Visions of light: a course on film technique and style
This weekend, I spent a day at the City Literary Institute attending a course by John Wischmeyer which examined film technique and style.
We began by watching the opening scene of “Jaws”, discussing it, and then watching it again to notice better all the techniques deployed by director Steven Spielberg. The rest of the course looked in more detail at the different elements of composing a film.
We considered the use of the camera for the long shot – such as the wounded soldiers in the railway station scene in “Gone With The Wind” – and the long take – such as the arrival of Sherif Ali in “Lawrence Of Arabia” [my review here].
Next we looked at the use of film scores, focusing especially on the scoring of Bernard Herman who did a lot of work with the director Alfred Hitchcock, including “Vertigo” [my review here]. Other cases of sound design included examination of clips from “A Clockwork Orange” [my review here], “Apocalypse Now” [my review here] and the recent film “Dunkirk” [my review here].
The next section of the course reviewed the role off the editor, known as “the invisible art” and arguably the least apparent to the viewer but the most important to the final look of the film. The typical film involves around 200 hours of material which has to be edited to something like two hours which could consist of some 5,000 shots. We viewed an interview with the brilliant editor Walter Murch.
Finally we considered the contribution of music to film. This is usually the last element of the work after the editing is done. Ennio Morricone and John Williams are particularly famous for their film scores.
A fascinating day that will enhance my appreciation of the movies.