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

Scenes are not just descriptions of what happened (that is news reportage); they are imbued with meanings, all of which must lead back to the central ideas and purposes of the film. Subtext is about placing meaning at a micro level in the film so that each minor event adds something to the overall meaning of the film.

A knowledge of the craft of film means that the text (the surface) is not too heavy-handed in pointing us to the subtext. Subtle signs lead us in an unexpected way to what is below the surface through ori­ginal scriptwriting, use of the camera or editing. Films tend to make the text explicit while the subtext is implicit, but in Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977), an amusing scene lays out both for us. We see the two main characters (played by Woody Allen and Diane Keaton) having a conversation, with the sub­text shown in subtitles. So, a simple response to a query is subtitled as 'Why did I say that? Now she will think I am stupid.'

Subtexts offer an added layer of meaning which make each moment more stimulating. Crucially, the way this is manifested is like this:

Text: Subtle and delivered in an elliptical way Subtext: What the above really meant in explicit terms

Relates back to the main ideas in the film

As an example, we could take the scene in Star Wars when Leia, Solo and Skywalker are stuck in a corridor under stormtrooper fire.

Text: Leia grabs the gun from Skywalker and shoots an exit into the wall.

Leia: 'Some rescue.'

Subtext: Leia is capable and quick-witted. She is also sardonic.

Ideas: This is no fairy story, the princess is a hero too.

In this example, the better the line or visual clue, the bigger the subtext can be.

Weblinks

http://www.pubinfo.vcu.edu/artweb/playwriting/subtext.html Concise university tutorial on subtext. http://koreanfilm.org/trbic-oldboy.html Insightful essay on subtext in the Korean film Oldboy (2003). http://thematrix101.com/contrib/azilleruelo_arfn.php Essay on subtext in The Matrix movies.

Theme

Further down beneath the micro-meaning that is subtext, we encounter the last stage that the director has total control over: the theme and ideas within the movie. The theme acts as an umbrella that brings together the individual micro-meaning of each scene. This doesn't mean there is only room for one theme, however. Films today tend towards a multiplicity of meaning, rather than supplying just one dominant meaning