Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Shot List

"If I don't know where to put the camera in a scene, something else is wrong." - Godard

This afternoon I meet with the DP to discuss a shot list. We've been throwing ideas about in passing conversations for the past several weeks. I have ideas and storyboards. More importantly, by allowing myself a producer's and a cinematographer's collaboration, I can think about this shot list in a way that I've never before been able.

Instead of thinking about the framing in a concrete, finished, result-oriented manner, I've been thinking about how much space I want to feel. Rather I want to push into or pull away from the subject. How much do I want the audience to breathe? How can I force perspective to allow these things? How can I use the frame to define relationships?

I'm also more open to camera movement than ever before. There's serious talk about Steadicam. If you asked me about Steadicam a year ago, you would have been the recipient of a tart diatribe.

I'm allowing Godard's watchwords to serve me. I'm not conforming a shot arbitrarily in order not to feel stuck or uninspired. I'm considering that my lack of inspiration may indeed be the result of some shortcoming in the writing or earlier blocking.

A friend that has completed a feature and is preparing her second confessed to me that she didn't know where to put the camera. In order to feel superior to her, internally at least, I preened that I didn't ever have that problem. That bit of self-deception could really endanger my work if I don't let go of feeling insecure that K. made a feature film and I haven't.
(Even though I deserve it more than her. Just ask me. In fits of shadenfreude, I reveled that her first film stunk. Ugh. That shadenfreude sure ain't pretty.)

A River Dertch,
Signroe Direttore

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