12

Composition styles

Visual styles

There are a range of film styles as distinct, for example, as Laurence Olivier's ‘Henry V’ and Billy Wilder's ‘Double Indemnity’, which were both made in the same year (1944). Olivier achieved a formalism based on sets designed with the colour and perspective of mediaeval illustrations, whilst Wilder's visual style is often based on film noir's low-key lighting and night shooting on wet, rain-streaked roads. Camerawork styles and visual imagery are not always influenced by contemporary fashion. The above two films, made in different countries, had two very distinct visual styles. To detail fully the variety of styles that have originated in the history of film and television would require a separate book. Below are just a few examples of different approaches to compositional styles.

The dominant influence on the look of the film is usually the director, although often the director of photography or production designer have a significant input. Styles of camerawork technique range from the standard storytelling coverage designed as an uncomplicated, undemanding entertainment that keeps faith with the expectations of most of its potential audience, to productions that completely reject conventional visual codes and favour an indirect and oblique presentation. This ‘alternative technique’ has been discussed in Chapter 2.

Style and technique

Visual style may rely on the repetition of visual motifs such as long focal length lenses condensing space, as for example, in John Altman's film ‘Short Cuts’ (1993), in order to provide an impression of American suburban claustrophobia. The same film uses another visual motif with long zooms, but change in image size is motivated and disguised by the action such as Earl Piggot's (John Waite) entrance to the cafe where his wife Doreen (Lily Tomalin) works, or the steady zoom movement towards a telephone that repeatedly rings. These stylistic flourishes are achieved within the standard conventions of invisible technique.

In ‘Tokyo Story’ (1953), Yasujiro Ozu consistently uses a low camera height, equivalent to the eye height of someone seated on the floor, shooting a medium shot of two, three or four people. There is one small camera movement in the two hours fifteen minutes of the film Although it has a very distinctive style, that style is again achieved mainly within the invisible technique conventions. These two films have a very different visual appearance created by the director's choice of lens angle, camera movement, camera height and camera distance when shooting the majority of scenes.

Not all productions consistently follow one style of shooting. A television cookery programme may introduce into a very prosaic presentation a few swerving camera movements to suggest the breathless excitement of unrehearsed news coverage. Of course, everything about filming the cookery demonstration is under the complete control of the producer/director, but the camera style implies that ‘reality’ is being recorded without production control. ‘Life’ is being captured on the run.

Style becomes content

Style sometimes overwhelms a weak narrative and becomes the dominant interest of the film. Exaggerated style elements such as the continuous use of a wide-angle distorting lens make the world less natural and will distance the viewer from the narrative. The audience will become less involved with the protagonists but may enjoy the stylistic flourishes.

Style building blocks

The style of a film or television programme can be influenced by any of the skills and crafts of the people that are involved in its production, such as the script treatment, artiste's performance, editing, soundtrack, music, etc. They all play a part in shaping the style of the production. This chapter will concentrate on the camerawork contribution.

There are a number of standard styles and camerawork conventions inherited from the past. The history of film and TV is one of innovation and change enhancing a body of standard technique. In general, the look of a film or TV production is created by the treatment of space, light, camera movement, choice of lens, colour or shot structure. The changes and variations in these visual building blocks are influenced by:

   technological development – screen shape, lightweight cameras, new film stock, Steadicam, etc.;

   lighting styles and fashion – e.g., realistic or expressionistic;

   choice of lens and camera placement – naturalistic or stylized compositions;

   camera movement – invisible or obtrusive, pace of movement;

   the staging of the artistes – juxtaposition of foreground and background people or things – small depth or wide depth;

   choice of studio or location shooting;

   monochrome and colour application;

   shot structure and editing – camera movement to explain narrative or cutting to follow action.

Technological development

The changes and innovation in cameras, camera mountings, film stock, lighting equipment, sound, post-production and electronic processing have had an enormous impact on what is possible in production. Sometimes it appears as if technical change stimulates new styles (e.g., portable video cameras, Steadicam, etc.). Sometimes a problem finds a solution in a technical breakthrough (e.g., the exchange of TV productions in different electronic standards solved by digital conversion). Film and TV are only possible through technology. Technology and technique intertwine. How you do something in camerawork is dependent on what equipment you are using. It is not simply a question of being told which button to press in order to get a professional result.

In television camerawork, for example, an understanding of camera technology plus the ability to exploit and take into consideration the attributes of the camera and the lens characteristics are the basis of practical programme production. Although television and film production can only be created with technology, there seems to be a growing trend to ignore the mechanics and simply trust auto-technique features. In an age of de-skilling, euphemistically called multiskilling, most video equipment is now wrapped up with auto-features in the hope of being user-friendly to technophobic customers, but cameramen usually understand what is happening when they are operating equipment rather than the uninformed passively pressing a button and hoping the equipment ‘will do the rest’.

One of the enduring characteristics of film and television broadcasting is that it is in a continuous state of change. New equipment, new techniques, new outlets are introduced almost annually. Each change in technology requires evaluation in order to understand how it can be exploited in production. Keeping up with change is a crucial requirement otherwise old skills will be as redundant as old equipment.

As we discussed in the chapters on widescreen, some types of new technology are taken up whereas others are ignored. It may be misleading to believe that the methods of production are simply ‘given’, but often new technology stimulates new styles just as the quest for new technique stimulates technological innovation. The lightweight portable video camera enabled ‘hot head’ camera booms to be developed that allowed much more fluid movement compared with manned cameras (see Chapter 16, ‘Movement), just as in the late 1950s/early 1960s the introduction of ring-steer pedestals in television studios enabled more complex camerawork and greater mobility in smaller sets that coincided with the new fashion for realistic ‘kitchen sink’ dramas staged in small sets.

Lighting styles

See Chapter 13, section on lighting technique.

Choice of lens and camera placement

Film director Sidney Lumet claimed that the (focal) length of the lens is the director's most fundamental camera choice. As we discussed in Chapter 4, ‘The lens and perspective’, choosing the camera distance from the main subject and the focal length of the lens to be used not only decides the size of the shot, but also controls the depiction of depth and the ‘internal’ space of the shot. These two aspects of style –size of shot and the depiction of depth – have had many different treatments in the history of film

Lens angle and focal length

Firstly, when discussing film and television camerawork, it is better to use lens angle rather than the focal length of a lens. Lens angle or angle of view is related to the focal length of the lens and the format size of the pick-up sensor, whether it be CCD or a frame of film As we discussed in Chapter 7, for some time there was a universal film frame that was either 35 mm or 16 mm Widescreen processes and innovations such as super 16 mm added to the number of frame sizes when calculating angle of view.

Television cameras have had as many different pick-up frame sizes as film, and from an early time in TV history it became customary not to quote focal length to indicate the size of shot obtainable from a lens, but its angle of view. When discussing the depiction of depth and perspective, either in film or television, identifying the angle of view of a specific lens will provide a better guidance of the lens/camera distance effect.

For example, a lens less than 35 mm focal length (35°) on a 35 mm film camera may be considered a wide-angle lens. The same focal length lens on a 2/3″ video camera would have a lens angle of approximately 14°. It would need a 14 mm lens to match the 35 mm lens on a 35 mm camera. A medium lens angle on all cameras would range from 35° to 25°. A narrow angle of view (a long focal length lens) would range from 17° to less than 3°. There is no scientific basis for the boundaries of these categories – simply custom and practice. To avoid confusion, state the angle of view in degrees rather than the dimension of the focal length of a lens.

In the early days of film making, 25°-17° approximate (50 mm-75 mm) lenses were routinely employed, although longer lenses were sometimes used. As was mentioned in Chapter 4, American silent film production at the beginning of the twentieth century used a convention of a 25° lens at eye level and actor movement was restricted to being no closer to the lens than 12 ft. With an actor standing 12 ft from the lens, the bottom of the frame cuts him at knee height. By 1910, the Vitagraph company allowed the actors to play up to 9 ft from the lens and the camera was lowered to chest height. This convention produced a distinct visual depiction of depth.

Not only lens angle and camera distance but depth-of-field also gives indications of space. The development of the close-up on a longer lens set at an aperture that threw the background out of focus became a staple style convention.

As film technology evolved with faster film speeds and more efficient lighting, it was possible, if desired, to have a much greater depth-of-field and, when staging in depth, to have all the artistes in sharp focus. Deep focus shots were a feature of Greg Toland's work on ‘Citizen Kane’, released in the spring of 1941. He used the hard light of arc lamps that had been used for Technicolour in the mid-1930s, the new faster film stock and coated lenses which allowed an ƒno that could hold foreground close-ups and background figures in focus. Many of the deep focus shots, however, were achieved by back projection, optical tricks or special effects.

Staging in depth became a feature of the 1940s and 1950s up to the expansion of colour and the use of anamorphic lenses for widescreen. The standard CinemaScope lens provided for a 46° angle (50 mm), but equivalent to 16.5° (30 mm) in normal 35 mm format. Colour film was less sensitive than the faster black and white stock and deep focus was restricted to exteriors because of the high lighting levels required for larger fnos in the studio. As mentioned in Chapter 8, early widescreen films were composed with artistes staged across the frame rather than in depth. A common aperture setting in the early years of widescreen was f2.8. With focus on artistes at 10 ft, depth-of-field extended from 8 ft to 12 ft. Any foreground MCU would have been out of focus.

As colour film increased in speed, a full range of lenses could be used ranging from 3° to 60°. In the 1980s and 1990s longer lenses were used as the fashion for following action on tight shots became popular. A major influence of this style was the Japanese director Akira Kurasawa who, in his monochrome 1950s films, used long focal length lenses on battle scenes.

In the 1960s and 1970s, many countries converted their TV services to colour. The standard four lens turret on a monochrome camera, which had a range of lenses of typically 9°, 16°, 24° and 35°, was replaced with a zoom lens. In the following decades the zoom range improved from 10:1 up to 50:1 and decreased minimum object distance (MOD) to hold sharp focus. This was particularly vital in studio productions and, with some zooms, the MOD was decreased from 3 m down to 0.5 m. Using a wide-angle lens with the camera close to the action produced accelerated action and movement. It was also popular for depicting a surreal, distorted view of everyday ‘reality’.

Depth-of-field

Depth-of-field is the term used to describe the range of acceptable focus in a shot. It is a function of camera aperture and the distance of the main subject from the camera. A small depth-of-field created by wide open aperture and a narrow lens angle, for example, is a useful compositional device for separating foreground subject from background. Because of its lack of background detail, if this style is used continuously it gives very little information to the audience about setting or location. Withholding information about the ‘geography’ of the action creates mystery and is more expressionistic than a large depth-of field that provides more information and appears to be more ‘realistic’. If the director wishes to provide a shot to explain the location of the action, he/she would most likely use a medium lens angle (25°-40°) as a scene-setter.

The depth-of-field of a shot will control the staging of the performers. A large depth-of-field will allow staging in depth unless it is possible to rack focus between foreground and background. This is usually achieved, for example, by being sharply in focus on a foreground performer who turns to a background artiste. The focus is racked back to this character on the turn of the head. Racking focus can be used in a number of ways in a shot but, to be effective, it requires a narrow depth-of-field to provide a significant change in focus and motivating action to trigger the focus shift. Throwing the focus to different parts of the frame changes compositional emphasis without reframing.

The sensitivity of the film stock has varied over the years. After 1940 panchromatic film stock was more sensitive than previous orthocromatic film and allowed a black and white fashion for staging in depth. The wider the film gauge the less depth-of-field and the introduction of widescreen and less sensitive colour stock produced a small depth-of-field that required shallow staging to hold focus. This lasted until colour negative film improved in speed.

In television, the same decrease in depth-of-field occurred with the introduction of colour until colour cameras improved their sensitivity. The depth-of-field in studio productions is conditioned by lighting levels. A smaller depth-of-field is often created for dramatic effect but large depth-of-field is often a convention of entertainment shows with large glossy sets. Many television productions feature unrehearsed and spontaneous events. Rapid shot change requires rapid focus and if the cameraman cannot predict the direction of movement a larger depth-of-field helps in following focus. On a narrow-angle lens this is only of marginal help.

Camera movement

A changing viewpoint is one of the unique features of film and television. It allows the spectator to travel through space and take up a new vantage point. A camera movement into a scene takes the audience into the film ‘space’. The use of camera movement to create a film style has taken many forms, from the 10-minute single takes of Hitchcock where the camera moved through sets that were peeled away like an onion to allow access, to the fluid lens of contemporary Steadicam technique. Camera movement is another crucial element of image making and is dealt with in Chapter 16.

Staging the artistes

The Dustin Hoffman character in ‘Tootsie’ (1982) was reproached by his agent for causing trouble on a commercial shoot. ‘But I was dressed as a tomato in that commercial’, he protested, ‘Tomatoes don't sit down’. How and when performers move, sit, stand or handle props is often a contentious topic on a film or TV set. There is often actor movement required to justify a camera move and there is movement that the actors feel is necessary for their performance. Staging a performer/presenter, that is, where they stand or move whether in a factual or a fiction production is a crucial part of the look or style of the shot.

There have been a number of different fashions in staging styles from the spread-across-the-frame shots of silent movies to the elaborate foreground and background choreography of staging in depth. Staging and its relationship to composition is discussed in more detail in Chapter 15.

Studio or location shooting

Although it would appear that location backgrounds would be cheaper than constructed scenery in a studio, it has often been the case in the past that a studio complex, like factories, needs a throughput of productions to cover the cost of premises and permanent staff. Television studio complexes for many years handled drama and soaps almost on a production belt system, with overnight ‘set and light’ to facilitate rapid turnaround of the facilities. Small crews manning portable video cameras allowed drama productions to move out of the studios onto the streets. This often coincided with a production desire to be more ‘realistic’. In the past, the Hollywood studio production often favoured a very stylized appearance that maximized the glamorous presentation of its stars. The full-time technicians employed by the studios were very skilled at this form of presentation (see Lighting and composition, Chapter 13). Even those films with considerable exterior scenes would be shot entirely in a studio in order to control costs and be close to the watchful eye of management.

A change in storytelling and type of story appeared in the 1950s when feature films took to the streets with productions such as ‘Panic in the Streets’ (1950). Of course, silent comedies had been out on the streets 30 years before, whether it was Laurel and Hardy moving a piano up a very long flight of stairs or the Keystone Cops causing traffic havoc in comedy chases. The gritty realism of ‘Panic in the Streets’ could only be captured at real locations, often with actuality lighting. No set could ever have the patina of use of an actual bar. Costume drama often faces the same problem when it tries to reproduce ‘poverty’ clothing. It is possible to dirty down cloth to make it grimy and stained but it is impossible to reproduce the threadbare and worn appearance of clothing that has had a lifetime of wear.

Shot structure and editing

Editing has such a significant effect on a production that it requires a separate chapter. See Chapter 17.

Stylistic flourishes

There are a number of stylistic ‘flourishes’ that occur across the history of film and television. Often they enjoy a brief popularity before falling into disuse. Then suddenly, in a retro revival, they have a brief renaissance. Amongst the more common effects are:

   flare – the deliberate introduction of degradation across the frame caused by sun or hard light source. The cinematographer on ‘Easy Rider’ said the studio previously would not let them use flare and always wanted well exposed films because of drive-in audiences;

   filters – there is a wide range of filter effects from diffusion to high contrast;

   smoke – acts as a three-dimensional filter allowing light to be shown, e.g., a beam of sunlight, etc.;

   canted camera – the Dutch tilt or canted camera has had various revivals over time. Carol Reed was a great exponent of the canted camera in ‘Odd Man Out’ (1946) and ‘The Third Man’ (1949). Also in canted low angles;

   pulsed zooms – the zoom is rapidly zoomed in and out many times, sometimes on the beat of the music in a music video. As an effect it was superseded by the flexibility of digital effects, although sharp jittery zoom pulls are often used in alternative, punk style – see below;

   freeze frame – one of the most famous freeze frames was at the end of François Truffaut's Quatre Cents Coups’ (1959) but as a stylistic flourish it has been used in many films;

   whip pan – the whip pan has a long tradition and is still seen in contemporary films;

   vignettes – opening and closing circle vignettes were a feature of silent films and are usually employed as a stylistic reference to their period of film making;

   wipes, etc. – wiping to a new scene or image is mainly used in television, although film travelogues at one time made frequent use of the wipe.

There are a number of other visual conventions such as montage, etc., which are dealt with below in specific styles.

Multi-camera live television conventions

Film is a record of an event edited and assembled after the event occurs. Live television is a presentation of an event as it occurs. The unique quality of an electronic camera is its ability to produce a picture that can be instantly transmitted. This entails a production technique that involves a number of people perfecting their individual contribution in a production group simultaneously as the event is transmitted. To coordinate such a group activity, it is essential to plan and have some measure of rehearsal before transmission or to rely on standard production conventions that are understood by everyone involved.

Standard television multi-camera conventions grew out of film technique and the same objective of disguising technique in order to suspend disbelief in the viewer was adopted. The problem for actuality television was not to recreate ‘real time’ as in discontinuous film shooting but to combine a number of camera viewpoints of an actuality event so that, for example, change of camera angle or cutting between different shot sizes was not obtrusive and distracting to the viewer. The aim once again was towards an ‘invisible technique’.

Figure 12.1 Multi-camera studio production

Television camerawork tradition includes multi-camera shooting, rapid production techniques and continuous, impromptu framing adjustments. It may seem paradoxical to suggest that speed and flexibility may be just as rigid a convention as any dogmatic rule but, because of the need for a ‘conveyor belt’ production technique in programme making, productions continually rely on quick workable technique and reject or avoid innovation that may be time-consuming or unfamiliar. Speed of application is a convention and a necessity but frequently leads to shot compositions that have some ‘rough edges’ that have never been fully resolved, owing to the shortage of rehearsal/recording time.

The roots of this multi-camera tradition began with the constraints of live television. Live television had all the advantages of immediacy –as it happened so you saw it. Sport, quiz, discussion or drama were sliced up and presented by continuous camera coverage. Production techniques were pioneered, shaped and perfected to accommodate any event that could be staged in or out of a television studio. Lacking the ability to edit, every event dictated its own timescale. If a writhing footballer in a live match took two minutes to ‘act out’ that every bone in his body was broken, then every second of his agony was faithfully transmitted. Whilst a more legitimate actor in a multi-camera drama might benefit from a continuity of performance similar to his experience in the theatre, the cameraman's activity often reflected the tempo of the production varying from frantic haste to beat the cue light, to a leisurely pull out from the ringing phone to allow actors from the previous set to scuttle in under the lens, seat themselves and look, as they came into shot, as if they had been waiting for that particular phone call for hours. The premier advantage of television compared with film was that it reached an enormous number of people instantaneously. It was also cheaper.

Five, 30-minute ‘soap’ episodes could, within five studio days, be rehearsed and recorded at a fraction of the cost of a similar length feature film There was no point in comparing film with television, they were different animals. Soap drama is topical and consumed like a daily newspaper whereas a feature film has a much longer commercial life to recover its financial and creative investment.

Multi-camera television drama is anchored to the clock. If an actor takes ten paces to cross the set, then in some way that time duration will have to be accommodated by the camera coverage or extensive post-production editing will be required. Time and space are the controlling factors for production staging and shooting. A number of shots have to be delivered from a variety of compromise positions. Time to get to the shot, time to deliver the shot and time to reposition for the next shot are fixed by the timescale of the continuous event in front of the cameras. Because of the pressure of time and space many shots in live, or recorded as live, television were a poor compromise between what could be achieved and what was possible to achieve.

The introduction of the portable video camera/recorder allowed the same flexibility of application as a film unit with even greater opportunities in image manipulation in post-production. Drama continued to be shot on video, especially in the hugely popular genre of the twice/thrice-weekly ‘soap’ series. Discontinuous recording and single-shot takes could have avoided the compromise of multi-camera drama shooting but the full advantage of this is constrained by cost, experience and convention.

Cost is the most restrictive factor in the transition from quickly producing large chunks of usable television direct from a studio to a method of production that involves both an extended studio production period and an extensive post-production period. Television has an insatiable appetite for new programmes and, with a history of rapid production techniques, it was unlikely that any innovation that increased costs would achieve immediate acceptance. Television studios were designed and equipped to produce a finished product – a ‘live’ transmission. Although many programmes are discontinuously recorded, the mechanics of production are conditioned by a capital investment in a technique that has been superseded. Lightweight location drama other than soaps has side-stepped this tradition and developed its own innovations, its expansion powered not only by the impetus of financial savings but by the results it has achieved.

Obviously there is a part of television that is live or rooted in live technique. Some actuality events such as sport or public events have their own sacrosanct timescale and capitalize on television's ability to transmit instantaneous pictures. There are also those programmes that are simply communicating information and require an unobtrusive technique free from interpretation. Obtrusive technique is usually grabbed by productions seeking ‘spontaneity’ – pop, quiz and entertainment productions that flash the viewer with visual cacophony in an attempt to communicate in perpetual motion that ‘it's all happening here and now’.

The video look

The criticism that electronically generated pictures are unsubtle and scrappy has a basis of truth. Too many shots occur that are expedient rather than essential – mass produced and instantly forgettable. Built into the television system is a back-log of technique that has evolved to meet a condition that is no longer a prime consideration – namely that all productions have to be transmitted live.

Multi-camera records real time. This often results in superfluous movement being left in, otherwise the production process would gravitate to single shot/single take and lose its economic advantage of speed. Single camera/single shot has an entirely different feel to it. Time and space can be manipulated in many different ways to provide a flow of images that defy location and time continuity.

The effect on video camerawork of smaller budgets and a tradition of ‘cheap and quick’ technique compared with film is that frequently shot structure is expedient rather than optimum. This often results in staging action for two or more cameras to save time on separate setups. Shots are often continued past the point where a cut would occur in a film, which results in fidgety reframing by the use of zoom or track to accommodate additional artistes entering or leaving shot. This adjustment of frame (although often expertly disguised) is a common occurrence in video camerawork, probably because the director is constantly monitoring the shot and is prepared to trade-off a less than satisfactory framing against the cost and time of another set-up.

Multi-camera shooting appears to encourage a convention of complicated stagings that require small ‘zooms’ and ‘tidy-up’ camera movement to keep a reasonable frame. This can be instantly achieved in a television studio because of smooth floors and cameras mounted on pedestals, unlike feature film production where more deliberation and time is needed if a change of camera movement is required. Television production often favours the two person or three person shot with people edging into small areas of frame. Multi-camera shooting provides a director with an instantly available wide range of shots. This in practice can deteriorate into a choice of shots covering a number of average and sometimes indifferent groupings and staging.

Standard shot sizes

As multi-camera television camerawork dealt with uninterrupted action in a timescale created by the nature of the event covered, ‘real’ time had to be continuously covered in a mixture of shot sizes and/or camera development. Shot size became standardized around abbreviated shot descriptions such as MCU (medium close-up), CU (close-up), MS (medium shot), LS (long shot) and o/s 2s (over-the-shoulder two shot), etc., in order that matched shot size could be achieved to allow invisible cuts between cameras. Cameramen had to provide cutting points either pre-rehearsed or by monitoring what the rest of the camera crew were providing. Same size shots of the same subject would not cut together, neither would widely different amounts of head room. Idiosyncratic personal composition by a cameraman would remain unnoticed if they were responsible for the whole of the visual production but would immediately be apparent if intercut with standard camera technique provided by the rest of the crew. Camera technique remained invisible provided it conformed to certain criteria. These conventions are inherited by everyone working within live or multi-camera recordings unless there is a production requirement for shot change to be obtrusive and obvious.

Figure 12.2 Standard shot sizes

The introduction of the zoom and television picture composition

Before the introduction of colour television in the late 1960s, most television productions were shot using prime lenses. Although zooms were extensively used on outside broadcasts, many studio productions used cameras that were fitted with a rotating turret equipped with four lenses of different focal length. The precise lens angle depended on tube size and camera manufacturer but the four standard focal lengths chosen had lens angles of approximately 35°, 24°, 16° and 8°.

Because of the standardization of lens angle, camera scripts and studio floor plans were produced giving the lens angle and camera position for each shot. Although shots were modified during rehearsal, the initial choice of lens influenced the look of the production and established a discipline of matched size and perspective of intercut shots. Over time, each prime lens was recognized to have a well-defined role in multi-camera studio production.

The 24° was considered the ‘natural’ perspective lens and allowed camera movement and was often used on ‘two’ shots or ‘three’ shots. The 16° and the 8° were close-up lenses and, although an occasional camera movement was attempted on the 16°, it was likely to result in an unsteady frame because of tracking over an uneven studio floor and the difficulty of holding frame with a fluid head using a narrow angle. Camera movement with an 8° lens intensified this problem and was seldom if ever used for tracking.

Small depth-of-field also inhibited camera movement on these lenses as the cameraman had to physically move the camera himself, adjust the framing and follow focus. This required three hands if constant focus pulls were required on the narrow lens.

The 35° lens was considered ‘wide angle’ and allowed complex shot development without the twin problems of focus and the considerable amount of camera movement required to achieve significant change of viewpoint if a smaller lens angle was employed.

This arrangement of a set of four lenses created a tight discipline in production and aided the twin objectives of matched shot size and perspective matching. Two cameras being intercut on two people talking would, as a matter of good technique, use the same lens angle and camera position/height relative to the participants. The introduction of colour cameras, which were universally fitted with a zoom because of the need for precise alignment of the lens to the four and later three tubes required for colour, caused a significant change in picture composition and in camera movement.

In the first years of television colour production, there was a determined effort to continue with the four-lens convention by using a zoom shot box that had been pre-set to the four standard lens angles. Tracking the camera was usually favoured in preference to zooming, although pop music programmes quickly utilized the visual impact of zooming.

As the range of zoom angles increased, a greater variety of shot sizes were possible from any specific camera position. This allowed the perspective of some types of conventional shots to change considerably. Zoom lenses with a 55° wide angle became common and allowed a shot development that was more dynamic because of the greater exaggeration of artist to background movement. At the narrow end of the zoom, lens angles of 5° allowed close-ups of artistes at the back of the set with the corresponding reduction in the perspective of the depth of the shot.

The most noticeable change in the style of television camerawork came with the use of the zoom to accommodate movement, to trim the shot depending on the action. Whereas in the past, with monochrome cameras, the staging of the artistes may have been repositioned during the blocking of the show to accommodate a fixed lens angle, a flexible lens angle allowed the shot to be recomposed by zooming in or out. Gradually lens angle and camera position were not pre-plotted but relied on the flexibility of the zoom as a variable lens angle to find acceptable framing. This was sometimes to the detriment of matched shots. Intercut shots could be matched on subject size, if not on perspective, by a rapid adjustment of the zoom. The prejudice against zooming even in drama was relaxed until a point was reached where zooming predominated in television production. There is a strong compositional distinction between zooming and tracking which is dealt with in Chapter 16.

Portable cameras

With the widespread use of portable video camera/recorders, the method of discontinuous single shot shooting shared exactly the same technique problems of film Shooting with editing in mind became an essential part of that technique. Composition, size of shot, camera movement, camera position and lens angle had to be carefully selected in order to facilitate a final ‘seamless’ string of edited images.

The extensive use of video portable cameras, especially in news and actuality programmes, was also responsible for a change in compositional style. The ability to position rapidly a lightweight video camera broke down the conventions established with turret cameras. A style evolved, particularly in programmes aimed at young people, where the camera was constantly kept on the move. Although some compositional conventions were retained, the prime intention was to inject excitement and pace by nervous, erratic camera movement.

In its extreme form, it was similar to the subjective style of the camera as an actor with other participants in the production treating it as a person. In this style, if someone spoke out of frame, the camera would swerve to find them. It moved around discussions and in and out of groups with very little attempt (or inclination) to disguise the movement. This was a studied attempt to avoid conventional production technique in an endeavour to create a different visual appearance to that seen in mainstream television.

Customary technique

In television, the nature of many programmes (e.g., sport, discussion, etc.), does not allow precise information about shots either to be rehearsed or confirmed. An experienced television cameraman will know the range and type of shots that will be required in each type of programme. A knowledge of programme-making formats must be added to an understanding of technique and how technology influences technique. Any competent cameraman, for example, will automatically apply the appropriate production methods to a news broadcast, and then be able to switch on the following day to the appropriate production methods of a pop concert. Often different techniques are not compatible.

A production team will expect each member of the unit to be familiar with the customary techniques of the programme format in production. Nobody, for example, will have the time to explain the rules of a sport that is being transmitted live. They will assume that the cameraman knows the standard TV response to different phases of the event.

Multi-camera production technique relies on the assumption that every member of the production crew is equipped with a knowledge of the conventions of the specific programme format and has a thorough mastery of the basic skills in their particular craft. Information about shots will be supplied during rehearsal and/or during transmission/recording, but it will be assumed by the Director that the camera crew will respond with customary technique to the specific programme requirements (example – matched shots for interviews).

Genre

Within film as well as TV production there are recognizably separate genres that have their own codes or visual conventions. For example, sports programming covers a team or individual competition that leads to a result. Documentaries have covered sports events in an impressionistic and symbolic style without bothering about results or who was competing. It is unlikely that sports fans would accept a camera coverage that ignored who won and simply concentrated on the ‘poetry of motion’ of the sports competitors.

To a large extent, genre or the type of programming dictates which of the standard visual treatments will be used. These conventions alter over time as, for example, in sports coverage with the overlay of computer graphics to examine participants’ performance, but the crossover of one genre's visual style into another type of production is sufficiently uncommon to be noteworthy. For example, a western will be shot in a different style to a musical. They will both share a common visual grammar but will usually have the distinct convents of their genre. These separate sets of conventions are sometimes interchanged to inject a fresh presentation to an oft-repeated theme. Errol Morris in his documentary ‘The Thin Blue Line’ (1988) mixed crime feature film technique with the documentary genre to provide a truthful account of the innocence of a wrongly accused murderer. David Lynch's ‘Blue Velvet’ (1986) mixed film noir conventions with horror conventions.

Within the mass media, most films and TV productions will display stylistic replications and slight revisions rather than a complete rejection of standard conventions. Successful innovation when it occurs, is often rapidly copied and becomes part of the everyday visual grammar such as the freeze frame at the end of François Truffaut's Quatre Cents Coups’ (1959), Sam Pekinpah's slow-motion gunfight deaths, sepia tinting of films set in the past, etc.

Conventional documentary style

A standard documentary structure, popular for many years, involves an unseen presenter (often the producer/director) interviewing the principle subject/s in the film. From the interview (the questions are edited out), appropriate visuals are recorded to match the interviewee comments, which then becomes the voice-over. A professional actor is often used to deliver an impersonal narration on scientific or academic subjects. The choice of the quality of the voice is often based on the aim to avoid an overt personality or ‘identity’ in the voice-over whilst still keeping a lively delivery.

The camera can follow the documentary subject without production intervention, but often the individual is asked to follow some typical activity in order for the camera to catch the event, and to match up with comments made in previous interviews.

Television documentary attempts to deal with the truth of a particular situation but it also has to engage and hold the attention of a mass audience. John Grierson defined documentary as ‘the creative treatment of actuality’. How much ‘creativity’ is mixed in with the attempt at an objective account of the subject has been at the heart of debate for many years.

’Vérité’ as a style

The mini DV camera format has allowed the ‘verite’ style to proliferate. This type of documentary attempts to be a fly-on-the-wall by simply observing events without influence. It over-relies on chance and the coincidence of being at the right place at the right time to capture an event that will reveal (subjectively judged by the film maker at the editing stage), the nature of the subject. With this style, the main objective of being in the right place at the right time becomes the major creative task. There is often an emphasis on a highly charged atmosphere to inject drama into the story. It may use minimum scripting and research other than to get ‘inside’ where the action is estimated to be. The style often incorporates more traditional techniques of commentary, interviews, graphics and reconstruction, using handheld camerawork and available light technique.

Wildlife

Documentaries featuring the habitat and lives of animals are a perennially popular form of documentary. They often involve long and painstaking observation and filming to get the required footage, added to some very ingenious special effects set-ups. A programme about the Himalayan Black Bear also featured a sequence of the bear hunting for honey on a tree trunk that was filmed in a zoo. The director said it would have been impossible to film it in the wild and it was needed because it made the sequence stronger. It is commonplace in wildlife programmes to mix and match wild and captured animals.

Docusoap

The spontaneous style of ordinary people observed strives for ‘realism’ and neutral reportage but gives no clue to what has been reconstructed. The viewer is sucked into a totally believable account. Many professional film makers protest that the viewer understands their subterfuge and fabrication and they are forgiven for the sake of entertainment, involvement and pace. But do viewers understand the subtleties of programme making? The viewer needs to question what they are shown but, as ‘invisible’ techniques are designed to hide the joins, how can the viewer remind themselves at each moment that they are watching a construct of reality? A documentary crew followed a woman who repeatedly failed her driving test. One sequence involved the woman waking her husband in the middle of the night with her worries. Did the viewer question if the crew had spent each night in the bedroom waiting on the off-chance that this was going to happen or did they immediately think ‘this is a fake – a reconstruction?’.

Music videos

In 1975, Bruce Gowers directed a seven-minute musical video ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ featuring the pop group Queen. It started a trend of using videos to promote pop singles. It was the flexibility of the small portable video camera that led to the development of several contemporary styles of camerawork These styles did not arrive overnight but had a long pedigree that sometimes embraced German expressionist films such as ‘Nosferatu’ (1922), ‘The Cabinet of Dr Calagari’ (1919), the short surrealist films ‘Un Chien Andalou’ (1928) and "’Age d'Or’ (1930) of Luis Buriuel, the alternative ‘jump cut’ styles of Jean Luc Goddard, Richard Lester and the Beatles 1960s films, commercials and many other visual sources. This portmanteau of stylistic flourishes is often dubbed the ‘MTV’ style after the TV channel that transmitted many pop videos.

The main characteristics of the MTV style are:

   it ignores continuity of time and place;

   traditional ‘visual’ storytelling is replaced by an emphasis on place, feeling or mood, usually with abrupt discontinuity in time and place;

   music form and beat replace traditional continuity as the structuring device;

   pace becomes the source of energy that drives the audience's interest forward, not a ‘what happens next?’ storyline;

   the music video often involves fragments of performance but not particularly staged in one venue. These clips are juxtaposed with non-performance images similar to CD cover images;

   location and images often allude to the worlds of science fiction, horror, dream states or parodies of TV and film genres, TV formats, comic books and computer games;

   there is also the use of the knowing jokes about popular culture. This involves a mixture of admiration and derision for the second-rate or popular icons and allows the audience to be let in on the joke and invites the audience to join the performer in the conspiracy of ridicule. This is similar to the punk credo of ‘we know we can't play or sing – but then why are you paying money to see us!’.

MTV style

Music videos are similar to commercials in that there are many images combined in a very short time. Many visual decisions are made in post-production with a greater use of digital manipulation compared with other programme formats. A characteristic of the MTV style is continuous camera movement and very fast cutting – almost single frame – to inject pace. These flash frame sequences are contrasted with slow-motion shots of very mundane activities such as spooning sugar into a coffee cup. There is a heavy emphasis on the isolated image rather than the continuity of a flow of images, coupled with the continuous use of wide-angle distorted perspective and a preoccupation with surreal images such as a close up of an eyeball.

There is a search for the bizarre, fantasy or evocative imagery that attacks cause and effect. Many music videos tease the viewer into attempting to find a narrative logic that is missing. Events are juxtaposed for their disturbing effect. Discontinuous editing is used to fracture any temporal or spatial coherence. There is a lack of narrative construction in the shots and sequences are constructed from isolated arresting images similar to fashion photography. The content of the shot emphasizes feeling or atmosphere with no narrative construction or a coherent ‘message’.

Visual puzzles

Pop videos challenge the visual impulse to find order in diversity by using many more close-ups than long shots, which avoid revealing the context of a shot, and often the geography of the setting is not explained. There is often an emphasis on foreground with no information about background. This can be achieved either by long focal length lenses that flatten perspective or wide-angle lenses and crowded foreground with characters masking out background. The lighting treatment is often non-realistic using filters, and atmospheric locations are used to produce dream states and fantasy. The jump cut predominates, often with rapid cutting to generate pace.

Richard Lester

Richard Lester's films featuring the Beatles, ‘A Hard Day's Night’ (1964) and ‘Help’ (1965) were the first to move away from a continuous record of a performance to a more free-flowing stream of images that remained within the ‘feeling’ of the music. His technique included cinema verite, jump cuts, multi-cameras on the performances, rapid cutting and whip pans. Energy, in this style, takes precedence over realism.

This style moved away from the musicians/singers performing a number such as in ‘Singing in the Rain’ (1952), in favour of movement and rapid changes in location. A series of diverse images unified only by a soundtrack were presented, uninhibited by traditional rules of continuity. The films were a vehicle for the music and not structured around a plot and characterization. The ‘what happens next’ method of classic storytelling is replaced by fast-cutting imagery to replicate pace, energy and atmosphere.

The Beatles played themselves, which allowed them to step in and out of character and speak to the audience. This use of parody to break down the barrier between audience and performer became a popular device. The style voids cause and effect plots and any consistency in time or place. It concentrates on mood, feelings or to evoke atmosphere of a surreal location. The general movement called Post-Modernism shares a key feature of this style by reflecting on itself. Participants step outside of their video persona to comment on their video performance or the media in general. They in effect join the audience who are watching the performance and comment on the performance. MTV style emphasizes that it's a film – it's not real.

In a sketch in the Monty Python TV programme, two or three characters are ‘trapped’ in a featureless studio set. They are unable to exit through a door or window because they then find themselves on a pre-recorded film They cannot break out of a TV ‘performance’ even though the concept of a studio reality is proposed as having a greater reality than appearing on film The comedy works for the studio audience because they can see the characters in the studio set but can only see their images protesting on the playback of the film The performers acknowledge that they are being watched as opposed to maintaining an illusion that the performance is ‘real’.

Uncertainty as a style

If MTV style seeks to be less ‘realistic’ there is another style of crime fiction that attempts to persuade its audience that they are watching an authentic event. Standard Hollywood camera technique emphasizes content – the development of the narrative rather than highlighting the methods of production. In Steven Boccho's ‘NYPD Blue’ TV series the shooting style appears to continuously draw the audience's attention to the camerawork.

Characteristics of this visual style:

   every dialogue close-up has a twitch in the framing as if the cameraman has accidentally knocked the camera;

   in a diagonal tilt to a hospital entrance, for example, the camera overshoots the door and rapidly pans back and centres up. The camera appears to be uncertain of its final framing (see Figure 2.4);

   a fast pan with actor movement on a long focal length lens picks up another actor to follow moving in the opposite direction. The camera appears to be distracted or unsure of its priorities;

   a flash pan from an unimportant object picks up a moving subject that is immediately cut away from before their identity is fully established.

The viewer is continuously teased by random camera movement with very few static shots to establish or explain the ‘geography’ of the setting. This causes some viewers to complain of ‘jerky’ camerawork and distracting movement. They complain that they are distracted by the visual style and cannot lose themselves in the story. In effect, they are constantly being reminded that they are watching a film ‘NYPD’ camera moves are fast, staccato and obtrusive. There appears to be no attempt to hide the mechanics of film making. How does the camerawork style of ‘NYPD’ differ from the dozens of other TV crime series or feature films?

Some people may imagine that a hand-held camera and random unstructured shots are more real or more immediate, but film makers have always been looking for ways of communicating their message with maximum effectiveness. The unsteady camera is simply a recent variation on the many ways realism has been attempted in film and TV programme making.

The camera surprised by the action

When camcorders came into widespread use in broadcasting in the early 1980s, they were first used for newsgathering before entering general programme making. On-the-shoulder ‘wobblyscope’ became the standard trademark when covering impromptu action. War reporting or civil unrest were presented in news bulletins with the nervous ‘tic’ of a hand-held video camera. Realism appeared to be equated with an unsteady frame.

Cinema verite in the early 1960s linked on-the-shoulder camerawork with a new flexibility of movement and subject, but many film directors adopted the uncertainty of an unsteady picture to suggest realism and authenticity (see below, ‘JFK’ (1991), dir. Oliver Stone).

Many productions mimic the camera movement of ENG news coverage that, because the subject matter is unknown and unstaged, is frequently ‘wrong footed’ when panning or zooming Holding unpredictable action within the frame results in a different visual appearance from the calculated camera movement of a rehearsed shot. The uncertainty displayed in following impromptu and fast-developing action has an energy that these productions attempt to replicate.

The same visual characteristics are used by commercials designed to suggest that a carefully calculated piece of promotion is spontaneous and ‘real’. In one detergent commercial, for example, an unsteady camera follows a ‘reporter’ to the door of a house. A surprised ‘housewife’ opens the door and reacts to the reporter and film crew before endorsing the product. The style is a parody of a news ‘doorstepping’ sequence using the familiar ENG visual characteristics of unsteady camerawork and uncertain camera movement.

Hand-held camerawork became the signature for realism. Even costume dramas that had been meticulously researched for costume and setting and classically shot and lit would throw in an obligatory handheld sequence to add pace and spontaneity to a scene (Persuasion’, BBC TV, 1994).

An example occurs in Stanley Kubrick's ‘Dr Strangelove’ (1964), which has a sequence where a deranged American air force officer is under siege by American soldiers in his office on an air base. With him in the office is an English liaison officer player by Peter Sellers. As bullets spray the office windows the two take cover on the office floor. The set is lit and the action staged to emphasize the identity and feeling of the main actors. It is what can be termed mainstream camera technique. As the American officer moves towards the window, a camera move accompanies him and its movement matches the actors movement – it starts when he starts and stops when he stops. This is a characteristic of invisible technique. The audience can observe, but it is not overtly made obvious that they are watching a controlled and structured action.

When Kubrick cuts from this standard treatment of the interior to the soldiers advancing on the office, the camerawork style changes. It is now shot like war reportage. The camera is carried on the shoulder and there is a constant unsteady frame. Many shots are on a very long focal length lens that compresses depth, and action is often masked by interposed objects. The camera appears to be constantly surprised by the action. It has the visual signature of actuality coverage and the audience consciously pick-up on this ‘news’ style. It appears as if this is spontaneous action. It is out of the control of the director. It is real and immediate.

Of course, just as Kubrick controls the staging of the interior action and the smooth invisible camerawork, the exterior is equally under his control and he can, if he wishes, place every actor/soldier in position for a ‘well composed’ shot. He chooses not to because the unsteady, random nature of the apparently ad-lib exterior shooting allows him to fabricate the ersatz realism of news coverage. The visual language has been changed to suit the message.

Oliver Stone achieves the same effect in his film ‘JFK’ (1991), when he creates the visual appearance of a surveillance/training film of the Cuban rebels. This change in visual language is in contrast to the mainstream technique he uses in the rest of the film

Belief and disbelief

Film makers adopted the imperfections of hand-held camerawork as a style and also to symbolize an attitude to their material, but this ‘uncertainty’ style sends two conflicting signals to the audience.

There is the production attempt to recreate the authentic primitive’ unstructured news footage – the feeling in the viewer that he or she is watching a real event that is beyond the control of the film maker and therefore the camera has a difficult time to capture the action. But the rapid and unsteady camerawork that provides this impression also draws attention to itself.

If the audience continuously becomes aware of the methods of presentation, that is, if camera movement draws attention to itself, then this denies the reality of the action and suggests that the film is a piece of fiction – a fabrication of reality. The audience will be constantly reminded that they are being told a story and never lose themselves in the action. This style has to overcome the viewer's irritation of random, unstructured camera movement and the continuous nervous ‘tic’ of an unsteady camera.

’Medium Cool’

One influence on this style may have been the feature film ‘Medium Cool’ (1968). The director of this film was Haskell Wexler, an ex-news cameraman. One of the characteristics of news camerawork is that it is seldom possible to rehearse camera movement. News, by definition, is unrehearsed although a great deal of movement can be anticipated by an experienced cameraman. The uncertainty of what is going to happen is reflected in the look of news coverage. Whereas, in a feature film, each camera movement is carefully pre-planned and calculated, news coverage requires almost a ‘hose pipe’ squirting of the lens to follow whatever is happening as it happens.

At the beginning of ‘Medium Cool’ there is a discussion between a group of people at a reception. Haskell Wexler shoots the discussion as if it is unrehearsed and the cameraman has had no opportunity to discover in what order the speakers will talk. They are all actors and the scene could just as well have been scripted and shot-listed as any similar scene in a conventional narrative film Instead, Wexler imitates the look of a spontaneous news conference by his style of camerawork in order to make the discussion appear to be authentic and realistic.

The uncertain camerawork in ‘NYPD’ is similar to this news-style recreation in ‘Medium Cool’; it is a fabricated style. It appears as if the camera is surprised by events. Like the audience, the camera never seems to know what will happen next. This replication of news coverage is constructed by a set of visual mannerisms.

Camcorder style

Ignorance of technique may seem to be a curious influence on a style but the growth of amateur use of the video camera has spawned a million holiday videos and the recording of family events that appear remarkably similar in appearance to some visual aspects of production shot in the ‘camera surprised by events’ style.

The user of the holiday camcorder is often unaware of main-stream camera technique and usually pans and zooms the camera around to pick up anything and everything that catches their attention. They have little or no knowledge of camera shot structure and rarely if ever are the tapes edited. The result is a stream of unconnected and fast-moving shots that never settle on a subject and are restlessly on the move (i.e., similar to the production style of ‘NYPD Blue’).

Amateur pans and zooms are often uncertain in their execution. Being unrehearsed, they frequently change direction and, when they settle on a subject, the shot is usually not held long enough for the subject to be established. The results are remarkable consistent across the world from Japan to Iceland. Most of them are very similar and with very little visual interest except to the immediate circle of family and friends.

This ‘camcorder style’ is a home-grown technique of innocent simplicity practised with no intellectual concept of the craft or technique of professional camerawork. There are direct parallels with naive art, where Sunday painters produce at times extraordinary paintings because of their unawareness of main-stream art. Very accomplished artists (e.g., Miro, Picasso, Klee, etc.) were impressed by this naivety and the innocence of child paintings and primitive art and produced work that was heavily influenced by the ‘untutored’ eye.

The maker of a holiday video has the same naive self-assurance that their work is presentable and accomplished as the naive painter. They assume that their work will engage their audience in the same way as main-stream video production.

Video diaries

The appeal of this ‘innocent eye’ approach has been taken up by broadcasting organizations who have loaned camcorders to the ‘man in the street’ for them to make video diaries of their own lives. The novice cameraman or woman is given a brief explanation of the mechanics of the camera and then left to their own devices to film whatever they wish.

The broadcasters claim that the appeal of this ‘camcorder style’ is its immediacy, its primitive but authentic style. It eliminates the professional crew who, by their presence in a location, may have an undue influence on the participants. The resulting untutored camerawork provides an alternative to the standard styles inherited from the ‘invisible technique’ tradition.

Most European video diaries, however, are not the raw and rough outpourings of an ‘innocent eye’. Broadcasters usually make certain that the material acquired by the amateur cameraman is carefully structured and cut by professional editors. The transmitted material uses very sophisticated editing techniques on very unsophisticated camerawork.

There appears to be a stylistic confusion or mismatch between the primitive ‘honesty’ displayed by unsophisticated amateur camerawork that is cut using professional editing techniques in order to make the video diary ‘watchable’ by a mass audience. If it is acceptable that the camerawork can be crude and lack visual subtlety why not bring someone off the street to edit the tape and extend the principle to the ‘innocent’ editor?

Low-tech

There has been a style backlash against the high definition, high quality video images that are possible with digital television production. These ‘low-tech’ stylists choose sub-broadcast equipment such as Super-8 film and domestic DV video cameras to create grainy, substandard pictures for their productions, in marked contrast with the usual highly polished commercial images. They have defiantly chosen to be a counter-culture to the over-crafted film and television product. They are looking for another version of authenticity by suggesting that image quality that is so good that it is invisible is masking reality.

Punk – the cult of the incompetent

There is a style of camerawork that falls between the innocence (or ignorance) of the domestic camcorder user and the conscious alternative technique created by groups such as cinema verite. Its chief characteristic is an aggressive hose-piping of the camera that sprays backwards and forwards to follow anything that moves or speaks. This style of ‘punk TV’ can be seen in TV youth programmes, music videos and some ‘people’ shows.

The style is a bogus naivety similar to the punk musicians of the 1970s who were deliberately inept at singing and playing their instruments and used their inadequacy in technique to taunt their audience. They aggressively displayed their incompetence. Anyone can play in a band, they suggested: why do you have to be a musician? They rejected what they saw as snobbishness in the music establishment and rejected any concepts of musicality or ‘quality’.

‘Punk TV’ camerawork also values the energy, spontaneity and ‘bad taste’ of the spray-can approach in camera coverage. These productions reject the standard visual conventions and attempt to provide their own individual language. It can be summarized as ‘do your own thing – shout don't sing’. Punk music was almost a rejection of communication. Some bands hated applause. They wanted no confirmation that they had made a connection with their audience.

Some ‘punk TV’ camerawork and productions display the same nihilism with a disregard for clear communication, an ignorance of conventions moving into an aggressive display of lack of technique. It is an ‘in your face’ yobbish style with a deliberate avalanche of handheld shots to zap the viewer.

These, of course, are deliberate production decisions in order to inject pace and texture into the narrative. The camerawork may appear anarchic but there is usually a precision to the cuts when music is shot. Unless the director is completely inept, the cuts come on the beat and match the mood and the pace of the number. In practise very few hand-held styles of camerawork used in productions will abandon narrative editing. The camerawork may be prized for its ‘rawness’ and spontaneity but it will almost certainly be organized and structured by conventional editing technique with just a few jump cuts thrown in for flavour.

Defocused ‘blobs of colour’ style

Staging in depth, the wide-angle look with deep focus, had been in vogue from the late 1930s to the mid-1950s but two innovations caused problems with this style of camerawork. Early CinemaScope (circa 1954) required a separately focused anamorphic supplementary lens attached to the front of a 50 mm lens, resulting in a reduced exposure. In addition, the widespread use of Eastman colour negative, which was less sensitive than the fastest black and white stock, prevented the large depth-of-field in studio interiors that had been obtained in such films as ‘Citizen Kane’. As long focal length lenses became available for the new widescreen formats a new style gradually evolved.

A long focal length lens and appropriate camera distance not only compresses space but produces attractive defocused abstract background patterns. Andrejz Wajda using a 250 mm lens noted: ‘The background, dotted with secondary elements, loses its aggressiveness. The image softens, the medley of colours melts into flat tints of colour ... The foreground, however, is transformed into a coloured haze that seems to float’ (Double Vision: My Life in Film).

The film maker who inspired and popularized this style of out-offocus, misty blobs of colour was Claude Lelouche with his film ‘Un homme et une femme’ (1966). In fact, Wajda and his cameraman called the fuzzy foreground shapes they devised with a long focal length lens, lelouches’. The style has had a long and enduring influence both in commercials and feature films. Lelouche was not the first director to explore the abstract qualities of a long focal length lens; Antonioni's 11 desert Rosso’ (1964) was shot with lenses of 100 mm upwards but ‘Un homme et une femme’ captured the creative imagination of a number of film makers, e.g., the 500 mm zoom lens used on the cycle sequence in ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ (1969).

The main characteristics of this style are the use of a very long focal length lens, shooting against the light and the use of heavy diffusion. Lelouche did not use diffusion but, because of the poor optical performance of long focal lenses at this time and his fondness for allowing subjects to move away or towards the lens without following focus, it appears, when shooting against the light, that diffusion had been used. Flare and light behind the actor had always been avoided by American cinematographers. One reason, given by Gordon Willis, was that studio bosses wanted a good, well-contrasted picture to cater for the drive-in audiences viewing outside with less than perfect film projection. With the move away from studio feature production to independent production, possibly cinematographers were free to use flare or very dark scenes, such as in ‘The Godfather’ (1972).

Heavy diffusion on a lens produces a scattering of white light over the whole frame as well as a loss of definition. Foreground and background defocused blobs of colour caused, for example, by flowers provide romantic, benevolent colourful ‘nature’ images that are still exploited to date. If, on a long focal lens, focus pulls are added through foreground leaves or shooting reflections in water against the light, a whole range of stylized effects are available. The reflections on moving water can, of course, be tweaked up for greater effect by the use of star filters.

The reconstruction of a period

Television versions of classic books such as the novels of Jane Austen involve a production quest for period authenticity with authentic costume, settings and characterization. But what constitutes an authentic film style of the period? What would be an authentic camerawork/production style when shooting any subject before the development of cinema?

A costume drama set in the eighteenth century used hand-held cameras on a banquet to replicate 1990s ENG style of camerawork. Is this an anachronism? Would the director accept a stylized acting performance (e.g., Marlon Brando ‘method’ acting) or would this be considered ‘out of character’ with the period? If costume and settings are in period for a decade in the twentieth century should the film style of the production be in the same period? The same arguments have raged for many years, for example when Shakespeare plays are performed in modern dress.

There is a paradox of the quest for authentic period costume dramas that seek authentic settings, food, locations, etc., but use contemporary styles in shooting. The interpretation of a past age may be completely bogus when translating from text to images. The construction of a Jane Austin novel is of its time. The television images of this novel are also of their time and may be in direct conflict. Audiences often dislike modern-dress versions of Shakespeare that seek to reinterpret the sixteenth century in terms that are relevant to twentieth-century audiences. But can Jane Austin be re-written in the style of Dashiell Hammett and remain true to the original author's intentions? Viewers may be image illiterate and be impressed by authentic settings while totally ignoring the anachronism of the shooting style. Should adaptations of Edwardian novels be staged in the style of early films?

The unconscious expression of contemporary fashion and attitudes can be seen in the set/prop design of science fiction films that are intended to be set in the future. Each decade's prediction of what the future will look like is heavily based on the current contemporary design ideas.

Sports coverage

Live sports coverage has a curious combination of factual and subjective camerawork. The broadcast of a sports event can be a reasonably accurate record of the event. Real people engaged in an activity with an unknown result. The camera coverage of the game can introduce a strong subjective influence. For example, the final of a tennis tournament will provide a point by point description of the match's progress. The big close-up of the participant's face is a production effort by the director to interpret the feelings of the player. A close-up in drama carries a great deal of emotional intensity. It is hoped that the story of the tennis match will have the same type of intensity when the visual grammar of fiction is used on a sporting event.

Changing styles

The American film academic David Bordwell proposed that there was continuity in film style over time with the occasional revision.

My research questions, focusing on the elaboration of norms, have led me to stress continuity. The lesson of this is quite general. Modernism's promoters asked us to expect constant turnover, virtually seasonal breakthroughs in style. In most artworks, however, novel devices of styles or structure or theme stand out against a backdrop of norm-abiding processes. Most films will be bound to tradition in more ways than not; we should find many more stylistic replications and revisions than rejections. Especially in a mass medium, we ought to expect replication and minor modifications, not thoroughgoing repudiation. We must always be alert for innovation, but students of style will more often encounter stability and gradual change. (Bordwell, 1997)

Summary of the history of style

Changes in style and technology do not confine themselves to a specific decade or country. Here are a few changes over the past 100 years.

   1895-1910: this was an age of invention and experiment in film technique. Style was not so much a considered application of technique as the result of the early pioneers’ discoveries.

   1910-1940: by the end of the silent period the Hollywood studio system was in full operation and began to shape style. This resulted in the recognizable visual styles of the major studios. Warner Brothers had a gritty hard-edge realism; Universal had a moody darkness; MGM had the luxurious, high-key, glamorous look; at RKO, Van Nest Polglase oversaw the styling of the Astaire–Rogers musicals and ‘Citizen Kane’; Paramount had a gloss influenced by European sophistication.

   1940s: saw staging in depth, on the street shooting, the long take and elaborate camera development shots.

   1950s: sci-fi and long focal length lenses, widescreen styles influenced by limitation of widescreen lenses and depth of focus. Most television was live until the end of the decade, which imposed limitation of camerawork and story lines.

   1960s: the development of the lightweight camera and Nouvelle Vague shooting; widescreen solved the shape and the limitations of the screen.

   1970s: television established with TV sitcoms, soaps and more sophisticated sports coverage. The break-up of the Hollywood system allowed independent productions to be more adventurous.

   1980s: the lightweight video revolution in television liberated drama from the studios.

   1990s: advances in video post-production allowed film and TV to achieve control of effects and purely electronic-generated images.