Film Directing Fundamentals PDF

FILM DIRECTING FUNDAMENTALS Film Directing Fundamentals Second Edition See Your Film Before Shooting Nicholas T. Proferes Amsterdam Boston Heidelberg London New York Oxford Paris San Diego San Francisco Singapore Sydney Tokyo Focal Press is an imprint of Elsevier Fo...

FILM DIRECTING FUNDAMENTALS Film Directing Fundamentals Second Edition See Your Film Before Shooting Nicholas T. Proferes Amsterdam Boston Heidelberg London New York Oxford Paris San Diego San Francisco Singapore Sydney Tokyo Focal Press is an imprint of Elsevier Focal Press is an imprint of Elsevier 200 Wheeler Road, Burlington, MA 01803, USA Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP, UK Copyright © 2005, Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Permissions may be sought directly from Elsevier’s Science & Technology Rights Department in Oxford, UK: phone: (+44) 1865 843830, fax: (+44) 1865 853333, e-mail: [email protected]. You may also complete your request on-line via the Elsevier homepage (http://elsevier.com), by selecting “Customer Support” and then “Obtaining Permissions.” Recognizing the importance of preserving what has been written, Elsevier prints its books on acid-free paper whenever possible. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Proferes, Nicholas T. Film directing fundamentals : see your film before shooting / Nicholas T. Proferes. — 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-240-80562-3 1. Motion pictures — Production and direction. I. Title. PN1995.9.P7P758 2004 791.4302¢33 — dc22 2004019069 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 0240805623 For information on all Focal Press publications visit our website at www.books.elsevier.com 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America  To Frank Daniel A great teacher, a generous colleague, a delightful friend.  CONTENTS FOREWORD xi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii PART ONE LEARNING HOW TO DRAW Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION TO FILM LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR 3 The Film World 3 Film Language 3 Shots 4 Film Grammar 5 The 180-Degree Rule 5 The 30-Degree Rule 8 Screen Direction 9 Film Time 11 Compression 11 Elaboration 12 Familiar Images 12 Chapter 2 INTRODUCTION TO THE DRAMATIC ELEMENTS EMBEDDED IN THE SCREENPLAY 14 Spines 14 Whose Film Is It? 16 Character 16 Circumstance 17 Dynamic Relationships 17 Wants 18 Expectations 18 Actions 19 Activity 19 Acting Beats 19 Chapter 3 ORGANIZING ACTION IN A DRAMATIC SCENE 21 Dramatic Blocks 21 Narrative Beats 21 viii FILM DIRECTING FUNDAMENTALS The Fulcrum 22 Dramatic Elements in Notorious Patio Scene 22 Notorious Patio Scene Annotated 23 Chapter 4 STAGING 30 Main Functions 30 Patterns of Dramatic Movement 32 Changing the Stage Within a Scene 33 Staging as Part of a Film’s Design 34 Working with a Location Floor Plan 34 Floor Plan and Staging for Notorious Patio Scene 34 Chapter 5 THE CAMERA 40 The Camera as Narrator 40 The Reveal 40 Entrances 41 The Objective Camera 41 The Subjective Camera 41 Where Do I Put It? 42 Visual Design 45 Style 46 Coverage 46 Camera Height 47 Lenses 48 Composition 49 Where to Begin? 49 Working Toward Specificity in Visualization 50 Looking for Order 50 Dramatic Blocks and the Camera 51 Shot Lists and Storyboards 51 The Prose Storyboard 51 Chapter 6 CAMERA IN NOTORIOUS PATIO SCENE 54 First Dramatic Block 54 Second Dramatic Block 59 Third Dramatic Block 61 Fourth Dramatic Block and Fulcrum 66 Fifth Dramatic Block 67 PART TWO MAKING YOUR FILM Chapter 7 DETECTIVE WORK ON SCRIPTS 77 Reading Your Screenplay 77 A Piece of Apple Pie Screenplay 78 Whose Film Is It? 83 Character 83 Circumstance 83 Spines for A Piece of Apple Pie 84 Dynamic Relationships 85 Contents ix Wants 85 Actions 86 Acting Beats 86 Activity 86 Tone for A Piece of Apple Pie 86 Breaking A Piece of Apple Pie into Actions 87 Designing a Scene 87 Visualization 88 Identifying the Fulcrum and Dramatic Blocks 88 Supplying Narrative Beats to A Piece of Apple Pie 89 Director’s Notebook 96 Chapter 8 STAGING AND CAMERA FOR A PIECE OF APPLE PIE 97 Staging 97 Camera 100 Conclusions 130 Chapter 9 MARKING SHOOTING SCRIPTS WITH CAMERA SETUPS 131 Chapter 10 WORKING WITH ACTORS 139 Casting 140 First Read-Through 143 Directing During Rehearsals 144 Directing Actors on the Set 147 Chapter 11 MANAGERIAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE DIRECTOR 150 Delegating Authority While Accepting Responsibility 150 The Producer 151 The Assistant Director 151 A Realistic Shooting Schedule 152 Working with the Crew 153 Working with the Director of Photography 153 Chapter 12 POSTPRODUCTION 154 Editing 154 Music and Sound 156 Locking Picture, or How Do You Know When It’s Over? 157 An Audience and a Big Screen 157 PART THREE LEARNING THE CRAFT THROUGH FILM ANALYSIS Chapter 13 ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S NOTORIOUS 161 Overview of Style and Design 161 First Act 162 Second Act 165 Third Act 178 Summary 179 x FILM DIRECTING FUNDAMENTALS Chapter 14 PETER WEIR’S THE TRUMAN SHOW 180 Overview of Style and Design 180 First Act 182 Second Act 187 Third Act 199 Summary 204 Chapter 15 FEDERICO FELLINI’S 8-1/2 205 A Masterpiece? 205 The Director as Auteur 205 Dramatic Construction 206 Overview of Style and Design 206 Detective Work 208 First Act 209 Second Act 220 Third Act 235 Summary 238 Chapter 16 STYLES AND DRAMATIC STRUCTURES 240 Tokyo Story, Yasujiro Ozu (1953, Japan) 240 Some Like It Hot, Billy Wilder (1959, USA) 242 The Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo (1965, France) 244 Red, Krzysztof Kieslowski (1994, Poland, France, Switzerland) 245 Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Steven Soderbergh (1989, USA) 247 Shall We Dance?, Masayuki Suo (1996, Japan) 249 The Celebration, Thomas Vinterberg (1998, Denmark) 251 The Insider, Michael Mann (1999, USA) 253 The Thin Red Line, Terrence Malick (1998, USA) 255 Chapter 17 WHAT NEXT? 257 Writing for the Director 258 Begin Thinking About Your Story 258 Concocting Your Feature Screenplay 260 “Writing” Scenes with Actors 260 Shooting Your Film Before You Finish Writing It 261 The Final Script 261 Shooting Without a Screenplay? 261 Questions Directors Should Ask About Their Screenplays 262 Building Directorial Muscles 263 Directing Exercises 263 Make A Piece of Apple Pie Your Own 269 Conclusion 269 BIBLIOGRAPHY 271 INDEX 272  FOREWORD How do you teach film directing? Nick Proferes’ book, Film Directing Fundamen- tals, answers the question perfectly by providing a clear and concise methodology to the directing student. It is the only book I know of that addresses both the art and craft of directing. It not only offers a step-by-step process to follow but engages the reader as if he or she were sitting in Nick’s class. His language is accessible, and he uses wonderful examples and clear, in-depth analysis that inspires you to the highest kind of effort. When I first started teaching at Columbia University, I looked through many texts to find one to recommend to film students who wanted to become directors. Some books were informative but extremely technical and hard to follow; others were oversimplified or were anecdotes by a particular director. None offered the students a concrete, organic approach. At Columbia, Nick addressed this problem by teaching a lecture course for all beginning students in our graduate film program. His focus is on training directors to engage their audience emotionally by first of all becoming clear on their story (detective work), then helping the director to orchestrate the progression and dramatic escalation of that story. The organization of action through dramatic blocks, narrative beats (director’s beats), and a fulcrum around which a scene moves are categories Nick identifies for the first time. Film Directing Fundamentals also provides a close analysis of three feature films to give the reader a chance to look at and understand how to use the dramatic ele- ments as tools in their own work. The book leads us through an almost shot-by- shot discussion of dramatic structure and narrator’s voice in Hitchcock’s Notorious, Fellini’s 8-1/2, and Peter Weir’s The Truman Show, and examines style and dramatic structure in nine other feature films. Although I have been an artist and a director for a number of years, it wasn’t until I started teaching that I truly began to understand my own process. To have a book that tracks the process so precisely is invaluable to me as a teacher and as a filmmaker. I consulted this book before, during, and after my last film project, and it is certainly a book I will use again and again. — Bette Gordon Vice Chair and Directing Supervisor of Columbia University Film Division Director of the feature films Variety and Luminous Motion  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book could not have been written without feedback from the hundreds of stu- dents who attended my directing workshops at Columbia University. Their probing questions and impassioned work forced me to constantly clarify my teaching to better serve them, and I thank them one and all. I am also immensely grateful to my colleagues for their support, especially Bette Gordon and Tom Kalin, and for any of their wisdom I may have purloined without attribution. I owe sincere gratitude to my colleague James Goldstone for his dedicated reading of the manuscript and for his valuable suggestions, and to Andy Pawelczak and my son Ted Proferes for their astute editorial contributions. I thank the fol- lowing students: Branislav Bala for his insightful comments on Part I, Jason Graham for his short screenplay The Marriage Bed, Sonny Quinn for the The Piece of Apple Pie storyboards, Greg Bunch for the diagrams, and Patrick O’Connor for digitizing the artwork. I am deeply grateful to all of the directors and writers whose films I rely on for their masterful demonstration of the directing craft, and to Kostas Matsoukas, a true lover of film and owner of Video Express in Astoria, New York, who supplied me with each of the films. I also want to express thanks to my publisher, Marie Lee, at Elsevier, who made this happen, and to my wonderful editor, Terri Jadick. For this second edition, I sincerely thank Elinor Actipis, my new editor, who has been a godsend; Angela Dooley, Senior Project Manager, and Daril Bentley, Copyeditor, for guiding the manuscript through production; Branislav Bala and Pedja Zdravkovic, for the Notorious diagrams and artwork; and Professor Warren Bass for his close reading and invaluable suggestions throughout the entire process.  P A R T O N E LEARNING HOW TO DRAW Excitement, passion, surprise, beauty — these are the things I think about when making a film, and these are the things my students think about. They cannot be realized unless the director’s vision is wedded to a firm grasp of the directing craft. With that end in mind, this book sets out to introduce you to the conceptual aspects of this craft, and to offer a step-by-step methodology that will take you from the screenplay to the screen. This second edition has benefited from the many questions I am still asked by students concerning the implementation of this methodology, so that I have endeav- ored here to be as clear as I ask my directing students to be. I have rearranged the material from the first edition, and most importantly, have added new chapters and artwork that I believe amplify, clarify, and ultimately, justify this second edition. I have devoted a separate chapter to “Organizing Action in a Dramatic Scene,” stress- ing the three dramatic elements that are unique to my methodology: Dramatic Blocks, Narrative Beats, and the Fulcrum. I have also added an in-depth analysis of a dramatic scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious, complete with floor plans for staging and camera, along with storyboards from the film. Another innovation I have found to be extremely helpful for student directors is the Prose Storyboard, and in this edition I have included examples. Finally, this second edition includes an Instructor’s Manual, offering instructors a medley of curricula options including a week-by-week “Introductory Directing Workshop” and an “Advanced Directing Workshop,” complete with field-tested exercises designed to facilitate the student’s mastery of the methodology offered in this book. Qualified instructors can request the manual by emailing textbook@ elsevier.com. This methodology is based on the experiences of my own professional career as a director, cameraman, film editor, producer, and graduate filmmaking teacher for 20 years at Columbia University, in the School of the Arts’ Film Division. I have taught more than 80 semester-long directing workshops where students have made many hundreds of films, and I have supervised more than a hundred thesis films. It was as a teacher that I realized the need for an organic, comprehensive text on directing. To put off the job of writing such a text, I developed a series of lectures I delivered at Columbia and at seminars in Europe. Still my students wanted a book. I began with a 30-page handout that has evolved over the years into the present book. The emphasis throughout is on the craft of narrative storytelling in the “classical” sense. The goal is to offer a toolbox that is fully equipped with every 2 PART ONE essential tool that can then be used to craft any kind of story. To use another metaphor, I want to develop all of the student’s directorial muscles. I make an assumption about the audience for this book — that they will want to engage their audience in a cinematic story. Everything contained in this book is aimed at that goal, which I believe is a laudable one. Human beings are in need of nar- rative and always have been. It has played a significant part in all the diverse cultures of the world, and perhaps even in development of the species itself. Out of concern for survival, our brains are constructed to make sense of incoming stimuli. Given any three facts or images, I, we, all of us, including our ancestors from forty thousand years ago, are on our way to making sense of these facts; in other words, to making a story. A movement in the grass, birds taking flight, an unnatural stillness, and a Cro- Magnon might begin concocting a scenario of a leopard stalking him. When I first began teaching, students would ask me what books they should read about filmmaking, I would tell them Dear Theo, Vincent Van Gogh’s letters to his brother. I still think anyone aspiring to be a film director should read this book — not for the craft of filmmaking, obviously, but for the inspiration to pursue the creation of art through the painstaking development of craft. For years Van Gogh drew with charcoal. He would spend countless hours drawing potato farmers digging in the fields, his eyes burning through their clothing to imagine the bones and muscles underneath. He built an unwieldy perspective device he would carry for miles in order to develop this invaluable skill of the representational artist. After many years, another painter mentioned to Van Gogh that he had surely done enough drawing and should begin to work with color. Van Gogh’s response, “The problem with most people’s color is that they cannot draw.” The point I wish to make is that although every one of you is in a hurry to “use color,” it would behoove you to first learn to draw well. And that is where we will start. The “drawing” or methodology in this book is based on the proposition that the screenplay — the blueprint of a film — informs everything the director does. We will focus on four areas: detective work on the script, blocking actors, the camera as narrator, and work with the actors. Do all good directors follow this methodology? I believe they do, whether they know it or not. For some it proceeds from an innate dramatic instinct. For others it is forged in the fire of experience. Most likely it is a combination of both. But I also know from my 20 years at Columbia that it is possible to teach these principles. And I know that it is nearly impossible to engage an audience fully, to pull them into your story and keep them there, eliciting their emotions — which is, after all, the main power of film — if the steps called for here are not paid attention to on some level. There are many attributes that are necessary for a good film director: imagina- tion, tenacity, knowledge of the craft, knowledge of people, ability to work with others, willingness to accept responsibility, courage, stamina, and many more. But the most important attribute that can be taught, the one that if missing will negate all the rest, is clarity — clarity about the story and how each element in it con- tributes to the whole, and then clarity about what is conveyed to the audience. Alfred Hitchcock said that if he were running a film school, he would not let students near a camera for the first two years. In today’s world that film school would soon find itself bereft of students, for the camera serves as a validation that one is indeed pursuing the art of filmmaking. But nevertheless, there are things one should be aware of before picking up a camera, so we will begin our journey with an introduction to film language and its grammatical rules.  C H A P T E R 1 INTRODUCTION TO FILM LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR THE FILM WORLD The first dramatic films were rendered as if through a proscenium. The camera was placed in position and all the action in the scene took place within that camera frame. The audience’s view was much the same as a theater audience sitting front- row center. The American director D. W. Griffith was one of the first to move the audience onto the stage with works like For Love of Gold (1908), The Lonely Villa (1909), The Lonedale Operator (1911), and the highly influential, but strongly racist, Birth of a Nation (1915). “Look here!” he said to the audience with his camera — “Now, here!” Griffith was not only moving the audience into the scene; he was then turning their seats this way and that — moving them into the face of a character, then in the next instant pulling them to the back of the “theater” to get a larger view of the character in relation to other characters or showing the char- acter in relation to his or her surroundings. The reason for putting the audience into the scene is that it makes the story more interesting — more dramatic. But by moving the audience into the action, and focusing their attention first here, now there, the director can easily confuse and disorient the audience. The geography of a location or the wholeness of a charac- ter’s body becomes fragmented. Whose hand is that? Where is Character A in spatial relationship to Character B? Usually the director does not want to cause confusion. Rather, she wants the audience to feel comfortable in this film world — to be spatially (and temporally) oriented — so that the story can take place unimpeded. Usually, the director wants the audience to know, “That is Bob’s hand, and Bob is sitting to the right of Ellen” (even if we haven’t seen Ellen for a while). There are times, however, when we will use this possibility for confusion and disorientation to our advantage to create surprise or suspense. FILM LANGUAGE Once film became a series of connected shots, a language was born. Every shot became a complete sentence with at least one subject and one verb. (We are talking 4 PART ONE about an edited shot here, as opposed to a camera setup, which may be cut into a number of edited shots.) Like prose, a film sentence/shot can be simple, with only one subject and one verb, and perhaps an object; or it can be a compound sentence/shot, composed of two or more clauses. The type of sentence/shot we use will first depend on the essence of the moment we wish to convey to the audience. Secondarily, that sentence/shot will be contained in a design of the scene, which may be an ingredient of an overall style. In Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948), where there are but nine sentences — each 10 minutes long (the length of a film roll) — each sentence contains many subjects and a host of verbs and objects. Let’s look at a simple sentence/shot: a wristwatch lying on a table, reading three o’clock. Without a context outside this particular shot, the sentence reads, “A wrist- watch lying on a table reads three o’clock.” The significance of this film sentence — its specific meaning in the context of a story — will become clear only when it is embedded among other shots (sentences). For example, a character is someplace she is not supposed to be, and as she leaves we cut to the very same shot of the wristwatch on the table reading three o’clock. Now the shot (the sentence) is given a context and takes on a specific significance. Its meaning is clear. The character is leaving behind evidence (which could cause her trouble). The fact that it is three o’clock might very well have no significance at all. The necessity of context in understanding a film shot applies to the camera angle also. No camera angle — extreme low, extreme high, tilted to left or right, and so on — in and of itself contains any inherent dramatic, psychological, or atmospheric content. SHOTS Professionals in the film industry don’t usually refer to a shot as a sentence. But in learning any foreign language, we have to think in our native language first in order to clearly formulate what it is we want to say in the new language, and the same principle applies to learning to “talk” in film. It can be extremely helpful before you have developed a visual vocabulary to formulate the content of each shot into a linguistic analogue (the prose and syntax of your native language) in order to help you find the corresponding visual images. At the same time, it is important to keep in mind that film, unlike the words of the screen- play, is rendered on the screen in a series of images that, when combined in a sequence, gives a meaning that goes beyond mere words. The late Stefan Sharff, a former colleague of mine at Columbia, in his book The Elements of Cinema, wrote: When a proper cinema “syntax” is used, the viewer is engaged in an active process of constantly “matching” chains of shots not merely by association or logical rela- tionship but by an empathy peculiar to cinema. The blend so achieved spells cinema sense — a mixture of emotion and understanding, meditative or subliminal, engag- ing the viewer’s ability to respond to a structured cinema “language”... A cine- matic syntax yields meaning not only through the surface content of shots, but also through their connections and mutual relationships. 1: Introduction to Film Language and Grammar 5 180 o B FIGURE 1–1 Axis between two subjects. FILM GRAMMAR Film language has only four basic grammatical rules, of which three are concerned with spatial orientation as a result of moving the audience into the action. The fourth also deals with space, but for a different reason. All of these rules must be followed most of the time, but all can be broken for dramatic effect. THE 180-DEGREE RULE The 180-degree rule deals with any framed spatial (right-to-left or left-to-right) rela- tionship between a character and another character or object. It is used to maintain consistent screen direction between the characters, or between a character and an object, within the established space. When a character is opposite another character or object, an imaginary line (axis) exists between that character and the other character or object. The issue is most acute in the sight line between two characters looking at each other (Figure 1–1). As long as A and B are contained in the same shot, there is no problem (Figure 1–2). (The axis exists even if the characters do not look at each other.) Now let’s place a camera between the two characters, facing toward A, who is looking not at the camera but at B, who is camera right (Figure 1–3). (Characters almost never look into the camera except in very special situations, such as an object of a point-of-view (POV) shot, a comic take, or a reflexive moment that recognizes the presence of the camera.) Let’s now turn the camera around toward B, who will now be looking camera left (Figure 1–4). If we were to shoot separate shots of A and B, and then cut them together so that one would follow the other, what we would see on the screen is the two sub- jects looking at each other. In other words, their sight lines would be correct, and the audience would understand the spatial relationship between the characters. What happens to the sight lines if we jump the axis during a scene (Figure 1–5)? Still shooting in separation, we have moved the camera across the axis for shoot- ing A, while leaving the camera on the same side of the axis for B. Subject A will now be looking camera left. B will also be looking camera left. When the two shots 6 PART ONE B FIGURE 1–2 Characters A and B both contained in three shots from different angles. R B L FIGURE 1–3 Character A looking camera right at B. L B R FIGURE 1–4 Character B looking camera left at A. 1: Introduction to Film Language and Grammar 7 R L B L R FIGURE 1–5 Jumping axis by moving the camera, and shooting A across the 180-degree line. are cut together, the result will be that the subjects/characters will be looking in opposite directions and the audience will become confused as to spatial positioning between them, the dynamics of the dramatic moment thereby broken. It is possible to cross the axis with impunity as long as we keep the audience constantly apprised of where the characters are in relation to one another. We could dolly across or around. Or, we could cut to a two-shot from the opposite side of the axis. Other than the fact that Character A will jump to the left side of the frame, whereas B will jump to the right side, the audience will still be correctly oriented (Figure 1–6). This “flip-flopping” of characters to opposite sides of the frame, at the right dramatic moment, can be another powerful dramatic tool. Having characters change sides within the frame is also a staging technique often used by directors, and one that is highly effective in punctuating a moment. This is made even more powerful if, say, the position of Characters A and B within the frame is changed forcefully. A good example of this exists in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974), in the highly memorable scene in which Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) exclaims to the private detective, J. J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson), “She’s my sister, she’s my daughter!” At the start of this hysterical out- burst, Dunaway is on the right side of the frame. Nicholson tries to calm her down. He fails until he slaps her hard, sending her reeling from screen right to screen left. This change in their positioning vis-à-vis the frame serves to end that dramatic “stanza” and announce the arrival of a new one. Another good example of flip- flopping of characters to the opposite side of the frame is in Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976) as Betsy (Cybil Shepherd) makes her way to a taxi pursued by Travis (Robert DeNiro) after a disastrous date at an X-rated movie. Keeping both in the frame, the camera crosses the 180-degree line four times, dramatically punctuating Betsy’s exit. Can we ever jump the axis between our characters while they are in separation? The 180-degree rule often terrifies the beginning director, and so much heed is paid to not breaking this rule that it rarely is. But we can break it — jump the axis between characters — with great dramatic effect if we do it on an act of energy. This act of energy can be either psychological or physical. We will see an example of this when we add the camera to a screenplay in Chapter 8. 8 PART ONE FIGURE 1–6 Jumping the axis with both subjects in the frame. THE 30-DEGREE RULE If we are going from one shot of a character or object (Figure 1–7) to another shot of the same character or object without an intervening shot of something else, the camera angle should change by at least 30 degrees. The effect of disobeying this rule is to call undue attention to the camera; it seems to leap through space. If the rule is obeyed, we do not notice this leap. But in some instances, disobedience can be dramatically energizing. In The Birds (1963), Hitchcock ignores the rule to “punch up” the discovery of a body of a man with a series of three shots from the same angle, each shot coming dramati- cally closer: medium to medium close-up to close-up. (Three is the magic number in this style of elaboration, as well as in other stylistic and dramaturgical aspects of film. Given any two types of patterns we anticipate the third, creating dramatic tension.) Sometimes, because of the geography of the set or other limitations, we have to cut to the next shot from the same angle. We see it done successfully fairly frequently, but the reason it works is because of one of the following mitigating factors: the subject is in motion, the second shot includes a foreground object such as a lampshade, or the change in image size from one shot to the next is substantial. 1: Introduction to Film Language and Grammar 9 FIGURE 1–7 Initial camera angle on character (a) and camera angle changed by 30 degrees on same character (b). SCREEN DIRECTION The sections that follow explore various aspects of screen direction. LEFT TO RIGHT If a character (or car, or any moving object) exits a frame going from left to right (Figure 1–8), he should enter the next frame from the left if we intend to convey to the audience that the character is headed in the same direction. If we disobey this simple rule and have our character or car exit frame right (Figure 1–9), then enter the second frame from the right, the character or car will seem to have made a U-turn. This rule can be broken if the time period or distance (which can be synony- mous) is protracted, as with a covered wagon going from New York to California or an ambulance speeding to a hospital. In fact, it can help to elaborate the sense of distance traveled, or in the latter case to increase the dramatic tension through a sequence of shots that reverses the screen direction (right, left, right, left). Each succeeding shot, besides reversing the screen direction, should be varied as to angle and length of time on the screen. The last shot in the sequence should then pay heed to the grammatical rule. That is, if the covered wagon or ambulance exits the start- ing point going from left to right, it should enter the frame of its destination going from left to right. 10 PART ONE FIGURE 1–8 Character moving left to right and exiting frame right (a) and character entering frame left, moving left to right (b). FIGURE 1–9 Character moving left to right and exiting frame right (a) and character entering frame right, moving right to left (b). RIGHT TO LEFT AND UP Psychologists have told us that those of us who grew up moving our eyes from left to right when we read, find it is more “comfortable” for us when a character in a film moves from left to right. When they go from right to left, a tension is created. Maximum tension is created when the character moves right to left and up. I suspect Hitchcock was aware of this psychological effect on an audience when in the final bell tower scene in Vertigo he had Jimmy Stewart climb up the winding staircase right to left. APPROACHING AND RECEDING A character approaching the camera and exiting the frame camera right (Figure 1–10) should enter the following frame camera left. 1: Introduction to Film Language and Grammar 11 FIGURE 1–10 Character approaching camera and exiting frame camera right (a) and character entering frame camera left and receding from camera (b). FILM TIME Our stories unfold in time as well as in space, and the ability to use both in service of our stories is of paramount importance. A simplistic view of the use of time in film — but one that contains much storytelling savvy — is that we shorten (compress) what is boring and lengthen (elaborate) what is interesting. COMPRESSION We are not talking here about the compression that takes place in the screenplay, such as a year, or even ten years, played out in five minutes of film time (an absolutely essential component of nearly all screenplays). And we are not yet talking about transitions between scenes: the “what” that happens between the end of one scene and the beginning of another. What we are talking about here is the com- pression of time that takes place within a single scene. In what we might call “ordinary compression,” to distinguish it from an ellip- sis (a cut that makes it obvious to the audience that a jump in time has occurred), we will often be dealing with compression the audience will accept as real time. A more accurate appellation would be film time. The following example will clarify this. A MAN enters a large space he must cross in order to get to his destination. We have determined that there is no dramatic reason to show every step he takes. In fact, it would be boring, so we compress the distance traveled. How can we accomplish this? Have the MAN enter the first shot and exit it, then enter a second shot already at his destination. This will give the semblance of real time to the 12 PART ONE audience. The jump across the space will have been made gracefully and will go unnoticed. ELABORATION Here we want to take a moment and make it larger, to stretch time. Large elabo- rations often occur at the end of films, as in, for example, the staircase scene at the end of Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946) or Marlon Brando walking through the crowd of dockworkers at the end of On the Waterfront (Kazan, 1954). But elabo- ration occurs with regularity throughout a film. The two instances just mentioned rely on a series of shots to achieve this purpose, and that is most often the case. But elaboration can also be a single camera movement, such as at the end of The God- father Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1987), where the camera moves into a “tight” close-up of the tortured face of Michael (Al Pacino). The movement gets us into Michael’s head and allows us to be privy to his thoughts — his realization of what he has become. Elaboration can also be used to prepare the audience for what will happen next, and, at the same time, create suspense about just what it will be. In Eric Rohmer’s film Rendezvous in Paris (1997, French), the artist/protagonist in one of the three stories is seen walking back to his studio in a protracted series of shots. This undue attention to the ordinary sets up an expectation, hence suspense, in the audience. The payoff of this elaboration happens when the female antagonist enters the film by passing the artist going the other way. (This is a good example of suspense versus surprise. Suspense has a duration to it, and is much more useful and prevalent in cinematic storytelling than is surprise, which comes out of nowhere and is over in an instant. Still, surprise has its undeniable place in cinematic storytelling, and many times a surprise is embedded in a suspense sequence. How many times have we seen a bird fly out unannounced or a cat hiss unexpectedly and jump toward the camera?) Elaboration can also be used to elicit a mood, as in the comedy Starting Over (Alan J. Pakula, 1979). A long, slow tracking shot over the participants of a divorced men’s workshop while they listen to an older member’s grievances about growing old elaborates the depressive pall cast over the entire group. FAMILIAR IMAGES A familiar image can reverberate with the harmonics of a previous moment, making the present moment larger. Scharff comments, in The Elements of Cinema: We know that cinema thrives on repetition and symmetries. The familiar image structure provides symmetry in the form of a recurrent, stable picture that “glues” together scattered imagery, especially in scenes that are fragmented into many shots or involve many participants.... Normally, the familiar image is “planted” some- where in the beginning of a scene, then recurs several times in the middle, with resolution at the end. Scharff mentions an image from Lancelot du Lac, Robert Bresson (1975, French): 1: Introduction to Film Language and Grammar 13 A solitary shot of a small gothic window flashed periodically on the screen means volumes, since the lonely queen lives behind it. All the emotions, struggles, drives, and fanaticisms of the knights, their whole philosophy of life, are tied to this little window. A strong image need not appear more than once to become familiar, so that the next time we see it we immediately recognize it, as in, for example, the front entrance to the Nazi spy’s mansion in Notorious (Part Three, Chapter 13). When Alicia (Ingrid Bergman) arrives at the front door for the first time, the job of setting up the geography goes unnoticed by the audience because it is integrated with the action of the moment, and we are as curious about the house as Alicia is. But if we had not been privy to the imposing grandeur of the front of the house before the cli- mactic ending of the film, which takes place within a similar framing, we may well have been thinking to ourselves at the moment when the final dramatic resolution is occurring, “Wow, what a big door that is.” In addition, Hitchcock uses the same prolonged tracking shot, but in reverse, to enter the mansion and then to exit it — a familiar note that reverberates within the audience’s psyche, bringing them an aesthetic pleasure in the director’s orchestration of such symmetry. Familiar images can be incorporated with familiar staging in order to orient the audience to geography that is less imposing, less memorable — say, an ordinary living room that is going to be used in more than one scene. To orient the audience it is desirable to decide on an angle that says “this is the same room.” An angle that has the characters approach a couch from the same screen direction can give the audience all the information they need. On the other hand, an angle that has the characters approaching the couch from the opposite screen direction than it was approached in a previous scene may confuse the audience to the point that it intrudes on the dramatic moment. A strong image exiting a frame can make the audience anticipate the return of that image, and this phenomenon can be used to create tension — even if this expec- tation in the audience is on the subconscious level. Think of the yellow barrel being pulled out of the frame in Jaws (Spielberg, 1975) after the first harpoon has been planted in the shark. Later, when that familiar frame is repeated, we find ourselves expecting the barrel to return into the frame — and to our great satisfaction and pleasure it does. There is yet another value to the familiar image: dramatic economy, a key ingre- dient of dramaturgy from its inception, starting with Aristotle’s unity of action. The concept of economy is mostly the purview of the screenwriter, but it also relates to staging, camera, props, and so on. In short, every time a director considers adding a new element in order to do a narrative, dramatic, or even atmospheric job, she should first ask this question: “Can I do it with what I’ve already got?”  C H A P T E R 2 INTRODUCTION TO THE DRAMATIC ELEMENTS EMBEDDED IN THE SCREENPLAY We talked in Chapter 1 about elements that appear on the screen, but there are many elements embedded in a screenplay that if unearthed by the director will help supply clarity, cohesion, and dramatic power to what appears on the screen. SPINES There are two categories of spines we will be dealing with. The first is the spine of your film, or its main action. Before we get to the dramatic definition of a film’s spine, an analogy using representational sculpture may be helpful. When working in clay, a sculptor first builds an armature (i.e., a skeleton, usually of metal) to support the clay. This armature determines the parameters of the final work. If the armature is designed to represent a man standing, it will be impossible for the artist to turn it into a man sitting, no matter how much clay she applies to it. But even without this exaggerated example, a poorly designed armature of a man standing, one that does not take into account the anatomy and proportions of the human skeleton, will still fall far short of supporting the artist’s intent. The analogy implies that there is a scientific component to our task, and that is exactly the case. It is called dramaturgy. And the armature of dramaturgy is the spine — the driving force or concept that pervades every element of the story, thereby holding the story together. Stage director Harold Clurman, comments in On Directing: “Where a director has not determined on a spine for his production, it will tend to be formless. Each scene follows the next without necessarily adding up to a total dramatic ‘statement’.” After the film’s spine has been determined, it is necessary to determine the spine of the characters — their main action. It is the goal that each character desperately desires, aspires to, yearns for. It should be extremely important, perhaps a matter of life and death. The character must save the farm, win her love, discover the meaning of life, live a life that is not a lie, or any of the countless wants we humans have. And the more a character wants something, the more the audience will care 2: Introduction to the Dramatic Elements Embedded in the Screenplay 15 about whether or not she gets it. Moreover, the character’s spine should be con- tained under the umbrella of the film’s spine. Clurman comments: “The character’s spine must be conceived as emerging from the [screen] play’s main action. Where such a relation is not evident or non-existent, the character performs no function in the [screen] play.” When Clurman directed Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, he came up with the following spines. For the play, to probe within oneself for the lost “something”; for Tyrone, to maintain his “fatherhood”; for Mary, to find her bear- ings, her “home”; for Edmund, to discover or understand the truth; and for Jamie, “to free himself from guilt.” Elia Kazan, one of America’s premier theater and film directors, was a member of the Group Theater in the 1940s and 1950s and shared the same methodology with Clurman. Kazan’s Director’s Notebook for “A Streetcar Named Desire,” published in Directors on Directing, edited by Toby Cole, gives us an invaluable look at Kazan’s thorough and insightful detective work. Kazan’s spine for Blanche, the protagonist, is to “find protection”; for Stella, to “hold onto Stanley”; for Stanley, to “keep things his way”; and for Mitch, to “get away from his mother.” Federico Fellini said that making a film was for him as scientific as launching a space rocket. But he most likely did not make conscious use of a spine for the film or for his characters. Nevertheless, there is an organic artistic unity present in his masterpiece 8-1/2 (1963, Italian), analyzed in Part III, Chapter 15. In other words, Fellini, on some level, paid attention to this important piece of dramaturgy. The following are spines for Fellini’s film 8-1/2. Film’s spine: to seek an authentic life Guido’s spine: to live a life without a lie Guido’s wife: to have a marriage that is not a lie Carla: to be loved (by Guido and her husband) Mezzabota: to deny an authentic life (by seeking escape in an inauthentic relationship) Gloria: to seek salvation in abstractions Screenwriter: to seek meaning in art Cardinal: to seek union with God through the Church (the only authentic path) Woman in White: to seek the true, the good, the beautiful Because the spines of the major characters can all be subsumed under the umbrella of the film’s spine, the film achieves the thematic unity that is a basic requirement of art. The spine is such a powerful organizational tool that when we apply it after our first readings of the text it may cause us to rewrite. We may find that the spines of our characters do not fit under the umbrella of the film’s spine. Does this mean that we have a film that will not engage an audience? Not necessarily, but it would be more engaging if it were an organic whole. (Other directors may use other words to identify similar categories that serve the unifying function of spine, such as premise and through-line.) 16 PART ONE WHOSE FILM IS IT? Most successful films have a protagonist, and the first question in our detective work on the screenplay is: Who is the protagonist in our film? Another way of asking the same question, one I believe is more helpful for the director, is: Whose film is it? Which character do we go through the film with? Which character do we hope or fear for — hope that she will get what she wants, or fear that she will not? I have not included as the primary criterion for a protagonist that they be the one who drives the action throughout the entire film. Not that that’s a bad idea. Quite the contrary; it is one of the key tenets of most dramaturgy. However, there are just too many successful films where that is not the case, as, for example, with Ingrid Bergman’s character Alicia in Notorious. Also, there are many fine films where there is no central protagonist at all, or possibly multiple or serial protago- nists, as in Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975), Kenji Mizoguchi’s Street of Shame (Japanese, 1956), or Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). CHARACTER Paul Lucey, in his very fine book on screenwriting, Story Sense, states that one of the main tenets of his dramaturgy is “Write simple stories and complex characters.” Although film takes place in the present, character is created in the past. Char- acter is everything that has gone into the making of our characters before they stepped into our film: genetic inheritance, family influence, socioeconomic condi- tions, life experience, and on and on. Of course, some influences are more relevant to our stories than others, and we should limit ourselves so that we do not become bogged down with the nonessential. Keep this analogy in mind: A film is like a train ride in which characters embark on their journey with just enough baggage for that trip. There is an often-told story concerning character that bears repeating here. A frog was sitting by a river swollen by a recent flood, when a scorpion came up to him. “Mr. Frog, the river is much too wide for me to swim across. Could you please take me across on your back?” “Oh, no,” replied the frog, “when we got to the middle of the river, you would kill me with your sting.” “Why would I do that?” asked the scorpion. “If I killed you, you would sink to the bottom and I would drown.” The frog had not thought of that scenario but it made perfectly good sense. “Okay,” said the frog, “hop on.” “Thank you so much, Mr. Frog,” said the scorpion as he hopped on the frog’s back. The frog was a strong swimmer, and in no time at all they reached the middle of the river, but still much too far for the scorpion to get safely to the other side. Nevertheless, the scorpion stung the frog with his stinger. As the frog began to die from the poison, and the scorpion began to drown because he had lost his ride, the frog asked incredulously, “Why? Why did you sting me?” The scorpion replied, “It’s in my character.” We are familiar with complicated film characters: Guido in 8-1/2 (Fellini, 1963), Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941), Rick in Casablanca 2: Introduction to the Dramatic Elements Embedded in the Screenplay 17 (Michael Curtiz, 1942), Michael in The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972), Blanche and Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire (Elia Kazan, 1951). The character studies in Kazan’s Director’s Notebook on “A Streetcar Named Desire” are brilliant not only in going to the central core of the character but in uncovering the undulations and modulations of that core that make the characters so compelling to watch. This psychology unearthed by Kazan prior to working with the actors points the way to behavior that will ultimately make the psychology avail- able to the audience. This point is made paramount in Kazan’s first note to himself: “A thought — directing finally consists of turning Psychology into Behavior.” The most complicated character in the play/film is Blanche, and Kazan pushes himself in the Notebook to discover all of the varied layers of her personality. “Try to find an entirely different character, a self-dramatized and self-romanticized character for Blanche to play in each scene. She is playing 11 different people. This will give it a kind of changeable and shimmering surface it should have. And all these 11 self- dramatized and romantic characters should be out of the romantic tradition of the Pre-Bellum South.” No director has ever been more attuned than Kazan to the idea that everything the director does is aimed at affecting the audience. Again, his Notebook: “The audience at the beginning should see her [Blanche’s] bad effect on Stella, want Stanley to tell her off. He does. He exposes her and then gradually, as they [the audience] see how genuinely in pain, how actually desperate she is, how warm, tender and loving she can be... how frightened with need she is — they begin to go with her. They begin to realize that they are sitting in at the death of something extraordinary... colorful, varied, passionate, lost, witty, imaginative, of her own integrity... and then they feel the tragedy.” Kazan’s exhaustive investigation of character not only deals with the past; he also projects (in the case of Stanley) into the future: “He is adjusted now... later, as his sexual powers die, so will he: the trouble will come later, the ‘problems.’ He’s going to get very fat later.” CIRCUMSTANCE Circumstance is simply the situation the characters find themselves in. It can be, from the character’s perspective, objective or subjective — real or imagined. In a feature-length screenplay, the circumstances, especially for principal characters, are more often than not made explicit in the screenplay. They are not up for grabs. But in short films the full circumstance of the character may not be contained in the text. DYNAMIC RELATIONSHIPS The relationship we are referring to here is not the societal relationship; that is, husband/wife, boyfriend/girlfriend, father/son, mother/daughter, and so on. These static relationships are facts of the story and will come out in exposition. What we want here is to find the ever-changing dynamic relationship that exists between any two characters — the one that supplies what I call the dramatic juice. And where do we find it? 18 PART ONE The dynamic relationship is found in the present moment; in the “now.” And it is always established by looking through the eyes of the characters. It may be objective or it may be entirely subjective. The important point is always how one character “sees” another character at the present moment. For instance, a bride on the day of the wedding may see the groom as her “knight in shining armor.” Seven years later she may see him as her “ball and chain.” Or, on the day of the wedding, the bride, instead of seeing “my knight in shining armor” sees her “ticket out of town.” A father may see his son as a “disappointment,” while the son may see his father as his “boss.” That very same father may change during the course of the film and begin to see his son as “his own drummer,” while the son may now see his father as his “rock of Gibraltar.” WANTS Wants differ from spine in that they are smaller goals (objectives is another term sometimes used) that must be reached before the larger goal of the spine can be achieved. For instance, in 8-1/2 the protagonist’s spine is “to lead an authentic life” — a life that is not a lie — but he also wants to make a great film and be a good husband. There are also smaller (but not unimportant), more immediate wants that occur in individual scenes and are called scene wants. For the protagonist, Guido, there are scenes in which he wants to escape, to placate, to deflect. Also, these “smaller” wants can conflict with the larger goal of the spine, and as far as dra- matic purposes are concerned it is better if they do. For example: an Ethical Man wants to live his life ethically — his spine, or sometimes called life want — but his wife and children are hungry. He wants to feed them, but can only get sustenance for them by committing an unethical act. Synonymous with want in drama is the obstacle to obtaining that want. This is what elicits the struggle — the dramatic journey. It is what supplies the conflict. “Hey, will you love me for the rest of my life?” “Of course I will.” End of film. If instead of acquiescence there is rejection — “Get lost, jerk!” — we have the obligatory obstacle that sets up the obligatory conflict, but only if the character truly “wants.” There are three possibilities concerning a character’s want: the character will succeed in obtaining the want, will fail, or will be sidetracked by a new, more urgent want. It is important to make a distinction between wants and needs. To paraphrase Mick Jagger: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try, you might get what you need.” This distinction often supplies the basis for irony in our stories — another very powerful tool used as a codified technique by storytellers at least since the time of the ancient Greeks. EXPECTATIONS A character may want something, but do they expect to get it? Are they afraid of what might happen, or are they confident? This psychological state is important for 2: Introduction to the Dramatic Elements Embedded in the Screenplay 19 the audience to know so that they can more fully access the particular moment in the story. In a scene where each character’s expectations are opposed, and we know about it, dramatic tension is created. (More later on what the audience should know and when.) ACTIONS Drama is told through the actions of your characters. These actions must be con- veyed to an audience in order for them to fully appreciate, as well as understand, the story. Characters perform actions to get what they want. That seems rather obvious, doesn’t it? But what may not be so obvious is that characters rarely perform actions that aren’t related to attaining what they want. They almost never voluntarily take their eyes off the prize. But exceptions do occur! Sometimes a character will commit an action that is not related to their immediate want, but instead is generated by their innate character — like the scorpion. A character can perform only one action at a time! Sandy Meisner, the famous acting teacher, would constantly encounter beginning actors who would think this was not so. Perhaps they thought it was too limiting. Meisner would ask the Doubt- ing Thomas to stand up. Then he would bark out: “Turn on the light and open the window!” Another common misunderstanding is that actors act emotions. They do not. Then where does the emotion come from? The emotional life of the actor/charac- ter comes primarily from actions that are wedded to wants that are contextualized by — embedded in — dynamic relationships and circumstance. Dialogue is action! If I say “Hello,” to you, it may be a greeting. But if you came into my class a half-hour late it may very well be a reprimand. Only by fully understanding the circumstances and the wants can we arrive at the true intent of the action. ACTIVITY It is important to distinguish between action and activity. Suppose you are sitting in your dentist’s reception area reading a magazine. Are you waiting or reading? Most likely you are waiting. As soon as the dentist is ready for you, you will drop the magazine. So what is the reading, in dramatic terms? It is an activity that accom- panies the action of waiting. ACTING BEATS An acting beat (also referred to as a performance beat) is a unit of action commit- ted by a character. There are literally hundreds of these acting beats in a feature- length film. Every time the action of a character changes, a new acting beat begins. Each acting beat can be described by an action verb. In the example of the student coming late to class, my action verb, “to repri- mand,” was an acting beat. But before that beat could take place there had to be 20 PART ONE at least one acting beat that proceeded it, no matter what the circumstance or wants attendant to this particular story. What is that acting beat that must precede any exchange between characters? Awareness! In order for me or anyone else to repri- mand someone — or to greet them — we must first become aware that they are present. In addition to the narrative/dramatic elements I have already introduced, are there others that would be helpful? There are. And they go to the heart of the methodology you are offered in this book. I have found them imbedded in hundreds of dramatic scenes in films of every genre and culture. Directors who can identify these elements will obtain a clarity about their scenes that will inform their work with actors, their staging, and not least, their camera. Dramatic blocks, narrative beats, and a scene’s fulcrum are three of these ele- ments I have identified and given labels to, and each of them has to do with the organization of action. These are the subject of the next chapters.  C H A P T E R 3 ORGANIZING ACTION IN A DRAMATIC SCENE DRAMATIC BLOCKS A dramatic block can be likened to a paragraph in prose: it contains one overrid- ing dramatic idea. Keeping our dramatic ideas separated gives them more force and power, and makes them clearer to the audience. And, as in prose, when we move on to another idea we begin a new paragraph, acknowledging to the reader the pro- gression of thought, or in the case of a dramatic film acknowledging narrative or dramatic change and/or escalation. Acknowledging change gives the audience a sense of forward momentum — of narrative thrust. Identifying our dramatic blocks will help us to incorporate spatial renderings into our staging; that is, “geographical paragraphs” that will contain a single strong “idea” (one main action). For example: REASON SEDUCE THREATEN BEG If we give each of the above dramatic blocks a significantly different spatial ren- dering, the series of actions will unfold in a more powerful way because the char- acter’s intent and increasing desperation will be made clearer — more palpable — to the audience. And the clarity we see in the above schematic will be helpful in working with our actors, and, of course, must be taken into account when we block them and add the camera. NARRATIVE BEATS Why does a director move a camera, or cut from one shot to another? Why does a director have a character move from one side of the room to the other? Is what they do random, or can it be explained? If it cannot be explained, it cannot be taught. I believe it can be explained, and not just for some films but for all dramatic/ narrative films. 22 PART ONE For nearly a century the concept of a beat has been used in acting as a unit of action or nuance from the perspective of a character. However, it is also possible to think of beats from a director’s perspective as units that progress the narrative. The majority of a director’s beats — or as I have labeled them, narrative beats — are acting beats that are articulated (“framed”) by the director. All narrative beats contain a heightened “story moment” (such as a significant escalation of action or changes in its direction) or render plot points essential to the story. The latter is an example of a narrative beat, which is separate from an acting beat. Narrative beats are articulated through staging and/or camera. And the editing process acknowledges this articulation. The director, using staging and camera, either separately or in combination, indicates to the audience that something sig- nificant has happened or foreshadows that something significant is about to happen. Whether or not an acting beat is also a narrative beat depends on the style with which each director articulates his or her story. Some will affirm more narrative beats than others. THE FULCRUM In a dramatic scene, a scene where the character whose scene it is wants something that is difficult to obtain, often the most important narrative beat is the fulcrum — the moment in the scene where things can go either way for that character. One could call this the turning point, but I prefer to use that term in regard to the film’s overall dramatic structure (turning point is often used to denote the plot point that occurs at the end of the first and second acts). In a feature film with, say, ten dra- matic scenes, there might be two turning points but ten fulcrums. We will now analyze a dramatic scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious. I have named it the Patio scene, and it comes early in the second act. This scene will enable us to explore the dramatic blocks, the narrative beats, and the fulcrum embedded within the scene. DRAMATIC ELEMENTS IN NOTORIOUS PATIO SCENE A synopsis of the story to this point: Devlin (Cary Grant) is an American intelli- gence agent who has recruited Alicia (Ingrid Bergman), a woman who likes to drink and has had more than a few lovers. Neither one has any idea what the agency is planning for them, and before they discover what the assignment is they fall in love. CIRCUMSTANCE In the scene just prior to the Patio scene, Devlin has received his instructions from the agency. He is to inform Alicia, the woman he is deeply in love with, of her first assignment: seduction of the German arms dealer Sebastian for the purpose of gaining information. WHOSE SCENE IS IT? To fully appreciate this scene, we have to be in Alicia’s head — to be privy to her psychology moment by moment. We will discover in later chapters how Hitchcock 3: Organizing Action in a Dramatic Scene 23 assists us in gaining this access — in making Alicia’s psychology available to us by his exquisite staging and his use of the camera as narrator. EXPECTATION Alicia’s expectation is conveyed from the beginning of the scene. There is an excite- ment in her voice as, preparing dinner, she unselfconsciously rambles on about domestic, “wifely” concerns, and her thought that “marriage must be wonderful.” Devlin, on the other hand, who an hour ago was on the verge of letting his guard down with Alicia, has now raised it higher than ever because he expects to be hurt. He expects that she will take the job, and give herself to another man. SCENE WANTS Alicia’s wanting a romantic evening — just the two of them dining alfresco over a home-cooked meal — indicates her ardent desire to escalate the relationship with Devlin. After this evening they will be a couple. Before his meeting with Prescott, Devlin would have wanted the same thing. Now he wants Alicia to refuse the assignment — to refuse to seduce the Nazi. He will not give his love to her unless she does. DYNAMIC RELATIONSHIPS For Alicia, Devlin is still the knight in shining armor: the man she has stopped drink- ing for; the man she will change her life for; the man who has rescued her from a meaningless existence. For Devlin, Alicia has returned to an earlier incarnation: temptress, or as Alicia herself suggests in the scene, Mata Hari — a woman who can hurt him if he lets her get too close, if he lets his guard down. He suggests as much to Alicia earlier in the film in response to her asking, “Are you afraid of falling in love with me?” Devlin’s response: “It wouldn’t be hard.” (Part of the following takes place in the kitchen and living room, and techni- cally they would be labeled as separate scenes, but I am including them as part of the patio location because they are spatially and temporally continuous. The direc- tor must regard them as a dramatic whole in order to integrate them seamlessly into an overall dramatic arc that contains a beginning, middle, and end — one of the defining characteristics of a dramatic scene.) NOTORIOUS PATIO SCENE ANNOTATED The following is the annotated Patio scene with the dramatic blocks, acting beats, narrative beats, and fulcrum identified. Acting beats appear in lowercase type on the right. Narrative beats appear in UPPERCASE type. BEGINNING OF FIRST DRAMATIC BLOCK LIVING ROOM /ALICIA’S APARTMENT - NIGHT Devlin enters and walks through the living room to the patio. 24 PART ONE ALICIA (o.s.) Dev, is that you? to greet DEVLIN Ahuh. to reply ALICIA (o.s.) I’m glad you’re late. This to share chicken took longer than I expected. What did they say? to inquire KITCHEN /ALICIA’S APARTMENT - NIGHT Alicia cutting the chicken. ALICIA Hope it isn’t done too... to excuse too much. They caught (lack of response) fire once. LIVING ROOM / ALICIA’S APARTMENT - NIGHT ALICIA (o.s.) I think it’s better if I cut to relate it up out here. Unless you want a half of one yourself. We’re going to have knives and forks after all. I’ve decided we’re going to eat in style. Alicia enters with two dinner plates and moves to the patio where she sets one of the plates on the dining table. ALICIA Marriage must be wonderful with to speculate this sort of thing going on every day. (She kisses Devlin, to connect then sets the second plate on the table.) I wonder if it’s too cold out to question here. Maybe we should eat inside. (She turns to Devlin and puts to greet her arms around him.) Huh? to persist 3: Organizing Action in a Dramatic Scene 25 SECOND DRAMATIC BLOCK PATIO / ALICIA’S APARTMENT - NIGHT Alicia kisses Devlin. He is unresponsive. ALICIA Hasn’t something like this to search happened before? What’s the (for a reason) matter? Don’t look so tense. Troubles? Well, handsome, I think you better tell Momma what’s going on. All this secrecy is going to ruin my little dinner. Come on, Mr. D, what is darkening your brow? DEVLIN After dinner. to delay ALICIA No, now. Look, I’ll make it to draw (him) out easy for you. The time has come when you must tell me that you have a wife and two adorable children, and this madness between us can’t go on any longer. DEVLIN I bet you heard that line TO ACCUSE often enough. ALICIA Right below the belt every time TO PROTEST... Oh, that isn’t fair, dear. DEVLIN Skip it. We have other things TO ANNOUNCE to talk about. We’ve got a job. ALICIA Oh, so there is a job. TO CONFIRM DEVLIN You ahh... you remember a man TO QUESTION named Sebastian? ALICIA Alex Sebastian? TO CLARIFY DEVLIN (o.s.) Yes. to affirm 26 PART ONE ALICIA One of my father’s friends, yes. to explain DEVLIN He had quite a crush on you. TO IMPLY ALICIA I wasn’t very responsive. TO DENY DEVLIN Well he’s here. The head of a TO INFORM large German business concern. ALICIA His family always had money. to state (a fact) DEVLIN He’s part of the combine that to explain built up the German war machine and hopes to keep on going. ALICIA Something big? to inquire DEVLIN It has all the earmarks of TO DISCLOSE being something big. We have (nature of job) to contact him. (Alicia takes that in TO DETACH and turns away from Devlin.) BEGINNING OF THIRD DRAMATIC BLOCK Alicia moves to a chair and sits. TO DISTANCE ALICIA Go on, let’s have all of it. to submit DEVLIN We’re meeting him tomorrow. to order The rest is up to you. You’ve got to work on him and land him. ALICIA Mata Hari. She makes love TO DENIGRATE (HERSELF) for the papers. DEVLIN There are no papers. You TO TAKE (COMMAND) land him. Find out what’s to instruct going on inside his house, what the group around him is up to, and report to us. 3: Organizing Action in a Dramatic Scene 27 ALICIA I suppose you knew about this TO ACCUSE pretty little job of mine all the time. DEVLIN No. I’ve only just found out TO DENY about it. ALICIA Did you say anything? I mean TO INQUIRE that maybe I wasn’t the girl for such shenanigans. DEVLIN I figured that was up to you. TO CHALLENGE If you’d care to back out. ALICIA I suppose you told them, Alicia TO ATTACK Huberman would have this Sebastian eating out of her hand in a couple of weeks. She’s good at that! Always was! DEVLIN I didn’t say anything. TO STATE A FACT ALICIA Not a word for that... that TO DECLARE (HER LOVE) little lovesick lady you left an hour ago. DEVLIN I told you that’s the TO REJECT assignment. FULCRUM At this point, the scene could go either way. Alicia could accept Devlin’s last words and let it kill her want. But because her want is strong and all-embracing, she cannot give it up without a fight. Alicia still has hope that she can win Devlin’s heart; to make everything like it was a few hours ago. (This fulcrum is also the beginning of the fourth dramatic block.) BEGINNING OF FOURTH DRAMATIC BLOCK ALICIA Well now, don’t get sore, to appease dear. I’m only fishing for a little bird call from my dream man. 28 PART ONE One little remark such as, to protest how dare you gentlemen suggest That Alicia Huberman, the new Miss Huberman, be submitted to so ugly a fate. (Alicia stands.) TO CHALLENGE Alicia’s challenge is the apex of this fulcrum, and she will now go on the offensive to pursue her want. DEVLIN That’s not funny. to rebuke (Alicia approaches Devlin. TO PURSUE (her love) Devlin puts a cigarette TO FEND OFF into his mouth and lights it. Alicia stops her advance.) TO BACK OFF ALICIA You want me to take the job? to question DEVLIN You’re asking for yourself. to reprimand ALICIA I am asking you. to insist DEVLIN It’s up to you. to refuse (help) ALICIA Not a peep. to criticize Oh, darling, what you didn’t TO IMPLORE tell them, tell me — that you believe I’m nice, and that I love you, and I’ll never change back. DEVLIN I’m waiting for your answer. TO CUT OFF BEGINNING OF FIFTH DRAMATIC BLOCK Alicia turns from Devlin. TO CONCEDE (defeat) ALICIA What a little pal you are. to denounce Alicia begins exit from patio. TO RETREAT Never believing me, hmm? to rebuke Not a word of faith, just down the drain with Alicia. That’s where she belongs. Oh, Dev... Dev... to relinquish (her hope) 3: Organizing Action in a Dramatic Scene 29 (Alicia pours alcohol to seek solace into glass and drinks.) When do I go to work for to accept (job) Uncle Sam? DEVLIN Tomorrow morning. to inform (Alicia looks at the food on the dinner table.) ALICIA Oh, we shouldn’t have TO COMPREHEND had this out here. (the enormity) It’s all cold now. TO CONCLUDE (Devlin looks around.) to search What are you looking for? to question DEVLIN I had a bottle of to answer champagne. I must have left it somewhere. Fade out: To proceed in our investigation it will be necessary for you to acquire a video- tape or digital disc of Notorious. Watch the film from its beginning through the end of the Patio scene. Watch the Patio scene again. The acting beats, now available to us in the per- formances of the two actors, should become clear to you. Hopefully you will begin to see how the dramatic blocks are embedded in Hitchcock’s “geographical para- graphs — his use of different “stages” within the one location. And the concept of narrative beats — the director’s tools for the articulation of a scene — may begin to make sense now that you see them rooted in Hitchcock’s staging, camera, and editing. And hopefully the dramatic function of the fulcrum will be understood (reaching its full dramatic strength in this scene when Alicia stands and faces Devlin). In the next two chapters we will be introduced to the narrative/dramatic func- tions of both staging and camera before we discuss in detail how they were used by Hitchcock to enhance the text for the Patio scene.  C H A P T E R 4 STAGING Unlike the theater, we are not staging (also called blocking) for a proscenium, which has the audience outside it. Nor are we staging for a theater in which the audience surrounds the action in two-, three-, or four-sided arenas or actually sits on the stage. In each of these cases each member of the audience has but one point of view from a static position. In film, we are staging for an audience that can be anywhere because the camera can be anywhere. Therefore, as you become more visually pro- ficient, you will move toward an integration of staging and camera. Often you will visualize a shot, and then stage the action in order to get it. But, for teaching the craft of staging, I have found it best to keep it as a separate process — just as long as we bear in mind that in film we are staging for the camera! MAIN FUNCTIONS Staging has eight main functions, outlined in the following. 1. The most obvious job of staging is that it accomplishes the functional and oblig- atory physical deeds of a scene. In other words, it renders the action, as in, for example, “Jack and Jill go up the hill.... Jack falls down.... Jill comes tum- bling after” or (in Shakespeare’s King Lear) “Lear dies.” 2. Staging makes physical what is internal. When staging is used in this way, it helps make the psychology of a character more available to the audience. In an overt action scene, or even in an entire action film, there may be very little need for this kind of staging, but the more psychological the scene — the more inside the head of the characters — the more a director will call upon this function of staging. 3. Staging can indicate the nature of a relationship, and do it quickly and eco- nomically, as in for example, a man sitting behind a large desk while another man stands in front of it. Coming upon this staging without knowing anything about the two characters, we would very likely assume that the man standing in front of the desk is a subordinate. Now, if we came upon a different staging — a man sitting behind a large desk, another man sitting on it — we would not so readily assume that the man sitting on the desk is a subordinate. Hitchcock uses this latter staging in Vertigo (1958) to help make us aware that the man behind 4: Staging 31 the big desk in this big office with the big windows is a close friend of Jimmy Stewart’s character. A great deal of back-story is accomplished very quickly by beginning the scene in this manner. 4. Staging can orient the viewer. It can familiarize us with a location or point out a significant prop. One way of doing this is to stage the action so that our char- acter’s movement in the space reveals the relevant geography of the location. In this way the viewer can be apprised of a window our character will later jump from or a door that someone will enter, or they can discover a prop that will have a significant bearing on the plot. An example of this is the hypothetical rifle hanging above the mantel, which Chekhov referred to in discussing dramatic craft. In Lina Wertmuller’s Swept Away... by an unusual destiny in the blue sea of August (1974, Italian), the director introduces the varied geography of a deserted island while keeping the narrative thrust of the story continuing unabated, so that the audience receives the expository information (location geography is most often expository information) without realizing it. “Oh, the island has high cliffs, and sand dunes, and look, there’s a tidal pool!” Later, when these various locations are used, this expository information will not get in the way of the drama, in that the audience has already digested it. 5. Staging can resolve spatial separation. “Separation” occurs when a character is shot within a frame that does not contain the other characters (or objects) in a scene. To “resolve” this separateness — to define, clarify, or reaffirm for the audi- ence where a character is spatially in relation to another character or object — a shot that places the disparate characters/objects in the same frame is needed. Staging can be used to create this shot, as in Character A walking into Charac- ter B’s frame. Resolution of spatial separation can also be accomplished with the camera, without a change in staging, by cutting to a two-shot or group shot that includes Character A or B, or a group or an object. It can also be accomplished with a camera movement; the camera pans from Character A to Character B. Although each character remains in separation, the “linkage” established by the pan will satisfy the audience’s need for spatial clarification. 6. Staging can direct the viewer’s attention. It can make the viewer aware of essen- tial information. Hitchcock uses staging for this purpose in the Vertigo scene mentioned in point 3. To force us to concentrate on the intricate and essential plot points — facts the audience must be aware of in order to understand and enjoy the story — Hitchcock does exactly the opposite of what you might expect. Instead of the “expositor” planting himself in close proximity to Stewart, Hitch- cock has him begin to roam. In fact, he roams into another room of the very large office suite, so that Stewart and the audience are forced to concentrate their attention on what is being said. 7. Staging can punctuate actions. It can be used as an exclamation mark, but can also be used to formulate a question, or to supply a period in the middle of a shot. In Gandhi (1982, British/Indian), director Richard Attenborough uses staging to emphasize the action contained in Gandhi’s (Ben Kingsley) dialogue during a political meeting among different factions of India’s elite. The meeting takes place in a large living room and everyone is sitting comfortably in a horse- shoe-shaped pattern. A servant enters with a tea service, and Gandhi stands, moves to the servant, and takes the tea service from him. Gandhi proceeds 32 PART ONE to talk and serve the teacups. The punctuation through staging goes like this: Political point/teacup served/period Political point/teacup served/period Political point/teacup served/exclamation mark 8. And of course, staging is used in “picturization” — in helping to create a frame for the camera to render. An example of this is the tableaus of Yasujiro Ozo in Tokyo Story (1953, Japan), analyzed in Chapter 16. When staging is used to accomplish the functions discussed in points 4 and 5, that staging must be in accordance with points 1 or 2. If they are not, the charac- ter’s movement will be arbitrary because it is unmotivated. In film, no one sits, no one stands, no one moves a step, unless they are fulfilling