Research about photography

This frame in A Fantasy Fear of Everything, builds a connection between the character and

the door behind by moving the camera.

It gives the audiences a feeling that something unknown is outside the door. It starts with

the character’s facial expression, moves as the door slowly open to catch the shadow

passing by, then it move back to the character in a quicker speed.

The character was scared by his own imagination and thought that something creepy is

outside the bathroom door behind him while he’s peeping. So this shot shows that what the

character’s doing, what he’s afraid of and build the connection between the door and the

character.

Camera movements can be used to promote story emotion as well as build up relationship

between characters.

In the film The Power of the Dog, Phil and Peter had an intense conflict in this scene. The

shot was started with a close-up of Peter’s hand, which grabbed another man’s sleeve. Then

the camera went up to shoot Peter’s face.

Camera keep moving around Peter and it became a over-shoulder frame of Phill.

It gradually went across the axis and made Phill at a lower position in the frame. So far, this

one successfully shot build the complex relationship between this two character, that is

Peter always wanted to be a man like Phill, while Pill thought that Peter’s already become a

greater man than himself.

This shot ends with a close-shot of the two characters, which Phill gently put his hand on

Peter’s neck. It’s an ending with tenderness.

Also, changing of focus can build up connections between different objects.

Zooming in

Out of frame narrative

In this scene from brighter summer, the character Xiao-Si went to find his friend to discuss

something about the girl he liked. We can see the two characters should be standing face to

face given by the two shots before.

And in this shot, the camera never move, however we know clearly that the one who was

outside the frame was Xiao-Si, what we can’t know about was his facial expression and how

he use his body language to respond his friend while this friend was clearly talking

unseemly about the girl he liked.

This kind of shots leave suspense. By not giving the whole part of information, they left

some details of the narrative unknown, so that audience will have their own imagination,

which might in fact be the most accurate image about the characters.

And since the camera tend to stay still or move slowly, the pace of the scene is going to be

steadier.

Breaking the forth wall

Breaking the forth wall generally means to let the story has conscious about it is a story. In

this scene from Fleabag, the character talks to the audience frequently, it gives the film a

sense of humor as the character discloses her life to the audience. Also, it is a good way to

shape the character’s personality cause she talks about what she thinks directly to the

screen.

In Pierrot le fou, the times characters talk to the screen are much less than Fleabag, they

give their opinion about what’s happening at the important parts of the film.

Characters in stories from French new wave are more likely to break the forth wall according

to the scripts. As directors from then are tend to focus the character itself, what he does,

what he says and what’s his view about the happening issue, which in some way represents

the director’s view. In those situations, breaking the forth wall is a chance director got to talk

to the audience about his own points about the world or society.

However, these wall-break scenes always show up in a less realistic film. Comparing with

another director from French new wave, Robert Bresson. He never lets his characters break

the forth wall while his films are center on characters themselves too.

In Robert Bresson’s films, he tend to create characters with multiple slight movements and

thoughts. He carefully designed every act the character did trying to revive them as what

they would look like in realistic. These movements came from the director’s meticulous

observation about everyday life and people he met. His films are like printers of life, as they

try to make the scenes as accurate as the real life itself.

Realistic is the most vital feature of Bresson’s films. If the characters from Bresson’s films talk

to the screen, this sense of realistic will vanish, as in real life, people won’t find a camera

that’s capturing them, nor will they realize that their life are in the story. Characters can’t

break the forth wall if the film tries to build up a sense of realistic with which it is going to

look like a mirror of life.

In order to make the wall-breaking shots counts, they should happen in films with less

realistic. However, timing of the wall-breaking scenes should be carefully chose too. In

order to avoid the film looks like a talk show, character can’t talk to the screen too

frequently. And for my 5 minutes film, it’s going to be at the beginning, the ending or the

most important scenes.

Finally I decided to put it at the ending. The last line of the film is the most important and

meaningful one, it would be even more powerful when it said by the character in terms of

he looking right at the camera. The scene happened when the character fail to suicide and

accidently found that all his trouble were temporarily solved but none of their solutions

came from himself, he was happy though and suddenly decided that he was not going to

die. The whole scene were full of absurd accident as well as the unexpected ending. The

final shot with character breaks the forth wall will surely punctuate the ending, also it gives

the audience a sense of ridiculer.