Hey!
: welcome :
I think the last two shots are awkward in my opinion. I'm sure someone else will give a better explaination.. I just feel lazy right now...
I'll quote the dashing and wonderful Clive here:
That's interesting. I'm very fond of Shyamalan as a director, when I first saw "Unbreakable" I was shocked because his choice of framing on that film was so close to my own style that it almost felt like I'd shot it.
The use of movement in The Village was very similar to that of another favorite film of mine "Diva" where the camera flows slowly around the actors in sync with the sound track which is mainly Opera.
I quite like these subtle movements of the camera, the flowing style. It's the shaky hand held NYPR blue style that is becoming passe. It's almost impossible to watch some TV now, even in non-conflict dialogue sequences the camera is is jerking around like the camera op has some neuorlogical disorder which prevents them holding anything steady.
I'm not anti-hand held, in fact I use it in all the flashback sequences of my feature "No Place," but that's a deliberate use of an ENG shooting style to show my protagonist's past life as a war photographer.
I think the thing that isn't so obvious about placement of camera is that it has a language and semantics of it's own. Where ever you place the camera is where you want the audience to be. The closer you get the more intimacy you imply, the futher away the more voyueristic it becomes, if you place the camera above the eyeline of the actor you are putting the audience in a dominate position and obviously if you place the camera below the eyeline you are putting the actor in the dominate position (Watch the begining of any early Arnie movie to see this one hammered home.) There are also conventions, so at the begining of the story you start wide and slowly move into the story and at the end you move away, telling the audience that their time with these characters is over. Most directors do this unconciously, because they've absorbed the languague by being part of the audience, some however consciously manipulate it, the most obvious directors in this category being the Coen Brothers, Roman Polanski and Kurosawa.
Roman Polanski talks about this explictly and I've always used it as a guide. When blocking out a scene he walks around the actors whilst they work, placing himself as the audience within the scene and seeing what is of most interest to him. He then places the camera and picks his shots accordingly.
I like this, because it's not about formulatic reproduction of other people's fancy shots, it's about creating a conscious link between the audience and how the film is shot.
I think the difficulty with a director like Kubrick is that he is the most visual centred director there has ever been. In much of his work the actors are no different to him emotionally than any other prop in the frame. This makes his imagery stunning and his attention to details is about creating a visual ballet, where how things look from second to second must conform to a fairly rigid visual formular. This makes his films both stunning to watch and at the same time difficult to connect to. At the same time, however, his early films Dr Strangelove and Lollita are compelling pieces of film making and seem to have been made before Kubrick could achieve the levels of control he took in later years. I think they are better films for that, but I must admit that Kubrick still has the ability to take my breath away with his capacity for creating visual coherence in a shot and I still wish he had completed A.I. rather than Spielberg, because I think the sentimental elements that pervaded that film were its weak points.
http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?p=25952#post25952
Hope that helps.
-Logan-