Cinema style

I keep waiting for the moment when I look at the film and think "I've done it all wrong! It just doesn't work!" That moment hasn't come yet. Maybe it will. I just keep moving things around, reshaping the edit. We shot so much footage that it's like having a huge source library. I can usually find a shot that I can use or repurpose. This gives the film a particular look. It lacks an overall seamlessness. There aren't swooping shots that gracefully transition from one shot to the next. It's the anti-Citizen Kane. The film is more like a series of fragments stitched together. It reminds me a bit of Moulin Rouge which has that same collaged-together feel. But apparently, that's the type of look I'm going for at an intuitive level. I edited out all the crane shots except the one at the end. I have only one traditional establishing shot. No exteriors. Only one place where there is A roll with B roll cutaways (the thinking sequence). In the desert sequence, Ben drives up in his car. He gets out of the car. Close up as he looks at a map in his hands. Then we see a tighter shot of Ben and he walks out of frame. Even then I didn't want to cut back to the wide shot. It had to go tighter. I'm not sure why I have such an aversion to that B roll cutaway look. I also discovered that I have an aversion to opening with establishing shots. I've been thinking about the sequence where Ben discovers stars coming out of the spinner. Right now, the geography is ambiguous. It's not clear that the stars are actually coming out of the spinner box because I shot so tight. I think traditionally you'd want to start wide and then go close. But I dislike that look so I might do a pickup shot where we see a high angle view of the spinner and then go tighter and see the stars coming out. That would make the geography clearer without going wide.

No wonder that this film looks odd. A large part of art is discovering your sensibility, your unverbalized likes and prejudices. Sometimes they make sense. Sometimes they don't. When I first started writing songs, I assiduously avoided going from I to V. I eventually realized that you can't be afraid of that, it's just a part of songwriting. Maybe I'll get over some of my film grammar prejudices. Here's what seems to comprise my cinematic style—

1. Locked down camera. People move in and out of frame.
2. Love of symmetry as long as there's sufficient visual depth.
3. Interesting angles.
4. Shot tight with wide angle lenses
5. Avoidance of traditional establishing shots. Instead, establish by using tight shots from various angles.
6. Avoidance of B-roll cutaway style editing
7. Unafraid to use post to do pushes and other post production camera moves as long as there's no foreground/midground.
9. Use of 'matte paintings' to augment compositions.
10. Dependence on using close ups of objects, etc., shot after-the-fact to fill in information.