the Visual Story
Set myself a homework assignment today to read Bruce Block's the Visual Story: Seeing the Structure of Film, TV and New Media.
I generally like Focal Press books. They are one of the few dedicated film-related publishes around afterall, so its not hard to own a number of them if you're interested in film or are a 'film professional' (gag).
I liked this one too, but it was terribly edited. Principle Photography? OMG. Hard to take the book seriously with oversights like that. It certainly made it difficult to accept some of its claims which seem counter conventional cinematic wisdom. e.g. that telephoto lenses have no magical ability to compress space and that a shallow depth of field produces a flatter image.
Now, I'm still not 100% on Block's claims vis a vis focal length. The premise of the argument is that any flattening of the image is due to the subject's relative distance to the camera. That longer lenses force you to photograph from further away and this compresses the image because the distance between Objects 1 and 2 decreases relative to their distance to the camera. Makes sense to me. It does explain how telephotos can be used in special effects shots (such as the train in Stand By Me) and action sequences (my one gripe with the winner of Tropfest this year, was that the used a wide angle and it made the pulled punches look very very pulled) to force BUT it doesn't explain lens distortion such as pincushioning (more of a problem with zooms) or stretching on wide angles.
His comments about soft-focus in the background removing depth cues and flattening the image I'm not 100% about either. I can see how that applies in theory and certainly with more extreme uses of short DoF, but I generally see short DoF as as a visual cue for depth akin to aerial diffraction or whatever he calls it. When my eyes focus on an object up close, the background goes out of focus, so for me this is a three dimension representation of realit.
But whatever. I'm probably wrong.
I liked these early chapters on depth and space because I'm becoming very interested in space as a directorial tool. I also liked the latter chapters on visual rhythm because they are the only ones I've seen which understand visual rhythm as being something more than cuts. Its the movement and composition within a frame and between frames. As an editor, I did findd some of his comments to be rather obvious (eyeline matching is a good idea!) but 'twas nice to be vindicated and also hear some new ideas on how to approach scenes. The colour chapters were OK. Colour Theory is always good to read but the whole 'colour can influence mood' seemed somewhat trite.
A worthwhile read. Certainly got me analysing my own work and contemplating what I had consciously and subconciously done and how I could've should've would've done stuff differently.
Anyways.
I have a 100% blue screen shoot coming up on the 19th. Scary. I feel like George Lucas.
I generally like Focal Press books. They are one of the few dedicated film-related publishes around afterall, so its not hard to own a number of them if you're interested in film or are a 'film professional' (gag).
I liked this one too, but it was terribly edited. Principle Photography? OMG. Hard to take the book seriously with oversights like that. It certainly made it difficult to accept some of its claims which seem counter conventional cinematic wisdom. e.g. that telephoto lenses have no magical ability to compress space and that a shallow depth of field produces a flatter image.
Now, I'm still not 100% on Block's claims vis a vis focal length. The premise of the argument is that any flattening of the image is due to the subject's relative distance to the camera. That longer lenses force you to photograph from further away and this compresses the image because the distance between Objects 1 and 2 decreases relative to their distance to the camera. Makes sense to me. It does explain how telephotos can be used in special effects shots (such as the train in Stand By Me) and action sequences (my one gripe with the winner of Tropfest this year, was that the used a wide angle and it made the pulled punches look very very pulled) to force BUT it doesn't explain lens distortion such as pincushioning (more of a problem with zooms) or stretching on wide angles.
His comments about soft-focus in the background removing depth cues and flattening the image I'm not 100% about either. I can see how that applies in theory and certainly with more extreme uses of short DoF, but I generally see short DoF as as a visual cue for depth akin to aerial diffraction or whatever he calls it. When my eyes focus on an object up close, the background goes out of focus, so for me this is a three dimension representation of realit.
But whatever. I'm probably wrong.
I liked these early chapters on depth and space because I'm becoming very interested in space as a directorial tool. I also liked the latter chapters on visual rhythm because they are the only ones I've seen which understand visual rhythm as being something more than cuts. Its the movement and composition within a frame and between frames. As an editor, I did findd some of his comments to be rather obvious (eyeline matching is a good idea!) but 'twas nice to be vindicated and also hear some new ideas on how to approach scenes. The colour chapters were OK. Colour Theory is always good to read but the whole 'colour can influence mood' seemed somewhat trite.
A worthwhile read. Certainly got me analysing my own work and contemplating what I had consciously and subconciously done and how I could've should've would've done stuff differently.
Anyways.
I have a 100% blue screen shoot coming up on the 19th. Scary. I feel like George Lucas.
posted by stu willis at
11:53 pm
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