Thoughts On Movements In Cinematography And Style
I started my video journey to a better kit, unhappy with my results from one of my very first shoots last year, with a strong emphasis on controlling movement. I was obsessed with panning, dolly moves, spirals to Dutch angles, Atlanta moves, steady cam look, indeed anything that allowed for a move to add structure to my movie making.
The push to perfect movement came from several directions.
We have traditionally used a lot movement for the schools in-house video in an attempt to………..follow the leader maybe?
When researching gimbals etc, you are saturated with tons of smooth glides and in-out transitions, so it becomes normalised.
So I thought I needed to as well.
Really, I am not sure which was the strongest push, but pushed I was.
My instinct when asked in my pre-video awareness period, was to advise people to keep things simple. If asked at the camera shop (rare as most of the other staff were videographers) my idvice was to stick to one thing at a time. Zoom, focus shift, move, pan? Sure, why not, but surely one only at a time. Anything more is trite, difficult to pull off and heroes the process over the subject. How quickly I forgot my own advice, naive as it was.
I have switched from videos on gimbal technique and slider use to studying the work of many of the top film makers of the past and present. I have watched countless videos on their techniques with examples of the best cinema has to offer and I have discovered that less is most definitely more when it comes to movement both in frame and of the frame.
“And…action”. Isn’t all still imaging simply a single frame of a story? The drama and tension of a still image is directly related to its place in the moving world and a single frames interpretation of it, played against your awareness of the time just before and just after.
The most moving and dramatic scenes in movie history, rarely come down to cinematography tricks, just good technique. They are almost always the very best processes wedded to strong vision, then executed with restraint and skill.
“Reservoir Dogs” Osaka style. Movement is strongly inferred, so adding it would be seamless. The main effect would be to lose this frozen moment in time, but each version has its merits.
Steve McQueen (not the actor) is one example of a film maker who can hold you spellbound for over three minutes with nothing but a struggling, hanging man.
As a still this could be used for a title sequence. As moving stock, it can hold tension and allow a voice-over to be emphasised or with a subtle movement, transition into another scene.
The thing that has hit home like a big nerf bat of happiness, is that the best of still imaging and the best of cinematography, have a lot in common.
It occurs to me that I would likely frame this identically as part of a film (just in 16:9).
Mise en scene or the art of “setting the scene” is in effect the same as composition of a still image, but with the anticipation of movement within its boundaries. For me personally, this realisation has flipped video from a monster so different to the comfort zone of my years of stills experience, to an old friend wearing different clothes.
I need to start thinking like a stills shooter more. If an image makes a compelling still, it is surely also the foundation of a decent moving scene.
Everyone, when starting a new creative endeavour, needs to find their voice. I hope that mine when it comes to video, grows from my long love of still photography, laying a strong base for my new found love.
So, revisiting the pre-amble, I for one see no need to add extra movement into a scene when it is not needed. One thing that movement does, that can be subtle or not, is make the viewer aware of the process. When done well, this can be brilliant (Tarantino, Wes Anderson). When done poorly, it rarely adds anything good to the experience. A bit like super wide angle or telephoto lenses in photography, over using extreme processes can be obvious, tedious, even damaging to your end result.