Moving Photos

When I think of something that is “cinematic,” I often imagine a scene that stands alone as a photo.

I first realized this double entendre while watching Last of the Mohicans when I was about 12.  I grew up in the hills of Northern California and spent countless hours exploring the woods and imagining myself as an Indian, and my affinity to the romance of vintage Native American imagery as a child helped me make sense of Michael Mann & Dante Spinotti‘s visual masterpiece. This film is full of incredibly moving photography, which moves. The nod to profile portraiture, which is used extensively in modern Native American portraits, sealed the deal for me. Perhaps this was the first time I ever thought of a movie as “Beautiful.” It just clicked for me. The composition of great photographs translate into great imagery on the big screen. The right photography style to match the subjects and story, translate into epically moving film.

I always try to think about whether or not my shots would hold up as a still photo. That usually leads me to better shots. If I can have camera moves that transform from one beautiful photo to another, then I have hit the jackpot.
My truth is that not a single moment of a film should be “filler” or the lack luster frames in between two great moments. I learned that lesson from my friend/video guru Rob Wright, who introduced me to the basics of video production. I was manning the B-Camera at a concert for one of his productions and the result was several usable shots with tons of fucked up shots while I moved into place to get the good shots. He told me that even the in between moves should be interesting. “The whole damn thing must ring bells.” Easier said than done, yes, but it seems to get easier with experience. I now approach video more like a photographer than a camera man, if that makes sense.

I have noticed there are some filmmakers out there that prefer the story over the imagery. To those folks I say, read a book.   A great movie is the harmony of several key elements: Story (how it is told), Sound, and Photography. I am also learning that the key to a successful shoot on a tight or non existent budget with limited time, is to never waste a take. I never know when that magic moment will take place, so I must always expect it, even when moving from on shot to the next. The worst possible situation is when I have a break in the chain of a take which renders the footage unusable. This can be an actor deciding when a take is “bad” and giving up halfway through, but just as often it can be when I let my guard down and lower the camera just as something wonderful happens. DAMN! It pays off big time to plan my camera moves ahead of time, as well as identify possibilities on-the-fly for unexpected magic moments that might require quick thinking and clever moves to capture.

In my latest production of a short-film/music-video called “No Other Word,” I was put through the paces. We had several location scenes in which the actors were very limited on available time, and often were filmed without permission of the property owners. That basically meant we had one chance to get the shots, all of which were decided within a day of shooting. Planning was done the night before, and no test shots were taken. That is just how it goes sometimes. I had about an hour to frame up my shots and go for it while directing actors who had not even seen the storyboard yet. It was amazing. I was in shock at the time, but looking back I get chills of excitement. Without the storyboard there is no way we could have made this happen on such short notice. I really liked how the storyboard was drawn, and it inspired most of the photography in the film. I can flip through the video and pause at almost any point and say, “that is an awesome picture, it looks just like the storyboard.” That was very pleasing to me and for the writer/producer JustLuv.

With the more static shots, I experimented with layering the scene with several framings, which seemed to get an interesting result, and in my opinion make great stills. For example, the wide shot of the son and the homeless guy was designed to build a relationship between the figures. I used a minimal approach for the subject layer and then filled the background layer with a one-point perspective of the hallway, and used DOF to slightly blur the ultra BG layer, which ultimately makes the subject layer pop forward in the space.

The idea of making the photos move was what inspired me to create a device for “No Other Word” that we called “The Catapult.” Basically it was a couple boards, some screws, a hinge with make-shift vibration dampener, and a camera mount at the end. The transition between the straight-on view and overhead view of the Victrola could have been a simple, clean cut-to, but I challenged myself to make it more interesting from one frame to the next, adding a characteristic to the camera-move style that, during production, inspired more shot ideas, such as the moving dresser. Check out the full video HERE to see what I’m talking about.

There were a couple classic shots that also came out really good, like the silhouette shot as father and son walk off into the sunset, which looks great as a photo too. We hoped to tug on some heart-strings there before “catapulting” back into the purgatory world of the narrator.