The Filmmaker’s Poetics: on Director of Photography's co-authorship

It is common for a purely technical profile to appear to overlap the artistic character of the director of photography, but, like the art director, his/her area of ​​activity is aimed at the design of the image and, in the case of cinema, the moving image. Certainly the technical details influence his/her work, but they are instruments whose purpose is to achieve the light and the idealized shots for the film. Thus, understanding the dynamics of light and framing becomes its object of study, and it is common for such professionals to dwell on the works of painters such as Vermeer, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, da Vinci, Velazquez, Delacroix, Monet, Degas, Hopper etc., trying to understand how these artists saw the "scenes" and how they represented them in their paintings: the arrangement of objects, the way that the light strikes the space, the light and dark zones, the arrangement of colors, the internal relations established by perspective and the balance of composition in relation to the point of view of the reader/spectator.

Thus, the director of photography is responsible for capturing, filling, punctuating, emphasizing and composing the viewing angles by which the spectator will contemplate the reality presented and represented by and in the film. His/her way of dealing with the information contained in the script and transmitted by the filmmaker is through the combination of the choice of shots, camera movements, the play of lenses and sensitive materials, and the arrangement and organization of intensity, direction, and nature of the lights to be used in each scene and / or framing.

He/she is a visual designer, and his/her work is closely connected to that of the art direction. So to discover, develop and structure the best way to convey the actions, environments, desires of the characters and the director's goals in each scene and in relation to the discourse adopted as a whole in the film, extracting not only what is on the surface, but to what lies between the lines, in the subtext of an exchange of dialogues, in the veiled intentions of each character, in the uncertain and oblique paths of an exchange of glances, in the dubious or logical unfoldings of a narrative. Only by the way of conceiving and composing the frames, the lighting, the camera movements and the set of lenses to be used in the film, shows exactly the function of this professional throughout the film production.

Shaping the photograph of a film is to observe and understand the interrelationships between what happens on the mise-en-scene and also on the narrative as a whole, for knowing the importance of each scene and to where the film moves in terms of dramatic intensity is part of its field of activity. As a designer, the photographer composes in line with the content of the reality represented or presented and the way that the director wishes to approach it. This means that what is described by the verbal language in the script becomes the starting point for the photographer who has to translate into images the idea impregnated inside the scene, the film and / or what is the idea that is searched by the filmmaker. Cinematography, therefore, is more than an image (BROWN, 2002, p. 30), transcends the desired aesthetic ideal and reverberates the information and concepts that underlie the film.

The complexity found in this process occurs because all the subsystems – art direction, acting, script, production design, direction etc. – involved in the construction of the film intersect and complement each other, aiming at the axis of action of the camera, that is, everything is designed to be captured and recorded by the camera. Therefore, the direction of photography is a game of interrelations in motion: light that focuses on space, objects, and staging and these are captured by the camera, which in turn is positioned, displaced and articulated in line with the material ahead. On the other hand, this articulation in motion still takes into account the nexuses that each plane has between itself or not, and with the narrative as a whole.

Still immersed in these interrelationships, there are many technical details attached to the camera itself, such as aperture of the diaphragm, type and quality of the sensitive material to be used, film speed (ISO or ASA), choice of lenses - wide angle, tele or normal - use of tools and / or devices for camera movements such as crane, traveling, dolly, steadycam, for example, and a range of resources to be used in the organization of lighting such as jellies, diffusers, hitters, reflectors etc. As Edgar Moura (1998, 78) explains, in cinematography "(...) the effects are always cumulative".

On the other hand, the cinematographer, despite all the attention to each shot and every scene, enjoys moments when he/she realizes that the cinematography brings incredible degrees of vividness, subtlety, freedom and inexpressible richness, for the way in which the mise-en-scene takes place in front of the shots and camera movements, is often of incredible beauty. Seeing, capturing, and accompanying such performances enveloped in distinct and disparate dramatic intensities, full of information, from the most subtle to the most profound and wide open, being transmitted / translated into moving image, usually leads to philosophizing about life (see MOURA, 1998, p.20).

It is common in lectures that these practitioners resort to high doses of theories - from Heraclitus to Freud - and from routine personal experiences, rather than complicated technical explanations. This is because the cinemagrapher's job is to perceive what no one perceives, to see and catch the nuances, peculiarities and singularities of what is ahead of him/her. And this, no matter how hard you try, no technical cinematography manual teaches.

From the filmmaker's point of view, the cinematographer plays a key role in his/her process of consolidating a career / style, because he/she is a co-author of his/her cinematic poetics. This bond, between filmmaker and cinematographer, is established in the moment that they realize that the film/work becomes something bigger because of the associations, collaborations and mutual adjustments on their performances, therefore, they are ecodependent. This ecodependent environment brings them their creative autonomy in relation to the film (s) and in relation to their professional life in future projects, as a team.

The film production implies the integration and interaction of a set of specialized agents in areas where, in other arts, they appear as dominant, but in the case of cinema, they are co-participants. The fact that the filmmaker makes the crucial decisions in the film making does not take out the co-authorship of the other agents involved with the film production. By following this perspective, what is observed is that these interactions (MORIN, 2008, p.105) that compose and shape a film's realization are configured as systemic, this is a set of semiotic agents with specific functions that interact towards the final attempt: to complish the work.

This ecological action, in which each member influences the creative work of the other in an ecodependent dialog, alerts us to the fact that the film production occurs in a complex and systemic environment. Thus, when this collaborative process emerges and evolves in a positive way, it is a two-way path guided by an empathy that renews itself, retroacts, permeates and surges throughout the phases of pre-production, production / shooting and post-production. This empathy allows competencies to enter into a stream of complementarity, that is, into a synergy of meaning.

However, such a work environment is not something simple to find or promote, because it depends on all the parties involved by exercising their tolerances, sharings, concessions and affinities. That is why when a director 'finds' a team whose members share the same synergy, this team remains with the filmmaker throughout his/her career and / or for many films, that is because it is the team that allows 'his/her-their' and also 'their-his/her' poetics and style. The filmmaker never walks alone, his/her style flourish through and among his/her team.

References:

BROWN, Blain. Cinemetography: Theory and Practice. Image making for cinematographers, directors and videographers. Oxford: Focal Press, 2002.

MERCADO, Gustavo. The Filmmaker’s Eye. Oxford: Elsevier, 2011.

MORIN, Edgar. O Método 1 – a natureza da natureza. Porto Alegre: Editora Sulina, 2008.

MOURA, Edgar. 50 anos luz, câmera e ação. São Paulo: Editora Senac, 1999.

The Filmmaker's Style: the roles of the Production Designer and Art Director

The film production implies the integration and interaction of a set of specialized agents in areas where, in other arts, they appear as dominant, but in the case of cinema, they are co-participants.

The fact that the filmmaker makes the crucial decisions in the film making does not take out the co-authorship of the other agents involved with the film production. By following this perspective, what is observed is that these interactions (MORIN, 2008, p.105) that compose and shape a film's realization are configured as systemic, this is a set of semiotic agents with specific functions that interact towards the final attempt: to complish the work.

Thus, a film is not only signed by an author, but by a set of authors, whose specialties complement each other in a recursive poli-circuit (MORIN, ibid., P. 231) of concessions, cooperations and associations between participating competencies.

In this kind of diverse and rich talent environment, there is always, in degrees greater or lesser, the risk of the entropy (MORIN, ibid., P. 94), the process that triggers the lost of a syntactic cohesion and semantic coherence, harming the intersemiotic exchanges between its various layers of meaning. These layers of meaning are coined and intertwined by the integrality and organization of the director of photography, art director, costume designer, actor and actress, music composer, screenwriter, director, etc. within a complex whole, the film.

Areas such as art direction and also the production design are intrinsically related on film's visual identity. These professionals have the responsibility to translate into images the concept idealized by the director and exposed on the script by the verbal language. In this way, an aesthetic vision of a film gains its first contours when passing through the mind of these visual designers.

Everything that appears on a fiction movie passes through its sieve, that is, every detail of the visual arrangement of the moving image has his/her touch. Therefore, this department is so crucial for the film director, because if, on the one hand, the script develops information on the paths of the story to be told, on the other, it is an art diretor, and also the production designer, who gives the visual dimension on what it was verbal. Thus, they work to situate the aspects and characteristics of visual representation, to be used in a film and to allow this aesthetic ideal sought by the filmmaker to become tangible, palpable.A film direction implies not a specialization, but a poly-functionality (MORIN, 2005, p. 346) is a multifaceted view of the integrating and copulating interrelations in and in which the poetics of cinema are immersed. He is an author who not only has to look at his creative process but also the market as ways of studying and a way how he will undertake his career / style.

From the filmmaker's point of view, the art director and the production designer play both a key role in his/her process of consolidating a career / style, because he/she is a co-author of its own cinematic poetics. Both share the same creative ambition and career. This bond, between filmmaker and art director/production designer, is established the moment they realize that the film / work becomes something bigger because of the associations, collaborations and mutual adjustments on their performances, therefore, they are ecodependent. This ecodependent environment brings them their creative autonomy in relation to the film (s) and in relation to their professional life in future projects, as a team.

This ecological action, in which each member influences the creative work of the other in an ecodependent dialog, alerts us to the fact that the film production occurs in a complex and systemic environment. Thus, when this collaborative process emerges and evolves in a positive way, it is a two-way path guided by an empathy that renews itself, retroacts, permeates and surges throughout the phases of pre-production, production / shooting and post-production. This empathy allows competencies to enter into a stream of complementarity, that is, into a synergy of meaning.

However, such a work environment is not something simple to find or promote, because it depends on all the parties involved by exercising their tolerances, sharings, concessions and affinities. That is why when a director 'finds' a team whose members share the same synergy, this team remains with the filmmaker throughout his/her career and / or for many films, that is because it is the team that allows 'his/her-their' and also 'their-his/her' poetics and style. The filmmaker never walks alone, his/her style flourish through and among his/her team.

References:

MORIN, Edgar. (2008) O Método 1 – a natureza da natureza. Porto Alegre: Editora Sulina.

_____________ (2005) O Método 2 – a vida da vida. Porto Alegre: Editora Sulina.

The Filmmaker's Eyes

First, what draws our attention when we are talking about cinema is the visual language, that is, the moving image. But while the visual field of the shot has edges, the visual world does not have it (SANTAELLA, 2001, p.185). Thus, the first challenge impose on filmmakers is to adapt to the rectangular space of the camera itself, that is, they had to choose what to frame and what to select in the world. Like the painter and the photographer, the filmmaker had to learn where to focus his attention, since, in reality, everything is visibly continuous, that is, the world extends behind our heads and in front of our eyes (SANTAELLA, 2001, p.186). Therefore, the camera view is a rectangular cutout of the world determined by the rectangular space of the frame (or a series of frames), so it is a fragment of the external object. The direct relation between camera and world is made by this fragmented form, then reduced, to look at. Thus, what the camera captures is only a delimited face of reality.

In this way, this filmmaker's eyes (see MERCADO, 2011, p.1-5) that is improved through the camera, is the result of a mediation between this space of the shot / composition and the world that appears ahead. And it is exactly to overcome this fact - the limited look - that the filmmaker learns to capture reality through the delimitations of the shot, thus, "framing" an object requires a refinement of a fragmented, limited space, delimited look, that this "glance", amidst the immensity of possible images that the reality presents during all the time, is distinct, is particular. This is to such an extent that we distinguish one filmmaker from another by the way he/she articulates these frames in a story. So it does not come from chance, the classic image of the director with his/her arms outstretched, the tips of his thumbs together and the indicators in parallel, as this is precisely like the trimming of the camera.

In fact, knowing how to compose a shot, in such a way as to be able to represent the action, requires a poetic look that, through a fragment of angle and time, shapes, in a moving image, the whole of the argument, of the concept, that is , of the general idea involved. Therefore, such a poetic gaze has in itself a synthesis character, mediated by the filmmaker and the cinematographer and his/her team, for the fluxes, movements, rhythms, and progressions of objects before the camera require the filmmaker to perceive the interactions, interrelationships and layers, in the spaces and times of each - and each - element in play, that is, on scene.

In his primeval state - in search of an idealized aesthetic style - this look is exactly the same as a pure hypothesis looking for a certain type of filmmaker's look defended by Gustavo Mercado (2011). They are not shots proper, but a process of stoning and enhancement of the look. In fact, they are sketches of shots not yet defined, not updated, not embodied. Therefore, they are images that enjoy the freedom to be free and spontaneous, which shapes in the mind in a set of possible shots for a scene, for a movie. In this way, they are mental imagery that test the different variations of angles when filming an idea, a script, a situation, an argument.

It can be defined as Aristotle (2005, 63) emphasized in saying that the poet must proceed as if the scene were unfolding before his/her eyes, for, seeing things fully enlightened, as if present, he/she can find what is fitting , leaving no details to it contrary to the effect it intends to produce. Or it can still be forged even at the moment when the filmmaker observes the staging of its actors in the scene and in the location of filming. In fact, it is at this instant of formulation that the filmmaker composes his/her signature, that is, it is through this open set of possibilities that he/she discovers the qualities of the surroundings of the shot and, consequently, the way these qualities integrate his/her vision of the world.

References:

ARISTOTLE. Poetics. São Paulo: Martin Claret Editora, 2005.

MERCADO, Gustavo. The Filmmaker's Eye. Oxford: Elsevier, 2011.

SANTAELLA, Lucia. Matrixes of language and thought - sonorous, visual, verbal. São Paulo: Editora Iluminuras, 2001.

Poetics of Cinema: On Filmmaker's Method

The direction of a film implies not a specialization, but a poly-functionality (Morin, 2005, p. 346), that is, a multifaceted view of the integral and copulating interrelations in and through whose the poetics of the cinema is immersed. This means that the author deals with the subsystems – art direction, cinematography, acting, editing, visual effects etc., knowing how to trigger them in the way that he/she wants, not being a specialist of one of these, but having the ability to sew them, to envelop them, and especially to connect them.

Therefore, its virtue is to establish and develop a systemic connectivity, that is, immersed in diversity, to be able to explore, to foresee and to articulate the links between these subsystems, promoting complementarities and associations that are built and consolidated in and by the whole, the film. Thus, the history of the system – the making of the film – becomes supported, determined or biased in accordance with the director (see VIEIRA, 2007, p.110). As François Truffaut (2004, p. 27) observes:

"Cinema is an art especially difficult to master because of the multiplicity of gifts – sometimes contradictory – it demands. If so many very intelligent people or many artists failed as directors, it was because they did not possess at the same time the analytical spirit and the synthetic spirit, the only ones that, simultaneously kept on alert, allow to avoid the numerous traps created by the fragmentation of the shooting film and edition of the shots. In fact, the most serious danger a director faces is losing control of his/her movie in the middle of the road, which happens more often than you think".

The role of the method becomes crucial, because to this are associated two important concepts: strategy and program (see MORIN, 2008, 250-252). An eco-organization, such as that found in filmmaking, demands a command that provides both a program to control the production and execution of the film, and strategy that deals with uncertainties and unforeseen obstacles. Thus, the program deals with the planning, schedule and scales stipulated to each stage of the filmmaking. Therefore, it is responsible for establishing a vigilant control of the progress of the film. It can be said that the program is always linked to the figure of the executive producer and the producer, those responsible to maintaining the control of the production itself (see RABIGER, 2007, p. 246-248).

In fact, a good production, while protecting and providing the resources – human, financial and logistical – necessary for the filmmaker to develop his films, also takes on the role of following exactly what was previously determined. Those guidelines, taken as rules (MORIN, ibid., p. 253), guide the terms of each stage of production: pre-production-production-post-production. Because they are general, they often do not anticipate eventualities, adversities and accidents, only operations and sequences stipulated. Thus, the program is a predetermined organization of action (MORIN, ibid., P.252), because the film, whatever its source of funding, has an end, a premiere, an economic return etc.

On the other hand, the strategy involves improvisation and innovations, therefore, it removes from the risks, obstacles and errors, its own improvement. While the program, with deadlines and guidelines, gives little scope to unforeseen and uncertainties, the strategy takes advantage of eventualities and makes from those things its art. As Morin explains, "Strategy presupposes the ability to undertake action on uncertainty and to integrate uncertainty into the conduct of action. It means that the strategy needs competence and initiative "(MORIN, 2005, P.250).

However zealous and judicious a film production is, there is always the risk of unexpected events occurring, whether with an actor, with a team member, with locations, with scenarios, with equipment, with pre-established shots that do not work when these are put into practice, with the way the material is being edited, or even the need to re-create an unforeseen scene, even after the filming has been completed. Thus, it is through the entropic processes that escape from the planning that the filmmaker has to demonstrate his/her competence and inventiveness by reversing and inverting in the direction of his/her action(MORIN, 2008, p.254) those eventualities.

The strategy does not eliminate the program, because whenever it is necessary, the strategy re-uses the automated nature of the program. In terms of economy and reliability, it would be wise not to travel at all times for uncertainty, when you have public and / or private money at stake in the film. In this way, both processes are important to the film eco-organization and are part of what François Truffaut sees as the ability to have at the same time an "analytical spirit" and a "synthetic spirit" in action.

Morin is emphatic in saying that the challenge of adversity stimulates intelligence, learning, and knowledge, not merely an adjustment to circumstances but, above all, a transformation of circumstances (see MORIN, ibid., 256 and 257). Thus, under the axis of the development of intelligence and learning, and not of the pure answer to adversity, Morin (ibid., 255) coined the concept of cognitive strategy:

"It is toward the outside world that neuro-cerebral appliances exert their strategic aptitude. Action strategy needs a cognitive strategy. Action requires, at every instant, of discernment and discrimination, to review / correct the knowledge of a situation that is transformed. The two strategies are in constant interaction".

This role of mediator, made by the cognitive strategy between program - rational purpose - and the circumstances that reality often presents in reverse of what is expected and that demand inventiveness and reformulations - strategy - is what Peirce will call Pragmatism. In fact, Peirce (2000, p.237) clarifies that the function of pragmatism: "(...) first of all we should get rid of all the essentially obscure ideas. Secondly, it should support, and help make distinct, essentially clear ideas, but whose apprehension is more or less difficult (...) ".

The reflections of the two authors coincide on that, and they both perceive that between rational program / purpose and strategy / abduction there is a need for a method that allows the mediation between the two poles, having reality - the facts and eventualities - as the pivot of this process. This is evident in Morin's (ibid .: 257-258) explanation of the need for a flexible and ready method of self-correction:

"When the program tends to command, diminish, suppress strategies, mechanical and myopic obedience becomes a model of behavior. At the human level, the strategy needs lucidity in the elaboration and conduct, play of initiatives and responsibilities, full employment of the individual competences, that is, full employment of the qualities of the subject. That is why the Method sought here will never be a program, that is, a pre-established recipe, but an invitation and an incitement to the strategy of thought".

In fact, a filmmaker is an experimentalist who learns from every film he/she makes and launches himself/herself into a new challenge every time that a work is finished. It is through this process that this complex authorship will develop dominance before the cinematographic language. Such domain - knowledge - implies managing, promoting and directing the connections between the subsystems that compose the filmic sign.

Thus, giving concreteness to a film demands a mental effort, a reasoning conductor, whose discerns every choice, decision, mistake and success. This reasoning conductor is the responsible to forging and polishing his/her method. In fact, such mental effort - mediator between program and strategy - becomes the process that leads the filmmaker to the concretization of his/her film, and, above all, to the consolidation of his/her discourse and style.

References

MORIN, Edgar. O Método 1 – a natureza da natureza. Porto Alegre: Editora Sulina, 2008.

_____________ O Método 2 – a vida da vida. Porto Alegre: Editora Sulina, 2005.

VIEIRA, Jorge de Albuquerque. Ciência – Formas de Conhecimento: Arte e Ciência uma visão a partir da complexidade. Fortaleza: Gráfica e Editora, 2007.

__________________________ Teoria do conhecimento e arte – Formas de Conhecimento: Arte e Ciência uma visão a partir da complexidade. 2° edição. Fortaleza: Gráfica e Editora,, 2008.

__________________________ Ontologia – Formas de Conhecimento: Arte e Ciência uma visão a partir da complexidade. Fortaleza: Expressão Gráfica e Editora, 2008.