Media Coursework A2: December 2016

"The film I was after would be made of strong graphic images and sounds. It would work through suggestion rather than explanation. It would mainly consist of self-contained scenes, done from one angle, in one continuous take, with no informational dialogue, no functional shots, no plot devices or any of the usual tricks cinema uses to suggest or elicit emotion. A film in which form, emotion, idea would be one."

" I was more convinced the story could tell itself without coverage and exposition. It was enough to put strong moments in strong shots, side by side, and leave things to the imagination. The film would work as a meditation as much as a story. The key was to choose one angle, the most effective shot, and then to work and rework all the elements: framing, light, dialogue, movement, gesture. Adding, taking away, refining from take to take, until the thing had the right life and rhythm. This meant forgetting the script and treating each scene and each shot as a thing in its own right."

CMENTARZ from Media 12345 on Vimeo.
This is some experimental editing and filming during a visit to the graveyard in Szydlowiec. I created the sequence in the style of Pawlikowski's film Ida, the framing, Polish culture, religious character and suggestive narrative. The film focuses on identity which is one of the key themes in my short film. The song I included is sung by a Polish man (Paweł Prokopieni) in the late 1930s but is singing a Russian song (Веровочка), this is because my grandmother is a fan of his music.

Ida (2013) Directed by Paweł Pawlikowski

In 1962, Anna is about to take vows as a nun when she learns from her only relative that she is Jewish. Both women embark on a journey to discover their family story and where they belong.

Framing the Faith of Ida from Steven Vredenburgh on Vimeo.

The Guardian

How we made Ida: Paweł Pawlikowski on the journey from script to film

The accepted logic of most film producers is this: you buy a book or an idea, then hire a screenwriter – in Britain, usually a converted playwright – who then turns it into a three-act structure, puts in some twists and lots of dialogue, and hands you a 90-page script. Next, you hire a director, who brings in his “vision”, attracts some cool actors, and breaks scenes into shots; and then you get a DP who photographs the thing as artfully as the story will allow. Then comes the editor to speed things up or slow them down, cover up holes, and sort out loose ends. The product at the end is more or less what was planned at the start – and with the right cast, soundtrack, journalistic hook and promotion it should make money.
I’ve always had a problem with this approach. I never went to film school, never learned the rules, and started out by making documentaries, which I usually shot and moulded as I went along. I began with an idea, a character, a situation; then threw all sorts of things into the mix – scenes, images; some found, others invented. Then I shook it all up – complicated, simplified – until I found the film. These films were neither documentaries nor fictions; they were strange hybrids that felt like the best and the simplest way I could express a complicated truth.
With genre films, where the audiences enjoy familiar mechanics and conventions, it was obviously another matter. But those kind of films have never interested me. Not as a film-maker, anyway. What excited me was the journey into the unknown – or, rather, to some place you know and intuit, but you don’t yet quite know how to get to. After all, this is how art works in every other area, and nobody objects. If you’re a novelist, poet, painter or composer, you just lock yourself away and work on the thing, for a week, for a month, for a year – put the thing aside if you need to – and finish when you think it’s ready
It was the sort of script you could raise the money on, but definitely not the film I wanted to make. Not just because of our over-written dialogue, dodgy plotting and dramatic wishful thinking, but because what I was after was a different kind of film altogether, one for which it would have been much more difficult to attract any funding. The film I was after would be made of strong graphic images and sounds. It would work through suggestion rather than explanation. It would mainly consist of self-contained scenes, done from one angle, in one continuous take, with no informational dialogue, no functional shots, no plot devices or any of the usual tricks cinema uses to suggest or elicit emotion. A film in which form, emotion, idea would be one.
In the “financier” script for Ida, the film opened with a scene of three nuns making a scarecrow in a field and a series of generic dialogue scenes, setting up the situation and the characters. It was OK as beginnings go, but it was clear we needed something stronger. A day before filming in the monastery, I noticed our art director, Jagna Dobesz, a woman with an angelic face and character, touching up Christ’s face with her brush. There was such tension and love in her face as she was doing it that I knew I had a much better scene right there in front of me.
In fact, I had a whole sequence of scenes. This is how the sculpture of Christ, which started out as one of several props in the monastery, became the key image. It was much better for Ida and for the film than the business with the scarecrow we had contrived in the script. The unexpected snow was another bonus. It gave me the idea for two graphic top shots and the quiet moment of prayer around the fountain.
This way, pages of dialogue scenes and fluffy non-events were replaced by a series of shots that were simple, powerful and set up the tone of the whole film perfectly. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not against good dialogue. But I can’t bring myself to film dialogue that’s there merely to colour in the characters, give information, and has no music to it.
In the financier script, there were five scenes showing Ida’s first encounter with the big city. They included her getting lost; talking to a policeman; going into a shop; listening to music; observing hip young people; couples kissing. These four pages of generic script shrank into these two shots.
With each day of filming, I was more convinced the story could tell itself without coverage and exposition. It was enough to put strong moments in strong shots, side by side, and leave things to the imagination. The film would work as a meditation as much as a story. The key was to choose one angle, the most effective shot, and then to work and rework all the elements: framing, light, dialogue, movement, gesture. Adding, taking away, refining from take to take, until the thing had the right life and rhythm. This meant forgetting the script and treating each scene and each shot as a thing in its own right. Ewa, who was in the trenches with me, joked that I was writing the script with the camera. She didn’t seem to mind and clearly liked the results.
I wanted to make the viewer enter the film in a different way, experience it as a kind of permanent present that unfolds in front of them. I was aware, of course, that most viewers might not enter this kind of film at all and leave the cinema after five minutes.
Putting static shots side by side and stripping things down forces the viewer to watch and listen differently; it asks them to fill in the gaps and not to expect to have things explained. It allowed me to drop dud scenes and lines without damaging the story. On the contrary, the method actually helped me find the story, or rather to home in on its best, its only possible shape.