OUAN502 - Film Making Methods - Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch & Lars Von Trier

I wanted to look at specific film makers and there approaches to film whilst looking at the differences between them and what they have achieved. Some of the directors I've looked at I'm familiar with and others not as much. Starting with Stanley Kubrick because I've looked at his methods a couple of times over the past year. Firstly, one of his trademarks is his uncompromisingly slow scenes. To me it feels like tension building and with a lot of film makers I would pass this type of scene off as tedious. However, the way it is executed in Kubrick's work and in the specific context to which they're done is actually very effective and something I like quite a lot. These types of scenes can be seen in both The Shining and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Next, Kubrick uses a lot of extreme camera angles. I remember watching the scene in the scene in The Shining where Jack Nicholson's character, Jack Torrance, is locked in the pantry and he attempts to persuade her to let him out. The extreme camera angle appears when at one moment in the scene he is framed from directly below using an almost straight vertical camera angle, looking up at the character as he pushes against the door (see image below). The purpose of this at the time was perhaps to disorientate the audience, being consistent with what the character is experiencing mentally at this point in the film. Following on from this, Stanley Kubrick was one of the first directors to be bold at using extreme wide angle lenses, extreme to the point of causing barrel distortion which is when otherwise straight lines in the frame become curved due to the field of view of the lens being much wider than the size of the image sensor. Hence it needs to be compressed or 'squeezed' to fit. An example of this in practice throughout Kubrick's work is in A Clockwork Orange during the dolly scene. Finally, a technique that is used widely across cinema is the tracking shot. However, it seems that virtually if not every single one of Stanley Kubrick’s films has at least one long, and uncut tracking shot.


Vertical Shot, The Shining


Wide Angle Shot, A Clockwork Orange

Next, I've decided to look at David Lynch. Lynch is a director who I'm not that familiar with in terms of other directors I've talked about but since I often hear about his work I thought it would be a good decision to look at his techniques further and how he approaches film making. Firstly, something he does throughout his work is move objects closer by zooming in. By focusing on otherwise mundane background details that aren't relevant to the plot you feel drawn in to the screen because it feels like an important plot point if being shown. Usually however this is more of a sensory effect being brought to the audience's attention by Lynch. An example of this occurs in Twin Peaks when Lynch focuses on a spinning fan in the background. The whirling noise from the fan and the vibrations it produces creates a sensory impact. Another one of Lynch’s techniques is to use a fade transition between scenes or between camera angles. Something else less about the visual aspect of film making but related to sound and sound design is the way in which Lynch uses ambient sound and noise almost all of the time throughout the films he produces. Sometimes it can be very faint but it is very rarely silent - this is irrespective of on screen action and can even take place when nothing is happening. Lynch is essentially adding low frequency ambient sounds in order to incorporate texture and depth. The use of this kind of sound design can create quite a haunting feeling when watching the picture and in turn can add a lot of emotion to what would otherwise be a fairly uneventful sequence. Finally, a shot that Lynch uses repeatedly is a car travelling down an empty highway at night. An example of this is the title sequence from Mulholland Drive taking place at the beginning of the film.


Mullholland Drive, Opening Scene

The third director I've looked at as I've seen some of their work recently is Lars Von Trier. Von Trier believes that to create original art film makers must distinguish themselves stylistically from other films. This is often done by placing restrictions on the film making process itself. In terms of his own method, Von Trier often shoots digitally and operates the camera himself, which may be different from the way some directors would work, having a cinematographer or camera operator handle this. He prefers to continuously shoot the actors in-character without stopping between takes, this often creates some pauses in scenes and essentially gives a less rehearsed more natural performance in many cases. In the film Dogville he let actors stay in character for hours so that they fully grasped their characters by using this form of method acting. Techniques such as these however means that great strain can be put on the actors themselves. An instance of this in effect was with Björk during the filming of Dancer in the Dark. I've seen this with quite a few directors but often he uses the same group of actors and these can be seen in many of his films. Specifically, actors that he reuses include; Jean-Marc Barr, Udo Kier and Stellan Skarsgård. Other directors that reuses actors in different roles that come to mind include Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan.


Lars Von Trier