Week 10 - Film Language Masterclass

Film language master class

Connor introduces us with a quote from Steven Spielberg which he was trying to say that if your confident with your work the less that you put in however if you are nervous you'll be much more aware of the content your making and the quality of the work would be better.

next is the outline of the following roles.

the role of the cinematographer

Key concepts - Lighting - Composition - Lens Choise - Camera Movement- Pre-production

the principle of storytelling - How to get information across to our audiences

mythology- in storytelling looking at mythology

key concepts -

engaging the brain in storytelling - diving into the trivial brain simulation

key concepts - Give audience the information to follow the story- never make the assumption that the audience knows what we know- we are showing a story not telling one- we show love, hate, good, bad etc.

how should I light this scene question?

do you just add some lights and it's done? NO! you would ask what effect are we trying to convey in this story? is that character sad so should lighting match? What is the character trying to accomplish in this scene? This way of thinking that Connel is explaining is something that as a designer I will definitely try using in my future work to combine the elements of lighting to tell a story through the colours that can correspond to emotions.

COLLABORATION - you can't get away from it so it's just part of the job, the key to collaboration is that everyone wants to make a good film, but ultimately there is a director and the director will have the final say at certain points it's all about picking a TIME AND PLACE!. As a production team to discuss ideas in the production phase, not the filming phase all films are about balance.

Next, we discussed CONSOLIDATION, bringing it all together!

What is it about?

what story is it?

what does the character want?

What is stopping them from getting what they want?

try to boil the movie down to its simplest concept.

These are some checks and ideas that I will be sure to use in my next project! I learned that even a simple prompt such as these can help you get a deeper understanding of what the story and film itself need to flow correctly.

The audience needs exposition to keep orientated and invested in the film ( where people say stuff deliberately to the audience so they pick up important info.

Dialogue is an option however as cinema is a visual language it is up to the cinematographer to leave lots of clues in the images they create to help the audience navigate the story but you need to be careful of how you use this and there is the difference between giving a clue and spoiling the film outright, which I will be careful to monitor in the future work I produce.

Mythology (weaving the story together)

He explains that a symbolic story that helps to convey moral and practical lessons. Following on, through someone within the story, we can learn the lessons from the character within the film. we are not told this lesson we are taught via experience in the story.

we see ourselves as the protagonist and so we emulate their behaviors if they learn something, we learn something. After thinking about this idea of emulating character behaviors really surprised me as when thinking back to media I have consumed, if the characters felt the pain, we felt pain, this kind of respose is indicative of the type of teaching effect that can occur from visual media of which I had never considered its applications. Myths are ideals for navigating life. such an example is Ulyses Pact. This concept of learning within the film is new to me and so when filming, considering these things will ultimately teach me to incorporate mythology and derive an emotional response from my visual works. Our upcoming final project next year will be a good opportunity to do so now I have the confidence to connect my visuals to a more thought-out storytelling technique.

The MONOMYTH Cycle

We next covered the TRIUNE BRAIN THEORY which I will show below which brings up the idea that we process things with different parts of the brain and how this can change the perception of the visual content we consume.

Finally, Connel went over the other smaller types of misc mythologies that could be incorporated into film and the different types of brain engagement. Seeing all this information I feel like I have learned many new methodologies and techniques that I could apply to my future film work such as the ways of communicating and working together on a film set that will be key in the industry.