitated by the fact that, in most scenes, drama and conflict intensify as a scene progresses.
● The “everything” that must be fully on display in a moving master in order to satisfy Task 1 can be broken down into three parts:
1. geography
2. money
3. believability
● Audiences have become accustomed to high levels of seamlessness in everything they see on a screen. If your film lacks seamlessness it will seem dated.
● If the camera is in motion any static object or object moving in a different direction or at a different speed that passes by the lens will have a slightly blurry edge to it. This is motion blur. The bottom line is: the more motion blur the more eye candy.
● The cheapest and the easiest way to generate the most motion blur is to move the camera as dynamically as possible horizontally along the X-axis of the frame in front of as many bright, prominent vertical objects as possible.
● Eye candy is of great consequence, because, even more than seamlessness, it makes a moving shot look like a moving shot.
● To do a good job of satisfying Task 4 a director only must do two things well. First, he has to keep the camera framed up on the eyes of the person who is carrying the scene, and second, when the conflict in the scene builds toward a climax, he has to move the camera into a more frontal position on one of the parties in the conflict.
● The strategy of shooting a moving master and, after the first confrontational moment in the scene, intercutting it with a moving reverse-master is a good general plan of attack for shooting longer scenes with a moving camera.
● If a director knows he is going to shoot a moving master and a moving reverse he can wait and decide during rehearsal exactly when the actors and the cameras will move. This makes it easier to work with Method actors who want to be able to determine their blocking spontaneously when they are in character.
● Whenever the balance in a scene shifts from motion to drama, in order to do a better job of satisfying Task 4, the master will tighten up and swing on-axis. The more it does this, the better a job it will do of becoming a piece of coverage. In this way Task 5 — Coverage — is a natural by-product of Task 4 — Drama.
● By designing his moving masters
so they become coverage the director is able to complete the day’s work doing fewer setups. This saves time and money.
● The first-time director should bear in mind when designing the best moving master for a scene that the master should always stay in the widest size needed to keep the audience oriented and to tell the story.
● Before he devises a good moving master for a scene, the director must go to the location, read the entire scene while standing where he is going to shoot it, and set his priorities in terms of the Five Tasks.
FOR TEACHERS
The best way to learn how to shoot a good moving master is to repeatedly apply the Five Tasks to the unique demands of many different scenes shot in many different locations over the course of a professional career. In truth, it takes years of practice, as well as a generous amount of natural ability, to become a great visual stylist.
The teacher can initiate this process by asking each student to design the best moving master for a scene from a contemporary film that lends itself to being shot with a moving camera. I have selected a body of fifteen such scenes below under: “15 Walk and Talk Scenes.” Here the student can find a description of the action in the film that leads up to each scene, as well as links to sites on the Internet where all the script pages for the scene can be located. In some cases, one of the links leads to a website where the entire screenplay can be found.
What all of these scenes share in common is that the conflict in the scene can most effectively be conveyed by having the actors on the move at various points in the scene. There are only two characters in each scene because this makes the design of the moving master easier to formulate, and more appropriate to the skill level of a student director.
The student can shoot the moving master himself outside of class on his own time using any point-and-shoot digital camera. There is no need for expensive camera or dolly equipment because a good handheld shot made with a home movie camera can reveal the extent to which the visual design of the shot makes it the best moving master for that scene. This is what this chapter teaches and so the assignment will display how fully the student has grasped the material taught.
The actors in the scenes only need to say the right lines as they hit the marks that the student director has laid out for them. They can be completely untrained, and they can even do the scene with the script in hand. If the actors do the scene with the script in hand, they only need to make sure that, if they look down at the script to get a line, they must look up again, before they deliver the line, so the camera can see their eyes. This way it can be determined to what extent the moving master succeeds in keeping the audience focused on the center of the drama.
However, working with non-actors who do not know their lines is the least preferable alternative when it comes to staging the drama that should motivate the camera movement. I only provide it as an alternative because it is the easiest for the student director to accomplish. And it keeps the emphasis on the purpose of the assignment, which is to provide the student with an opportunity to display his understanding of the principles governing good visual design. On the other hand, talented actors who have memorized the lines and embodied the characters will make the scene come to life. If the students want to try to produce such a more professional, finished piece, I never stop them. They will learn more if they attempt to attain perfection both in what they do with the camera and what they put in front of the camera.
The student should also shoot the right coverage to fit into the moving master and complete the scene. A well-designed master provides a good template into which the coverage must fit. In addition, a well-designed master will contain one or more of the pieces of coverage needed to complete the scene. So the shortest of the scenes I have provided below, such as the scene from Kramer vs. Kramer, can be completed by shooting four or five pieces of coverage, in addition to the master. The longer scenes, such as the scene from LA Confidential or Sex, Lies and Videotape, may require twice, or three times as much coverage. In any case, the more pieces of coverage contained in the master, the fewer the number of setups needed to complete the scene, the more viable the master. Digital is cheap, and student crews are free, but the student director should learn to work like a professional, who must shoot fast, because time is money, and money will be in short supply when the student begins his professional career.
The student should edit the scene and hand in the edited version of the scene in addition to the best take of the moving master, and any moving sub-masters. The completed scene along with the master and sub-master(s) should be screened for the entire class and critiqued. Whichever format can be most easily screened in the classroom, be it DVD, mini-DVD, USB drive, etc., should be the one the students use to give the teacher the completed assignment.
In these critiques I have found that it is best to focus on whether the camera is in the right place at the right time, and to not be overly concerned with correct composition and focal length. This is because, since the student probably lacks expertise as a camera operator, the execution of the shot will be flawed throughout. But, what is important is the thought behind the shot. The teacher should ask himself if this shot would do the best job possible of fulfilling the Five Tasks for this scene in this location if it was executed by a professional crew.
During the in-class critique, the teacher should call attention to all those areas where the design of the master could be improved. He should point out these areas in class and ask the class to identify the problem and devise a solution. In all likelihood, the students, since they are still just learning this element of craft, will not be able to pinpoint the problem. But by challenging them and asking them to improve the visual design, the teacher is taking them through the process by which they will learn this element of craft. This drill should give them valuable problem-solving skills.
In addition, such a critique is a lengthy process. It can take an hour or more. If the teacher directs his inquiry exclusively at the student who prepared the assignment, most of the other students will soon tune out. The student whose assignment is being critiqued will be eager to correct his mistakes. But the teacher will teach more of the students more about shooting with a moving camera if he directs the majority of the questions to the class as a whole.
At Chapman, all my students post all their work on YouTube, or similar file-sharing sites, and send links to their friends. I take advantage of this and tell them to put up their assignment on YouTube forty-eight hours before it is due in class, and post the link on the online information-sharing site for the class. Each student is then required to prepare a written critique of each moving master identifying all areas that could be improved and providing suggestions for improvements. I collect these after class and grade them. This makes the in-class critique of the work much more lively and productive. When a grade is hanging in the balance the students are motivated to focus, root out all the problems, and come up with many of the best solutions.
This assignment takes a substantial amount of time to plan and execute successfully, so at the first class meeting I pinpoint the date on which each student must turn in the assignment. To do this I divide the number of class sessions I intend to devote to teaching how to shoot a good moving master by the number of students in the class. This tells me how many assignments will be due and how many critiques will be undertaken in each class. I have found that it takes me at least forty-five minutes to fully critique an assignment. I usually have fifteen or sixteen students in a class. So, ideally, three or four assignments are due in each three-hour class, spread out over four dates. In the first class I hold a lottery and raffle off the dates. This way the student discovers on the first day of class when his moving master assignment will be due. I also tell them that there are no excuses for late assignments. No matter what disaster strikes, including a real illness, they must have contingency plans to complete the assignment on time, because that is what is expected of professional directors. And then I tell them how if Francis Coppola get
s sick during production, he directs from his sickbed in his trailer by looking at a video monitor and talking to the crew and actors over an intercom.
Below are the fifteen scenes that I have selected for this assignment.
FIFTEEN WALK AND TALK SCENES
Warrior
by Gavin O’Connor, Anthony Tambakis and Cliff Dorfman
http://hollywoodfilmdirecting.com/directing-the-camera.html — scene only
http://www.lionsgateawards.com/script_warrior.pdf — entire script
This scene is on page 55.
Brendan accidentally runs into his long-estranged brother, Tommy, on the beach just before they are about to compete against each other in the Sparta Mixed Martial Arts Tournament. Brendan attempts a reconciliation, but Tommy is locked in his rage against Brendan and the world. All the bad blood in their past comes out. After this scene they are both determined to kill each other in the cage.
EXT. BEACH – NIGHT
Brendan walks on the beach as the waves of the Atlantic Ocean lap at the shoreline. Boats bob on the water. Stray bottle rockets trace through the night sky.
