In the previous installment of this series I asked what happens when you run the well-worn narrative framework of sequence filming through the decisive moment and the dogma of Terrence Malick?
I still don’t have an answer, but I work on it every time I pick up a camera.
One way to answer is: How does Malick look? As in how does he see and how does his way of seeing show up on the screen. It turns out you can find a lot of YouTubers interested in the look of Malick.
I particularly like this one:
This is the way I want my documentaries to look (with obvious differences re: my personal style and the circumstances real life presents to me). What I’m seeing here is exactly the melding of the decisive moment (because I want to see it?) and the Malick dogma (because, well…).
The author of this video is noticing Malick’s “obsessions” from three particular, recent films while also suggesting we can see the same choices at work throughout the Malick canon:
He abandons the writer-centrism that pervades the vast majority of filmmaking, and in doing so, brings the choices of the actors, cinematographer, and editor to the forefront. I think for Malick the process of creation almost supersedes the final product. The lens is searching because he is searching, the characters search because the actors search. These films aren’t planned, they are formed by reaction. The actors react to the world and each other, the cinematographer reacts to the actors and to the world, and the editor reacts to the rhythms constructed by the actors, the world, and the cinematographer.
So make two mental adjustments. Substitute “source” for “actor” and add the role of director to cinematographer. The other side of that equation is a guy like me: a documentary filmmaker working alone or with a small crew. All of a sudden that sounds a lot like how a documentary filmmaker, such as myself, works.
The scenes I film are necessarily more chaotic than Malick’s. He is filming fiction, and he is in control no matter how much he allows his scenes to develop in a free-form way. But I am enamored of following my subjects closely and filming with wide lenses to achieve a visual style similar to what you see in the video. Because I am not in control of the reality unfolding before me, I cannot follow the dogma to the letter (nor would I want to in any case). So I must translate some of this look and feel for longer lenses.
Coming up… I’ll discuss my use of wide and long lenses and how I try to use these each for specific effect while trying to maintain my own visual dogma. Hmmm… I guess I’m going to have to write my own dogma. Perhaps that will be the concluding entry in this series.
Posts in this series:
From Coverage to a Visual Style | Frame by Frame (rhetorica.net)
Where I Differ With the Dogma | Frame by Frame (rhetorica.net)
Visual Style Conveyed in Words — Maybe | Frame by Frame (rhetorica.net)
