PRACTICAL DV FILMMAKING

Practical DV FilmMaking

• Overview
• Inside video
• Films and how they work
• Pre-production
• Production tools
• Production aesthetics
• Post-production tools
• Post-production aesthetics
• Careers and distribution
• Mapping the industry
• Glossary of film and video terms

This outer surface is bigger than it needs to be - it contains not just the events and incidents that go together to make the plot, but also the entire fictional world that holds the plot. Signposts to this bigger world are strewn throughout so that we get a sense of where we are, what has happened to get us to this point, and what the norms and conventions are. Most films do this by relating the surface of the film to our own real world, and we imagine far more than is actually shown because it conforms to our experience. So, if we see two adults and two children eating together, we assume they are part of a family, because this is a construct we take from our world into the one on screen.

But films that don't relate to our world are peculiar and unsettling. David Lynch's second short film, The Grandmother (1971), creates an entirely imagined world in a dramatic departure from reality. This cre­ates a surface or shell to the film that is unfamiliar and that straight away demands our forensic skills. We have to work hard to uncover even the most basic information. But it is rewarding if we stick with it, as we get to have profound and long-lasting ideas about life. These are films that people talk about long after they are over. This kind of surface has to draw in the viewer, however, just as much as the straight narrative does, but it does it by using other ways rather than recognition and identification. In Lynch's case, he uses juxtaposition of real elements with the dreamlike and with unexpected moments of cruelty or violence; you can't look away for too long as your curiosity gets the better of you.

Figure 3.6 A careful use of imagery enables filmmakers to create interest and meaning, as in this short, Northern Soul, from acclaimed director Shane Meadows.

In either case, the surface acts as a place where the events of the film are placed. Even if a viewer fails to understand the deeper parts of the film, they can't fail to see what is actively in front of them, whether or not this corresponds to real life or not. What goes on below demands another kind of viewing, however.

Subtext

If we imagine each of the events on the surface happening above us, we could also imagine that each of them has an echo below the surface. In practice, this means that everything that happens above has a corresponding meaning below; a car door being slammed loudly doesn't just mean that someone has shut the door, it also means the character is annoyed or angry