Monday, March 1, 2010

Week 9 post production...







Hello friends,

Thought it might be cool to show some Summer Coda storyboards and then follow up next week with the actual shots from the film.


I'm a massive fan of pre-visualization. I don't dig just rocking up on the day and "feeling out" a scene. That's kinda lazy. When you storyboard you force yourself into closely examining what might work best for a scene. You can always improve those images on the day -- and often do, but you'll never walk away with a scene that wasn't AT LEAST as well composed as you'd originally imagined. It's a director and DP's homework, but man does it feel good to nail. 


I hear a lot of talk about letting the scene play out in front of you and then designing camera moves to suit, which is fine, but only to a point. Even that handheld / doco-feel (when it's done well) doesn't just evolve naturally. Intricate planning is required to pull off the photography of films like The Insider, Amores Perros, City of God, Eternal Sunshine, Constant Gardener, Children of Men. They are some of my absolute fav films . 

I think that's were most crappy handheld films go wrong -- thinking that you can just use handheld to create immediacy and forget about the planning -- cover things "organically". It's BS and annoys Ricky when he's watching shaky, funky-junky cam in the cinema, getting nauseas for no good reason.


Anyhoo, Ricky ain't here to preach and certainly doesn't have the runs to teach. Was just wanting to make the point that it doesn't cost anything to plan. You don't need a big budget to visualise every frame, and after the YEARS it's taken to get your baby up, it's not like you haven't had the time! You'd might as well create with craft. 


For me, it was growing up with Scorsese, Coen Bros, PTA and Wes Anderson flicks that really highlighted the importance of choice and composition.  Flicking through their DVDs frame by frame is all the film schooling you'll ever need. 

Here's a fav quote:  "...the language of film is our own interpretation of reality. You have to select what is important from the jumble of images we see in our everyday lives. You can speak without using words by the decisions you make about movement and composition."    THAT'S GOLD.


Being in the edit suite day after day is really hammering that message home. Many lines of dialogue that were necessary at script stage (to tell our story) become obsolete when we nail our visuals.  The cinema audience is REAL SMART too, don't need nearly as much exposition as we'd planned. If you can see it, really see it, you don't need to say it. Okay, that quote above might be a little flowery for some, but flowers are given to people for a reason. They're beautiful. 




Now isn't that pretty, more soon.


Ricky : )


P.S. Follow Ricky on TWITTER http://twitter.com/Ricky_Hollywood

No comments:

Post a Comment