Filming
Yippee! I managed to get to the woods with both my parent to film the final part I need to film for my video, the 3 different camera movements experimental scenes, with a second camera filming me filming. I hadn't been sure if I would be able to, since I needed both my parents as crew and my Dad has had to be working really hard. But he made it. Filming went really well, only few hiccups.
For instance I hadn’t appreciated how noisy even a slight amount of wind can be when you are recording. Now I know. I wrote an evaluation and reflection on both the 2 main days' filming, which is under Evaluation and Reflection.
I am very pleased that we got this footage as it gives a totally different look to my video, a look that I had put a lot of creative thought into. So I regard that as a success.
Watching 1917 (2019) for the first time – SPOILER ALERT!
1917 (2019) is the best film that I have ever seen!
Just in case anyone doesn’t know, 1917 (2019) is set in the year 1917 during WW1. It follows 2 youngish soldiers, Schofield and Blake, as they try to get a message to another unit of soldiers to stop them walking into a trap. The USP of this film, what sets it apart from other films and stops it being "just another film about war" is that it is filmed and edited to give the impression that it is one continuous shot. And it is very effective in this.
I have seen lots of films that I am crazy about, for example Logan (2017), but I have never felt quite as emotional at the end of a film before. I think that this is partly due the fact that in this movie, due to the "one continuous shot" nature, you are always with the main character (Schofield), so you develop a deeper attachment to him, and feel a part of his struggles. Also, there is very little, almost no, down time in this movie. In most movies you have frantic action sequences then the director often cuts to a calmer event, possibly like if they have just failed to catch a bad guy then you cut to a couple of hours later when they are sat at home thinking about it. But in 1917 (2019) the first time that Schofield really gets to stop for even a minute is when he stops and listens to the guy singing with all the other soldiers, which is towards the end of the film, right before one of the soldiers says that they are the unit that he has been looking for and they are about to go over the top, so he has to frantically, urgently start running to get his message to the right person. You might think that he stops for a moment just after Blake dies, however although that may be a (brief) physical stop for him, it sure isn’t a mental stop, either for him or us the audience.
To be honest, if I was him sitting by that tree at the end, I would just break down completely, with the amount of anxiety and energy that he has just exerted. I was exhausted and emotional just watching the film. Sam Mendes has done a brilliant job as director, and I am majorly impressed by Roger Deakins the cinematographer.
I read a review where the reviewer didn’t like the film because he thought that the "one continuous shot" idea was just a gimmick and that without it 1917 (2019) WOULD just be another film about war. But I feel that the point is that 1917 (2019) DOES do the "one continuous shot" idea and that is what not only stops it from being just another war film but also makes it amazing. I thought about this afterwards, and I realised that although a large part of the reason why I wanted to watch it was because of the "one continuous shot", when I was actually watching it I wasn't thinking about the "one continuous shot" idea, I was just totally emotionally immersed and invested in the narrative, to the extent, as I said above, that I was emotionally exhausted at the end.
Because I am obviously interested in film, from many angles, especially camera movement, I sat and tried to analyse my reactions as detailed above. But whether you analyse your reaction or just go with the flow and the experience, I certainly think that the "one continuous shot" concept works extraordinarily well, better than I could ever have imagined. Because I'm sure that every director and cinematographer are aiming to evoke strong emotional reactions of some kind of other, from making you laugh out loud in comedies to the emotional exhaustion and realisation and gratitude that we actually are NOT going through this with Schofield.
I think that it, maybe, had a particularly extra poignant layer right at the moment, since many of us are finding lockdown challenging. For many of us it is a scary time, we keep hearing about people dying, lots of things are changing and we don’t know how things will be affected in the immediate future. But at least in our country we are not having bullets fired at us or walking past dead people on barbed wire.
In most action movies there at lots of quick cuts between different views to keep the pace and give a feeling of action. Sometimes you don't actually have time to take in totally what is flashing up on the screen, but the director is helping you because the cut ins are generally to relevant things to help you to follow the narrative and to foreshadow things that are going to happen. Directors often make use of the Kuleshov effect where they cut to a closeup of an item to imply what is going to happen next. For example, in a scene with 2 people standing talking the director may cut to a closeup of a knife on a surface by one of them, out of sight of the other one. This leads you to conclude that one of them may be about to knife the other one. Whereas if the same shot of the 2 people standing talking cuts to an official looking document with space for a signature then you may conclude that one of them is a lawyer. But using the "one continuous shot" principle makes this very difficult to do, and actually it would defeat part of the purpose of making you feel that you are really there, immersed, and seeing what the characters see.
And how I felt with the whole "one continuous shot" idea, which is a reason that I think it had such a big effect with me, is because it's like life is all one continuous shot, life doesn’t cut to a different camera angle. So, it's like it takes you along with Schofield and you experience it with him much more. And, because there are no cut in closeups to tell you where the director wants you to look, you have to work harder because you are having to look everywhere at the same time, like in real life, which is a good thing because you really feel like you are with Schofield, having to scan the vista in the same way as him to see what is happening like you would do in real life.
So yes, if it hadn’t all been just one continuous shot it probably wouldn't have stood out as much, it would have been just another war movie, and there are plenty of those. But the innovative use of the "one continuous shot" idea (which has also been done in the video game God of War) transformed it.
I am going to watch the behind the scenes videos that came with the Blu-ray disk, and I am particularly looking forward to watching the film again, firstly with commentary by Sam Mendes the director, and then with commentary by Roger Deakins the cinematographer. I can't wait to see how they got some of these shots.
As I say, I absolutely loved this film as a film, but it is also very relevant to my FMP. It really shows how far filming has come from the original days with stationary cameras. Without camera movement, and all the amazing new technical equipment that exists now, it would have been impossible to make 1917 (2019). You could say that 1917 (2019) is the culmination of all camera movement techniques so far.
I haven’t decided yet how much of that to put into my script, because I could easily spend my whole video raving about the camera movement on 1917 (2019), and I still want to keep the focus on me trying out the camera movement. But I definitely think that a clip or 2 with behind the scenes footage would enhance my video. How on earth do I choose which bits though?! It is all just amazing…
Comments