Mean Streets (1973) is an early Martin Scorsese film starring Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro.It tells the story of low level gangsters and the life they live. Charlie (Harvey Keitel) collects debts for his uncle who is a mob boss. Charlie is trying to progress in the local mob, but is held back by his feelings toward his childish and destructive friend Johnny (Robert Den Niro), and his love for Teresa who has epilepsy. There is much internal conflict in Charlie about his Catholicism and his involvement in the mob.

Before I give my analysis, there are a few things to know about Martin Scorsese. He is what you call a “Modernist” Filmmaker. Part of the generation of New American Cinema. If you read back into my post on “New Hollywood” you will see that Mr. Scorsese:

• Went to film school (wanted to go to a seminary)
• Has knowledge of film history

You know that Mean Streets has a modernist sense because:

• You have a non-traditional hero. A person that can be like able, but at the same time has many flaws.
• Is sexually and violently explicit (Muslims, if you have to sit through this in class…please lower your gaze)
• Showed psychological complexity
• Social issues are addressed
• Gave a more complex view of the world. Charlie is the Main character. You see New York City from the subjective view of the character’s life. There is German expressionism in the sense that when the character gets drunk, the camera shows how the character sees things as a drunk.
• Says that heroic actions are difficult
• Relationships are not easy
• Institutions have failed the individual
• Life is complicated

The Player (1992) is a movie that tells the story of Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins), a Hollywood studio executive who believes he is being blackmailed by a screenwriter whose script he once rejected.

Robert Altman, a Hollywood filmmaker is someone who has a provocative and risky demeanor. He has had Hollywood successes and failures. Considered himself an artist, and thinking of himself as making art film for Americans with American themes.

The movies he makes are personal, innovative, and darkly comical about American culture. One thing to notice about his works is that he has a particular style:

• Many characters
• Overlapping sounds
• Intricate movement of camera

He is very much like Orson Wells in his works. His images are very complex in nature Exact opposite of Hitchcock who was simple in his imagery. Orson Wells was known to use a zoom lens as opposed to cutting to point out some details. Martin Scorsese and Fredrick Wiseman are known to follow this style. Not like Alfred Hitchcock who was very keen on editing. People who followed suit with Hitchcock were Leni Riefenstahl, Bruce Conner and Woody Allen.

The Player

You will notice as American cinema progress through time, sexual content and violence increases. This movie is a satire about the Hollywood movie industry. In the film the main character is asked why he doesn’t make movies that are realistic or have a certain moral standard. He replied back saying that it doesn’t contain the elements to market the film successfully. The “elements” that he says need to be to make a successful film are:

• Sex
• Nudity
• Heart
• Violence
• Happy ending

This movie in itself contrasts with Italian Neorealism, in the fact that everything that movie had, The Player is opposite in nature.

Few things you will notice about this film is:

• In Hollywood the studio producers make movies. Its not about the writer or the directors. Its all about the producer.
• Your hero isn’t the conventional type. He has no real sense of morality. He is somone who commits murder, lies, and gets away with it.
• You spend time with the character, making you sort of identify wit him.

- — - — - — -

My Comments

Its amazing how certian elements of society and character that people normally see as repulsive, can be made to look as something attractive. Media, television, and cinema has done that in the past, and continues to do it today. They can take trash and make it look like treasure. The question that comes to my mind, “When will we rise up and take the treasure that we have and have it look better than the trash out there?“

Go ahead leave your comments. Give us your thoughts.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe:
     

Before attaining the “film” one has to understand its history a little bit. If you look back at the first few Film Study notes, I made a mention about the Lumiere Brothers, the first video filmmakers. Before sound was added to film, video used to be 16 frames a second. Once sound came along, 24 frames a second was the slowest possible speed to which sound could be recorded.

In professional movie production they use 35mm motion picture cameras and they capture photos at 24 progressive frames a second. This is where the term “24p” comes from. Digital filmmakers try hard to attain the look of 24p because it gives a “otherworldly” look. It doesn’t have as they say, “the sharp motion of daily life”.

The way I see it, people associate 24p as being professional due to it being on the big screen, while anything smoother than 24p such as 30p, 50i, 60i (”i” means interlaced while “p” means progressive) as being armature since home video has the smoother videos. — Understand that making your video look professional doesn’t only depend on your frame rate being 24p.

While reading HDV: What You NEED to Know”, I got some interesting tips regarding making professional videos. These are the following things major motion pictures have that amateur films don’t:

• Big budgets
• Shots are setup with great attention
• Proper lighting, camera angles, camera motion, depth of field
• widescreen format

Know WHY you want to get 24p. If your ultimate goal is to deliver the video on actual film, then convert it to 24p. Your best bet is to shoot in film rather than digital to attain the best 24p picture. If you don’t have the budget to do it in production, then you will have to spend time in post production.

Getting the “Film-Look”

Production stage:

• Record on film
• Tightly stretch a piece of nylon pantyhose over the lens to get a film-like diffusion.
• Shooting at a shutter of 1/30, 1/50, or 1/60, will go a long way. The goal is getting a shutter as close to 1/48.
• Obtain a shallow depth of field. This is done via good lens. Do your best to use the type of lens used on 35mm motion picture cameras. Redrock Micro has some good cinema rigs for purchase.
• Light the scene dramatically. Learn the 3-point lighting scheme. Check out glamour photography books. Examine movies and shows on how they light the scene.

• Learn how to properly hold the camera. Avoid whip pans, and zooms. Use cranes, dollies, or other devices to move the camera, and not the lens.

Post-production stage:

• Use plugins such as Magic Bullet or those provided at Digital Film Tools.
• Use programs such as Adobe After Effects Tutorials to apply some filters and effects

Results

What does digital film that is shot using a professional work flow look like? A short film I recently saw had some of the best footage I’ve ever seen. This short film was made by Amilcar Machado of Argentina with a Sony HVR-Z1U, a Redrock Micro M2 kit, and Nikon Lens. The film is titled Quiroga.

Go ahead leave your comments. Give us your thoughts.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe:
     

The use of microphones can bring the level of professionalism of a production very high. Capturing bad audio is like using a dirty lens. If you have a dirty lens, the image you record will be dirty and ugly. If you use bad audio capture device, your audio will be dirty and ugly. There are some important rules that vasst suggested in thier book “HDV: What You NEED to Know” to capturing better sound:

1. Don’t use the built in mic for anything other than capturing crowd noise, reference audio, or your own commentary while shooting.
2. Hire a book op for critical sound, or learn to use lavaliere microphones. You can also use a fixed boom for non-moving scenes.
3. In most situations, do not use shotgun mics indoors. Use a cardioid or hyper-cardioid in nearly all indoor shoots. If the room is large, then a shotgun mic may be a good idea.
4. Don’t go wireless, unless you really have to. Wireless is for the benefit of the talent, not the videographer. Its better to run cables, although its a little inconvenient.
5. Use Balanced, low impedance cables when your cable is longer than 3′. If you don’t then you are likely to run into interference.
6. Record audio with about 6dB of headroom. This helps reduce the noise so you can have quality audio.
7. Consider using a limiter before the audio gets into the camcorder to assure that nothing can approach the 0dB mark. Disable Automatic gain control
8. Try your best to wear headphones on all shoots. You don’t turn on the camera without looking into the eyepiece. Why would you turn on the mic without knowing how it sounds?

A set of headphones that the book recommends is the Sony MDR 7506:

They come for about $100. One can probably get it cheaper off of eBay.

Go ahead leave your comments. Give us your thoughts.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe: