The Sound Of Footsteps - Barnaby Smyth's shoe colllection
Barnaby Smyth, foley artist on many, many TV series and films (Downton Abbey (2010-15), Dickensian (2015-16), Suffragette (2015), explains some of his techniques for the seemingly simple task of recording footsteps.
Apart from employing a a huge range of boots and shoes (all with a specific purpose) he also demonstrates techniques for changing the sound to emulate characters of differing stature. One of the more interesting observations is that it is not sufficient to record a straight rhythmic footstep but the scuffs, turns and idiosyncrasies that make the audience believe.
Our mission was to deliver a very short short in the style of Film Noir.
Film Noir (literally 'black film or cinema') was coined by French film critics (first by Nino Frank in 1946) who noticed the trend of how 'dark', downbeat and black the looks and themes were of many American crime and detective films released in France to theatres following the war, such as The Maltese Falcon (1941), Murder, My Sweet (1944), Double Indemnity (1944), The Woman in the Window (1944), and Laura (1944).
http://www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html
Not initially recognised as a genre, merely a trend or a "look", a visual style identified by a French critic, Film Noir has become synonymous with gritty crime dramas. Often violent, always involving characters of dubious reputation (whether as protagonist, antagonist or both).
Looking into the mechanics of the imagery, we find several visual themes used throughout.
The most obvious visual effect (accentuated by its use in black and white photography) is low key lighting. Contrary to its apparent meaning, low key lighting is used to produce images of high contrast. The key light being far stronger that a weak (or absent) fill light.
I've mentioned chiaroscuro in a previous post but here's a reminder:
Artists recognized the power of low key lighting long before photographers came around. Painters during the Renaissance and Baroque periods often used a technique known as "chiaroscuro" to achieve a similar dramatic tone for their images. Chiaroscuro comes from the Italian "chiaro" meaning clear/light and "oscuro" meaning obscure/dark.
A brief interview with Oscar nominated animator Cordell Barker.
https://youtu.be/1DTnR32cHpQ
It always interesting to hear how someone works and Barker has some interesting takes on the production process. He leaves the tough stuff to the professionals so he can "get away" with producing the images from the imagination of a grade 7 kid.
This trailer caught my eye. I'm not pushing for an apocalyptic-zombie-slaughter-fest for my next project but I found this surprisingly emotive despite the subject matter.
I suspect I've been suckered by some beautifully affecting music and a character that's around the same age as my daughter.
I've been told the game itself is pants though I do like the theme of taking the normal and twisting it (as all good horrors do).
https://youtu.be/lZqrG1bdGtg
The story excerpt is presented backwards but, as a viewer, you yearn to see the start while almost believing that the ending can be changed.
I'm not sure if this is a means to inspiration or a means to an end.
In late 1920, the Dadaist writer Tristan Tzara wrote “dada manifesto on feeble love and bitter love,” which included a section called “To Make a Dadaist Poem,” and it gave these instructions:
Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article of the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that makes up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are – an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.
If you're looking for a dose of the less usual for information, interest and inspiration, you could do worse than taking a look at Hi Fructose Magazine.
You can find more of George RedHawk's fantastic animated GIFs via this link and that link. He demands your attention and probably deserves a post all of his own... I'll get on to that.
Tonal Montage: Transitions are employed to illicit a specific emotional response from the audience.
This is a scene from Damien Chazelle's Whiplash (2014). Ostensibly it's a film about a drummer. By any means it's a film about a drummer. Why would this be a good example of tonal montage?
Whiplash, Damien Chazelle (2014)
Despite the rhythmic theme of the film, you can't carry a feature film narrative on tub thumping alone. For me this scene is more about emotional hits than the complexities of jazz drumming. We witness the nervous father, the talented son and the erstwhile, maligned teacher. It's all about the reactions. That's not to say the sound isn't hugely impressive.
Unsurprisingly, this film took Oscars and BAFTAs for editing and sound amongst others.
One of the few films I've deliberately watched repeatedly and enjoyed every time.
Tom Rolf, (editor on Taxi Driver (1976), Jacob's Ladder (1990), Heat (1995) and Equilibrium (2002) amongst others) offered this comment. I can't find a definitive source for the quote but it rings true.
“Is it
better to say, ‘I love you,’ bang, then cut to the reaction? Or is it better to
say, ‘I love you,’ hang on it for a beat to show the emotion of the person delivering
the line, then go for the reaction?
It’s a
matter of choice.
Either
way, there’s a different result for the audience looking at it.
Are their
sympathies with the guy who said the line, or the girl who said the line? Or is
the audience saying, ‘Don’t believe him, he’s going to screw you over’…
If you
find the frame to cut on at that right moment, the audience will be totally
satisfied.”
Quote attributed to
Tom Rolf, Editor
Not a Tom Rolf edited scene. Very much a sequence of action and reaction shots maintaining eye-line and tempo, both rhythmic and tonal. Mick Audsley takes the editing credit on this one.
Rhythmic Montage: Shot length is dictated by visual elements such as movement and
composition.
Taken from the Planet Doc series Land of the Dragons, this series of shots shows us the courting
rituals of the Fiddler Crab.
There is a visual continuity throughout the scene. The
colours of the crabs and their environment give us a background of browns and
yellows with flashes of brilliant red and orange from the male crabs’ claws.
Although portrayed with temporal continuity, I suspect that this is actually a
montage of many different shots over an extended period of time. As one crab
looks very much like another, only the narrator’s contribution and some
directorial decisions tie the shots into a story.
The twitching movements of the crabs lends a tempo to the
transitions (hard cuts), an example of rhythmic montage. Most shots are not cut
on action but in the spaces between. A suitably rhythmic electronic soundtrack
is also employed to accentuate this twitching rhythm.
Shot 1
Eye
level mid shot.
The
female crab quickly feeds herself
Shot 2
High
angle, long shot.
Two
males have approached and wave their claws for attention. Two waves to the
rear, three waves to the fore before the cut to close up.
Shot 3
High
angle mid shot.
Starting
with a metallic hit on the soundtrack, the shot features the bright orange
claw in the centre third. If that weren’t a strong enough image, the orange
object in the background also points us down along the claw.
Two
waves before the cut to a reverse angle.
Shot 4
Reverse
angle eye level mid shot.
Starting
with another metallic hit.
A rival
appears. Composed in reverse, in opposition. This crab’s claws are on
opposite sides though giving a compositional continuity, the bright orange
shapes appear consistent.
In this
shot though, the claw has moved further up the screen perhaps portraying
dominance.
Two
waves back before a cut to a high angle long shot.
Shot 5
High
angle long shot.
The
brightly coloured males leave the shot, one remaining (bottom centre of
screen) before moving off screen left.
The
soundtrack, an electronic rhythm (high hat?) reflects the skittering
movements of the crabs’ legs.
As he
is about to leave shot, there is a cut on action
Shot 6
Eye
level tracking shot.
The
electronic rhythm continues.
The
crab remains in motion, moving screen left as the camera tracks. Visual
continuity is maintained, the bright orange claw remaining screen left. The
crab is now facing away from us however. His claw has swapped sides.
He
approaches a female and is spurned.
Cut to extreme
close up.
Shot 7
Eye
level extreme close up.
The
crab’s eyes are in sharp focus, his claw remains at screen left as he looks
out for another mate.
Two
waves and the sound is cut four beats before the next shot. Our crab is
deflated.
Shot 8
Eye
level medium close up.
Soundtrack
is a higher pitched, cleaner electronic rhythm.
Very
similar to shot 1, we see the female alone having escaped our protagonist’s
advances.
She
moves off screen left followed by another male. Pointedly, this opponent’s
claw is presented from the reverse side as he steals the girl.
As I'd casually mentioned "persistence of vision", I thought I'd drop in a note. After all, if it wasn't for this quirk of our eye/brain mechanism, the zoetrope, cartoon or photographic film would never have been invented. If they had, they would have appeared to us as a stream of stills, a passing curiosity in an avant garde art form maybe.
"The theory of the animated cartoon preceded the invention of the cinema by half a century. Early experimenters, working to create conversation pieces for Victorian parlours or new sensations for the touring magic-lantern shows, which were a popular form of entertainment, discovered the principle of persistence of vision. If drawings of the stages of an action were shown in fast succession, the human eye would perceive them as a continuous movement."
We've become so accustomed to the illusion of rapidly changing images as a representation of movement that it's easy to forget it entirely. At least as children we could be amazed that we could draw circles in the air with a sparkler.
"Persistence of vision is a commonly-accepted although somewhat controversial theory which states that the human eye always retains images for a fraction of a second (around 0.04 second). This means that everything we see is a subtle blend of what is happening now and what happened a fraction of a second ago.
In film and video, this phenomena is often claimed to account for our ability to perceive a sequence of frames as a continuous moving picture. However this idea was debunked in 1912 and there is no scientific evidence to suggest that persistence of vision works in this way. Rather, it is thought that the illusion of continuous motion is caused by unrelated phenomena such as beta movement (the brain assuming movement between two static images when shown in quick succession).
Despite this, persistence of vision continues to be incorrectly taught in schools as the physiological mechanism behind video's illusion of movement."
There may be some dispute over the hows and whys of the effect. For a film maker or animator, isn't it enough to know that the audience will accept 24 or 25 pictures per second as natural movement?
Metric montage: Shots are of equal length or number of frames To take essentially organic elements, a performance or a
scene and apply this strict method of timing appears the simplest yet least
forgiving and most stylised treatment.
In searching for examples, I found it difficult to identify
a piece of film that complied with this strict timing method that had not been
produced specifically for the purpose of demonstrating it.
This student film is
an example of an entire short film adhering strictly to the metric method.
Each shot is shoe-horned into the same number of frames. It
doesn’t appear to advance any story nor increase the visual appeal of the
piece. It may be that metric montage is not intended to stand in isolation.
There are brief
moments in Eisenstein’s own film October
(1927), shots of a machine gunner and his weapon. The shots are rapidly and
repeatedly edited to perhaps only a few frames each with a short fade transition. This almost gives us a
Thaumatrope-like effect. Our persistence of vision not quite merging the two
images.
Even without sound, these short, metric montages do convey
the physical violence of the gun shots. The images are hammered at the audience
as the gun is fired into the crowds. If the individual shots had been held any longer, the effect would be subdued, less violent. Any quicker and the images could have merged as in the Thaumatrope effect.
Stills taken from: October, Sergei Eisenstein (1927)
Although not the first to employ editing in film, the likes
of Sergei Eisenstein and Lev Kuleshov formulated techniques and theories,
raising the editing process to an art form.
Eisenstein believed that editing could be
used for more than just expounding a scene or moment, through a
"linkage" of related images. Eisenstein felt the "collision"
of shots could be used to manipulate the emotions of the audience and create
film metaphors. He believed that an idea should be derived from the
juxtaposition of two independent shots, bringing an element of collage into
film. He developed what he called "methods of montage"
Eisenstein formulated his Methods of Montage, detailing several principles of film editing.
Sergei
Eisenstein – Methods of Montage
Metric
Shots
are of equal length (number of frames)
Rhythmic
Shot
length is dictated by visual elements such as movement and composition.
Tonal
Transitions
are employed to illicit a specific emotional response from the audience.
Overtonal
Overtonal
montage may utilise metric, rhythmic and tonal techniques.
Intellectual
Presents
and conveys intellectual ideas through juxtaposition, symbolism and metaphor.
Lev Kuleshov famously studied the effects of juxtaposition in film editing.
In the
dawn of the 20th century, cinema was a new art form, comprising many
techniques that hadn’t been developed. And the ones that had had not been
studied to the needed extension. The elements of editing were among them.
Filmmakers knew that you could cut and splice the film strip, but they
didn’t thoroughly comprehend the purposes of doing so.
Lev
Kuleshov, a Soviet filmmaker, was among the first to dissect the effects
of juxtaposition. Through his experiments and research, Kuleshov
discovered that depending on how shots are assembled the audience will attach
a specific meaning or emotion to it.
In his
experiment, Kuleshov cut an actor with shots of three different subjects: a hot plate of soup, a girl in a coffin and a pretty woman lying in a couch.
The footage of the actor was the same expressionless gaze. Yet the audience
raved his performance, saying first he looked hungry, then sad, then lustful.
Film and sound editor Walter Murch discusses the art of
film editing in his book, In the Blink of
an Eye (Silman-James Press, 1995). The theme of the book lies around the
process of editing, why it should work and its acceptance by the viewing
audience.
Murch proposes six guiding considerations for editing in
film. Although referred to as “the Rule of Six”, they are designed to inform
the process rather than be a rigid reference. Correctness and consistency are
dependent upon the required effect, the response we wish to elicit from the
viewer.
Walter
Murch – The Rule of Six
Emotion
Is it
true to the emotion that we want to portray, that we want to provoke in the
audience? Does it push forward the emotional line?
Story
Does it
advance the story? Does it tell the story in way that can be understood by
the audience?
Rhythm
Does
the cut happen at the “right” point? Does it feel correct and interesting?
Does it fit in the overall and established rhythm?
Eye
Trace
Where
is the audience looking during the shot? Is the eye carried smoothly during
the transition?
2D
Plane
The
representation of the 3D space on a 2D plane (the screen). Questions of
“stage line” (the 180 degree rule) and composition
3D
Space
The
positioning of actors and objects in the 3D space. Are they represented
coherently and consistently?
Murch,
Walter, In the Blink of an Eye, Silman-James Press, 1995
Where Murch is more firm is in the primacy of each rule
over those that follow. While all six conditions may be met in most
circumstances, where, perhaps for practical reasons, any must necessarily be excluded,
the priority is to maintain emotion over story, story over rhythm and so on.
“What is drama but
life with the dull bits cut out.”
Alfred Hitchcock
Here Hitchcock may have been referring to elliptical editing, the technique of
compressing time, skipping the unnecessary (“the dull bits”), while maintaining
continuity.
These shot setups from his 1960 film, Psycho, seem morerepresentative
of temporal or continuity editing but demonstrate some of the same technique.
The scene is presented in “real” time. Where he has allowed
the viewer to skip the “dull bits”, he has accomplished it via edits. The
camera is not static but cuts to the shots necessary to progress the story,
heighten drama and view the players’ actions and reactions.
The diagram below represent the various camera set ups
employed in the scene. It’s apparent that this is not a conventional sequence.
Hitchcock has not adhered to the 180° rule. From the establishing shot he
employs many different angles. Hitchcock though could not be accused of being
an unthinking, sloppy film maker.
Perhaps most noticeable, most far removed from the
established viewing angles are the shots from the driver’s point of view, of the
policeman in front of the car (Set Up I). It appears that Hitchcock has used
eye line and trace to lead the viewer’s eye.
We can break down the shots in this way:
Set Up H
Low
angle mid two shot. We’re under the gaze of the police officer, stuck in the
car with Marion.
Her
eyes are down as she reluctantly hands over her licence.
Set Up H
The
police officer moves away to screen left.
Marion’s
eye’s move up to follow him towards the front of the car.
Set Up H
As the
police officer exits screen left, Marion stares straight ahead after him.
Set Up H
To
accentuate the eye line, Marion’s hand moves to the steering wheel,
deliberately pointing the viewer to the front of the car.
This
prepares us for the novel camera angle, crossing the 180° line.
Set Up I
Cut to
low angle, point of view, mid shot. The officer enters screen right
maintaining spatial continuity.
We now
know that the police officer is in front of the car and we are looking from
Marion’s point of view.
Set Up I
The
officer checks Marion’s details and his eyes drop towards the front bumper of
the car. His eye line prepares the viewer for the next shot.
Focal
point at screen centre.
Set Up J
Cut
away to point of view, very close up, high angle shot. Focal point screen
centre
The
officer’s eye line has led us to his point of view as he checks the license
plate.
Set Up K
Eye
level, medium close up reaction shot (not from the officer’s point of view).
Focal point still at screen centre.
Marion
cranes her neck in an effort to see what the officer is doing. She’s looking
for a reaction.
Set Up I
Low, reverse
angle, mid shot. This is a reaction shot (although there is no reaction).
Marion’s obvious concern or curiosity is shared by the viewer.
The
officer is standing slightly to screen right in preparation for moving in
that direction and leading us back to Set Up H (car interior).
2.The maintenance of continuous action and self-consistent
detail in the various scenes of a film or broadcast.
Definition from www.google.co.uk
Considering
Continuity
Why do we need to consider continuity in film making?
If our films were to comprise a single shot from one camera
angle, much like a single scene taken from a traditional stage play, continuity
would be guaranteed, unavoidable. The audience would experience the entire
story from a single, consistent angle with no break in the action. This was the
technique used by the earliest film makers believing, as they did, that
splicing together different shots would confuse the audience.
It would not take long for the early pioneers to discover
that the audience would accept editing and that it could be used to great
effect. Shots from differing angles and positions could be juxtaposed to move
the story forward while maintaining the attention of the audience. The moments
deemed unnecessary to carry a story could even be removed altogether.
Over two weeks and maybe 450 photos, getting sand blasted and hailed on, suffering a nest of ratt-weilers and camera wrangling, I put together a photo-story short.
Fairly early on I decided to produce in black and white. With natural light and a necessarily high ISO value, many of the original photos took on a natural grain that was accentuated in the grey-scale. Adding a high tonal contrast in post-production made for a gritty, moody and almost vintage feel that suited the subject matter and this was carried through to the rest of the footage. I hope this created a consistency throughout the project.
The project is paced slowly, setting the scene, introducing the character and his environment and building the story. Foley sounds have been applied to lead the story and assist in atmosphere.
Many of the transitions are fades (between shots and to black) and these are meant to convey a sense of passing time. Several shots feature subtle zooms to suggest travel, a movement through the scene. Where harder cuts are used, the intention is to provide contrast with the subtly of the general pace of the project.
The scenes are paced to build from a moody, slow beginning towards the finale which is more up-tempo, brighter and, ultimately, to a happy ending.
