Introduction to Filmmaking1-21

8/7/2019 Introduction to Filmmaking1-21

1/21

Introduction to

FilmmakingProduction Design

Sitges, Spain, 2011

1


2/21

I was aware that I didn'tknow anything about making

films, but I believed I couldn't

make them any worse than themajority of films I was seeing...

Bad films gave me the courage to

try making a movie.

Stanley Kubrick

2

2


3/21

The purpose is to make filmmakers aware o

the art and craft of production design for motion

pictures and to provide practical, technical, and

aesthetic guidance.

Well analyze when production designers are

doing their job.

Production design is associated with big-budget

and low-budget filmmakers think they will nothave access or that they wont need it.

3

3


4/21

Seeing the economic and creative success of

the cinematographer many people in Europe and America started to experiment and from the

essays and experiments surged new creative

languages, elements and technics that helped tell

the stories.Within this new findings were new shapes and

nstruments to move the camera, illuminate, edit,

etc, and soon the introduction of color and sound

were achieved.

From that point new schools and ways to

make movies emerge but all encompassed by the

universal cinematographic language.

4

4


5/21

Georges Mlis was the first person who made

films with artificially prepared scenes and for that hehas the merit of this new form of popular entertainment.

Within his film experimentation and as per singer

Paulus requirements, Mlis had to put a stage with

theatrical scenery and use 30 projectors for lighting,

this can be taken as the basic technique for creating

scenes.

After this experience he built a studio to protect

the films of the inclement weather and at the same time

begins seven episodes of the Greco-Turkish Warreproduced with models.

Then he can also have the merit of first art

director for incorporate to film the staging of a set.

5

5


6/21

6

6


7/21

In the early twentieth century and with aincipient film industry, the competition for the

market was fierce in both America and Europe.

Production requirements while creating the

largest studios of the world at the time, led LeonGaumont, director of the company to hire

separately the exsculptor Victorin Jasset as

director and Louis Feuillade as artistic director

and producer for their films, giving birth as to what is known as a production designer or art

director.

7

7


8/21

8

8


9/21

9

9


10/21

The Brighton School was characterised by their

contributions to the photographic language with thetraveling, and to the emerging language of cinema with

the editing intercuts (shot/counter shot), starting a new

syntax, distancing from the filmed-theatrical-plays and

further away from moving pictures. Their stories ranged

from drama to adventure and to create more excitementand veracity producers began filming in natural

landscapes with an exclusive cinematographic

narrative.

A representative film is Attack on a China Mission,

for its time a major production, comprising four set-ups

and cuttings between each. This was a first use of

montage: cutting between shots to heighten the drama

and to show reverse angles.

10

10


11/21

11

11


12/21

In 1908 the production company Film d'Art is

founded with the idea to end the monotonous themes,frivolous and vulgar at the time, especially Americans.

The idea of this school was resorting to majorclassics (Homer, Dickens, Shakespeare, Zola, Goethe,

etc..) And for the same year they premiered Themurder of the Duke of Guise, made in a stage on astunning scenery and represented by famous andrespected actors with a perfect characterisation.

The film as such resulted in a photographed

theatre, back to a still camera and a recital of dialogue.However, with the use of big actors created the starsystem, that is using the prestige of a star as a hook togenerate audience.

12

12


13/21

13

13


14/21

At the same time, in America, they were

experimenting with new genres: Westerns. Usingthemes and topics of the Wild West and as a main

distinctive feature and the long shots filmed in

very wild and extended landscapes.

The realisation of these landscapes werempossible to recreate neither by the best painters

and carpenters.

Also are recreated scenes of real life with a

very realistic approach to the subject, the settingsand the characters, giving way to super

productions located in diverse places and periods

thus generating new shooting techniques.

14

14


15/21

15

15


16/21

Then, with great commercial competence

for 1913 is filmed in Italy Cabiria by Piero Fosco,

where, for the first time and thanks to the

traveling shots the three dimensional sets were

enhanced, highlighting the importance o

architectural organization in the medium of film.

When italian filmmakers discover the

charm of the decoration and architecture create

the first film by avant-garde futurist Anton Giulio

Bragaglia Perfidious Charm (1916) in which were

sed objects as concave mirrors and prisms to

create an atmosphere.

16cont.

16


17/21

17

17


18/21

The Norse used the winter atmosphere of its

surroundings in order to use nature as another of hischaracters in the drama, creating psychological

environments in the stories, making this a natural

expressionist resource that gives way to the German

expressionist cinema.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is the most representative ofexpressionism. It breaks all the history of aesthetics and is

clearly evident in the scenery and lighting (even get to paint

light and shadow on the sets) oblique chimneys and windows

and using all the scenery as another element of drama and

psychological distress and creating a threat in the viewer.

This movie created with the boldness of the scenery an

impressive plasticity where scenic pictorial content is more

important than the movement of the camera for storytelling

as the previous film work.

18

18


19/21

19

19


20/21

The Soviet cinema was based on the testing of visual

communication and revolutionary propaganda of thecircumstances. Then influenced the research andtheory of filmmaking giving structure to theproduction and to the script.

Sergei Eisenstein interprets the visualcommunist propaganda under the light of Da Vincisrenascentism.

Creates in his films the most crude odocumentary realism, the symbolism and the

aroque expressionism, reflecting the brutalrepression with bloody images, putting into practicetheir theory: from the image to the feeling and fromthe feeling to the idea.

20

20


21/21

21

Introduction to Filmmaking1-21

Documents

Transcript of Introduction to Filmmaking1-21