Tonight we are going to spend most of our time looking at the edits from the past week but before we do I'd like to show the opening sequences for three films in the interest in beginning talking about beginnings.
It is often said that, as filmmakers, we have between 10 and 15 minutes at the beginning of a film to do what we want with the audience. They will forgive us almost anything because they don't yet know where the film is going. We've got that length of time to let them know three main things about the film:
The opening of Stephen Frears' THE GRIFTERS, Krzysztof Kislowski's RED, and
Mike Figgis' TIMECODE, all do that in form or another.
THE GRIFTERS is a story about three people who become connected in a series of scams that befits the title of the film. At the start of the film we don't know anything about them or their professions, but with a simple voiceover, Frears tells us that the Angelica Huston character is up to no good. Then, using a split screen, we are introduced to both John Cusack and Annette Bening's characters. When all three turn to the camera simultaneously in aobut the same screen size, it is clear that these are characters who have something in common. It doesn't take this movie long to establish all three of the points listed above, even though the details are sketchy. Between the opening titles' noirish feel/music and the clues in this short opening sequence, we immediately know if this is a movie that we are going to like and to stick with.
RED
takes an entirely different visual tactic in its opening sequence. The film,
which is about people who miss each other through happenstance and about peoples'
privacy and openness, spends its opening five minutes deliberately NOT being
clear about the relationships among all of its characters (we don't even meet
one of the movie's crucial characters -- an elderly judge who eavesdrops on
people's phone conversations -- in this section). Yet, by the time it is done,
we know that one of the major characters is Valentine, a woman who is in love
with a man who is not there. We also spend some time with her neighbor. The
opening goes through a phone line to a missed connection. We also soar over
a Parisian intersection to associate two people who don't know each other,
and who go about their daily lives without the knowledge that they will be
linked in some way. Within this film's first minutes we have a sense of who
the film is going to focus on and in what style it will be told. The next several
scenes will elucidate on that.
Mike
Figgis' TIMECODE was a bold 2000 experiment in digital split screen technology. It
tells the story of a number of Los Angelenos who all intersect during 90 minutes
of one day. The film is about interactive lives and uses a four-screen ("quad")
split in which all cameras run simultaneously in real time following the different
characters.
The challenge of the opening of this film is to ease the audience into its style without seeming forced or pretentious. It needs to let them know that story willl be told in all quadrants and that sound will help them focus in one place or another. To that end, it eases each quadrant in, during the credit sequence though it doesn't present continuing compelling content in each quadrant all of the time. At one point we see the Jeanne Tripplehorn let the air out of her companion's car tire, which piques our interest, though it is not explained yet. In another place, the Julian Sands character enters the building and exits its lobby in one quadrant, only to enter an office in another. In fact, for a while, we see him in both quadrants.
This approach lets the audience know just what to expect in terms of the film -- pacing, style, characters (there will be a lot, it says; just stay tuned).
At last week's class we spent some time beginning to figure out what SHUT UP AND SING is about, at its core. In 535 we called this a logline, and its main purpose is to give us a guidepost that we can check back to as we cut each scene. This is a process that will be an ongoing, continuing evolving one. It will be handy to look back on this as we explore the film in its greater depths.
Here are the thoughts that we discussed last week. In order to bring order to the chaos of twelve editors, I am going to be enforcing many of these thoughts. Please check back to this every week as you begin cutting and recutting. To make this easier, I've posted the logline at another place in the site (hit the link called Logline over in the Navigation Bar on the left, or click right here) where I will be updating it as we refine our thoughts.
The evolution of this film will be one of discovering how to bring these points to the forefront, so the audience experiences them viscerally.
