Narration and Titling, Part Seven

(This is part of a series. Start with Narration and Titling, Part One.)

Conclusion

The worst intertitles in the world belong to Len Cella, the filmmaker known for 1985’s Moron Movies and the inevitable 1986 sequel More Moron Movies. Seemingly just plastic letters on a board, they spell out the titles of his shorts––such as “Animals Should Wear Underwear” and “Jello Makes a Lousy Doorstop”––and may look uglier than any other title ever has.

Still, they function perfectly, setting up Cella’s visual jokes exactly as needed. Sometimes they are themselves more than half of the joke, delivering the punchline in the first second of the film, and setting up our expectation of action to come (not unlike Flaherty’s titles in Nanook). As well, they set our expectations exactly right for the humor of these films: they instantly create an expectation of the lowbrow, and the poorly-made (yet pitch-perfect) strivings of Cella.

As Stella Bruzzi points out in her essay “Narration: The Film and its Voice” in New Documentary: A Critical Introduction, much of the disparagement of narration and titling in the documentary field may derive from the taste of Cinéma Vérité and Direct Cinema filmmakers who saw resorting to narration as a failure of a film to achieve its desired results through picture-logic rather than word-logic. Yet to abandon a key tool of filmmaking––and clearly one necessary to a range of essential documentaries––would be foolhardy.

It may be that alternative strategies (such as Chris Marker’s use of a female voice in 1983’s Sans Soleil) and minimization (as in the use of text in 2004’s Darwin’s Nightmare) may be necessary to avoid the known pitfalls inherent in intertitles and narration. Photographs of circa-1976 leisure suits do not stop clothing designers from making suits, after all, but may serve instead to force questions on the function and message clothing delivers. It may be the same for documentary filmmakers.

Narration and Titling, Part Six

(This is part of a series. Start with Narration and Titling, Part One.)

The Computer-Based Diary Film: Tarnation

As Lev Manovich has pointed out, computers are omnivorous and anything that can be brought into a computer can become part of a video or film presentation. Still images, moving images, animations and most significantly text are all easily brought into a motion picture created in a computer-based editing program.

The art of motion graphics has finally come of age when a relatively inexpensive program like Adobe After Effects offers more power than the best artists of the film world had into the 1970s. Opening credits––once of minimal importance, but increasingly valued since the time of designer Saul Bass––have become a tool in the service of a film’s story and mood.

Jonathan Caouette's 2003 Tarnation uses the computer-editing aesthetic intrinsic to Apple’s iMovie software. Titles are easily created in the midst of cross-dissolved stills, and the movie is heavily dependent on these textual elements. Key moments in the story are revealed through these titles, something that would have been incomprehensible in Flaherty’s Nanook: “Nanook builds an ice window” would not have served the film in the same manner the visual revelation does.

Yet in Caouette’s film the text can be perceived more as a personal letter. It is assumed it is his writing of the tale, and the non-visual moments can be interpreted as his revelations, rather than as patches over missing material.

Next: Conclusion

Narration and Titling, Part Five

(This is part of a series. Start with Narration and Titling, Part One.)

Informal Versus Formal: Dogtown and Z-Boys

The narration by Sean Penn in Stacy Peralta’s 2001 Dogtown and Z-Boys reflects the informal, anti-establishment approach of the filmmakers through a strange mix of formal “storytelling” narrative combined with the inclusion of Penn’s informal throat clearings and restatements.

Selected in part for his fame and credibility as an actor, Penn’s real connection to the story of the film is his history as a Southern California youth and his infamous role as Jeff Spicoli, the ludicrous surfer character from 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Penn’s metamorphosis from this stereotypical surfer into a serious actor parallels the development of the film’s director, Peralta, from a long-haired surfer (physically resembling the Spicoli character) into a serious documentarian.

The film also plays with the fact that its director also serves as the main “informant” for its ethnography of circa-1982 Southern California, appearing on camera as needed as a sort of second narrator, often supplying crucial information to clarify the story where no clear visual exists.

A key element of how both narrators function in this film is that, while both are white males, they have voices that vary in timbre and style from that of a traditional “voice of god” narrator. While Penn’s omniscient text is written in a manner matching that model, it is offset by his delivery: his seriousness is perceived as striving to present the story of the rise and fall of a sport not taken seriously, and thus avoids an authoritarian tone.

Next: The Computer-Based Diary Film: Tarnation

Narration and Titling, Part Four

(This is part of a series. Start with Narration and Titling, Part One.)

Necessary Revelations in Social Documentary

The practitioners of Cinéma Vérité and Direct Cinema eschewed narration as an admission of failure in a film. Drew Associates proudly notes on its Web site its 1960 film Primary uses less than two minutes of narration, noting further that this was the reason the broadcast networks of the time declined it.

Yet the filmmakers who would follow would find that social documentary films often needed both intertitles and narration to allow a coherent story to be shaped. Since these films are often shot with a single camera at unrepeatable events, and since access is often denied or minimized, often the footage gathered requires context and explanation.

Barbara Kopple’s 1990 American Dream, for example, uses intertitles as well as Kopple’s voice as narrator to move the story forward at key junctures. The result of contract negotiations, key to the narrative of the film, does not occur on camera and thus requires either text or statement to clarify the positions of the key players of the film. Titles or statements specify the offer given by the negotiating company or the response of the labor union as needed.

As well, the progress of time is structured by these imposed elements, as footage of meetings does not give a clear sense of the progression of events in the story.

It is notable that the use of titling in the film––basic and simple text which does not call attention to itself––may function differently than Kopple’s voice, which comes as a surprise for many viewers after so many minutes of an approach derived from Direct Cinema. Announcing a key development in the plot, the addition of the voice comes approximately at the point in the film where the effect of the larger story on individuals is revealed, and where the crisis becomes personal.

Here, the use of a female narrator may avoid the connotations of the “voice of god” narration technique and the impositions it might bring to the film.

Next: Informal Versus Formal: Dogtown and Z-Boys

Narration and Titling, Part Three

(This is part of a series. Start with Narration and Titling, Part One.)

Evidence and Drama in Early Sound Films

Housing Problems (1935) by Arthur Elton and Edgar Anstey deals with the “problem of the slums” and uses audio narration to set up sequences of evidence in support of its message. Introducing segments of images with phrases such as “here are some pictures of ...” and the more specifically negative “here are examples of sheer neglect...” in a male upper-middle-class voice that seems to fit the bill for delivering an official viewpoint, the film begins with this “voice of God” style narration. Yet this is counterpointed with the working class dialect of the film’s subjects, who give the details of their situation (and their feelings about that situation) in their own words decades before this would become common practice in documentary film.

Night Mail (1936) by Harry Watt and Basil Wright can be taken as celebrating efficiency and the British worker. Its poetic narration, by W.H. Auden, seems specifically designed to add a sense of dignity to the simple story of the delivery of the mail. Referencing the rhythms of the trains depicted in the film, this narration positions the importance of the image sequences we see into the unseen lives of those who depend on the mail. A second layer of sound consisting of the overdubbed voices of the workers serves to dramatize the process, asking questions such as “can we do it?” and counting down to the critical shots of netting the mail in the dramatic manner of a feature film.

Both of these films proved early on that audio narration could solve “problem areas” in a film by communicating needed information that was not provided in the visuals gathered or in interviews. This technique, however, would quickly become a crutch for many documentaries and the hallmark of the “educational film” as it was seeming easier and less expensive to script and record a “voice of god” narrator than to provide for the process needed to gather certain materials.

As well, propagandists would discover that such a technique would allow precise control of a desired message, and that where images could be misinterpreted or not show what was intended, narration could be crafted to present any message as true.

Next: Necessary Revelations in Social Documentary

Narration and Titling, Part Two

(This is part of a series. Start with Narration and Titling, Part One.)

Intertitles in the Silent Era

Robert Flaherty’s 1922 Nanook, considered by many the earliest documentary of significance after the actuality films of the Lumieres, uses intertitles for purposes of establishing facts and situations a viewer will need to understand to comprehend visual sequences in the film.

Throughout the film, with one notable exception, these intertitles are presented title-first and then action, describing the sequence ahead (to some degree) before we see a depiction (and occasionally extension) of the detailed progress of that action. One of the film’s ostensible functions is to explain an “alien” culture in an unfamiliar setting to its domestic audience, so cues that explain the significance of the visuals would have been welcomed. As well, these intertitles seem to be used to provide a pacing element for the film, at times allowing a “breathing space” and controlling the presentation of time in the most dramatic sequences.

The notable exception to this title/action pattern comes at the end of the sequence where Nanook builds an igloo. As Eric Barnouw details in Documentary:

“Now only one thing more is needed,” a subtitle tells us as Nanook, having apparently completed an igloo, starts to cut a block of ice. Audiences do not know, for the moment, the purpose of the “one thing more.” They soon discover: a square of snow is cut from the igloo, and the ice becomes a window. It is even equipped with a snow reflector, to catch the low sun. The sequence has often brought applause. Part of the satisfaction lies in the fact that the audience has been permitted to be, like Flaherty himself, explorer and discoverer.

Here, the reward Flaherty has in mind for the audience is one where Nanook exceeds their expectations in ingenuity in his work, and the subtitle must hold off its description until the appropriate moment.

Next: Evidence and Drama in Early Sound Films

Narration and Titling, Part One

I find that again and again the idea of voiceover and narration arises in discussions on film, and that there's almost always a knee-jerk reaction detailing how terrible it is. Certainly, there are plenty of bad examples. Still, if it's such a common practice, isn't it likely that there are good uses for it? A while back I wrote a short paper on this topic, focusing specifically on narration and titling in documentary film. I've decided to put this online as a short series. Here's Part One.

The Accidental Narration of the Radio

I grew up in the shadow of a college radio station. One of the best, in fact, and at a small school that supported it and let the student disc jockeys alone. In summer, when the students were mostly away from the campus and there were very few requests, it was easy for my friends and I to call and name anything we liked and to hear it within moments. We memorized the request line and the disc jockey’s names and schedules, and took to turning the sound down on the omnipresent suburban televisions that dominated our lives. We began to leave KSPC 88.7 FM playing as soundtrack. Inevitably, sound and picture would synchronize into new meanings for us. We found that certain types of music went well with certain programs, which is no surprise.

What was a surprise was that new meanings would emerge when public service announcements were read by the disc jockeys. The college deejays were a diverse group, from an 18-year-old freshman to the man who had hosted the Sunday Polka Music Show for decades. They were female and male, and from many states and several countries. There were no commercials, so they played about 8 songs and then read the news or the PSAs in various voices and accents, with varying reading and announcing skills.

These PSAs proved not only as associative as music, but more so. The collision of pictures and words was always fertile, and filled with patterns anyone might sit and decode, if they had as much free time as we did. We interpreted some statements as opposing the pictures they were juxtaposed with, and others as his supporting images on screen. We took some readings as ironic, and some as heartfelt, and we perceived different voices as holding varying amounts of authority or friendliness. We found some to imply we must take action, and others that seemed to reassure us.

In this series I will examine in brief a variety of narration / titling strategies used in documentaries, noting the key functions of the relation of this “imposed” text over the film’s images and audio. My main interest in doing this will be to explore the functional purpose of this read / heard text, as opposed to its use as language.

Next: Intertitles in the Silent Era

Persistence

Well, each time my students submit papers, I get at least one that tells me about "persistence of vision."

Ain't no such thing. The brain scientists know this, they've written about it, and the film people should stop copying-and-pasting the myth into their papers, blogs, articles and textbooks. It doesn't exist, it isn't important to film, and it is an unnecessary and incorrect start to a discussion of film ideas.

Don't trust me. Go read this complete article:

The Myth of Persistence of Vision Revisited

Several years ago we wrote an article entitled "The Myth of Persistence of Vision" which appeared in the Journal of the University Film Association in the fall of 1978 (Anderson and Fisher). In it we offered a considerable volume of evidence that the concept "persistence of vision" was an inaccurate and inadequate explanation of the apparent motion found in a motion picture. At the time we thought the article had laid the matter to rest. We had pronounced persistence of vision dead. And frankly, we expected never again to hear the term, other than in an historical context.

Now, more than a decade later, we are drawn once more to the myth of persistence of vision. Why? Because it is still with us. [1] We read a student paper, and we cringe. We attend the lecture of a seasoned film scholar, and we cringe. We cringe not only because they have chosen to perpetuate the notion of persistence of vision, but because they apparently, even at this late date, do not understand its implications. By this time most film scholars seem to have heard of the inadaquacy of the term "persistence of vision." Some have mistakenly substituted the generally misunderstood term "phi phenomenon" as an explanation of filmic motion, and many still cling to the myth.

Running and Gunning

I've been discussing and thinking about the theory behind editing run-and-gun footage lately, so I really enjoyed David Bordwell's post on the use of that style in The Bourne Ultimatum and the other Bourne films.

In general, the run-and-gun look says, I’m realer than what you normally see. In the DVD supplement to Supremacy, “Keeping It Real,” the producers claimed that they hired Greengrass because they wanted a “documentary feel” for Bourne’s second outing. Greengrass in turn affirms that he wanted to shoot it “like a live event.” And he justifies it, as directors have been justifying camera flourishes and fast cutting for fifty years, as yielding “energy. When you get it, you get magic.”

Rewatching and Rehearing

In general, if you make video work you get better at it over time. It's a slower improvement than in a field like photography -- where sometimes you go from little understanding to a high level of seeing in just a matter of weeks. Still, over time you get better at understanding why something works or doesn't work, and your ideas on how to cut become more refined.

Well, I recently had to watch a number of older pieces I made (I was assembling them for a portfolio) and went through the experience of re-thinking each cut as I watched them. It's not an easy process.

The biggest surprise was that I've learned a lot about audio continuity in the last year -- and that was the main thing I thought the older pieces lacked. The idea of how sound lets us orient ourselves in an imagined place and how each soundscape can flow into the next is something I had not always been thinking about. I think I still have a lot to learn about it, so I'm looking for ways to practice that set of skills....

Round Up The Usual Suspects

The Guardian has a very interesting piece by Ian Jack: "The documentary has always been a confection based on lies":

The 1990s saw a succession of controversies about invention in documentaries - Driving School, The Clampers, The Connection (in which drug runners weren't in fact running drugs) - which produced the same kind of hand-wringing, if not quite the quantity of it, that this month overtook the BBC.

According to Michael Grade, too many young people in television have "not been trained properly, they don't understand that you do not lie to audiences at any time, in any show".The BBC's director-general says it must "never deceive the public". But the documentary is a confection and often built on a series of small lies.

Well worth a read.

Personally, I'm not bothered when someone disputes that either documentary or photography can deliver "truth." I do kinda resent the "confection" bit, however.

Cutting (to the) Chase

I'm a big believer in learning-by-doing, so in the face-to-face video classes I've taught, I have a few custom projects I give that I think are very valuable. (The online classes I teach are usually more regimented in syllabus and lessons -- they are also good classes, but the course material is more locked-in and there isn't time for this type of assignment.)

The project almost everyone learns a good deal from involves cutting a chase sequence. It sounds like the easiest thing in the world, but it really gets people engaged in understanding the connection between editing and understanding -- the fact that every editing choice should be based in a deep understanding of how we comprehend what we see.

The actual project is much more direct: the goal is usually a 90-second chase video. There is some type of scenario set up -- for example, an action that motivates the chase or just the appearance of the characters -- then a chase begins.

That really sounds like the dumbest possible scenario, but here's how we proceed: we start by watching scenes from a range of chase films and trying to understand the visual systems at work in those. For example:

The French Connection
Bullitt
Ronin
Diva
Taxi

In the midst of that immersion, we start to get the traditional techniques. For example:

Use a landmark, so when we show one character go past it and later another we will have a sense of how far apart they are.

Frame a shot with the escapee and the pursuer together so that one is perceived to be gaining on or receding from the other.

Build up a language of looking out of the frame and then revealing a point-of-view shot. This lets us use reactions from the character in the chase language.

Use a directional language, based on screen motion left-to-right or right-to-left, then develop a technique for "turning around" the screen motion when needed.

Find ways of using shots that communicate speed -- for example, a camera close to the road.

From what they've learned, each small team of students (usually four works well) storyboards their own chase, and then they tape it.

Generally, the basics go very easily (and it can be quite rewarding to see these come together) but for almost every project an interesting thing happens: there is almost always one point where something went wrong, and a crucial shot can't be used or just won't work. Having to solve this problem -- which can range from easy to very tough -- brings out some serious thinking about editing and how to reconsider / rethink a project in the last stages of the process.

Ted's Ten Ideas on Editing

I've read a lot on editing, and I've never been completely happy with how the basic concepts are explained. So, in an effort to open up some practical discussion, I'm publishing my "Ten Ideas" on editing. This list comes out of traditional notions to a degree –– for example, from the writing of Walter Murch and others -- but is really meant to function as a checklist.

That is, this list is meant as to work as background to the question "does this cut work or not, and why?"

10 Editing "Checks"
by Ted Fisher

At each edit in a work, an editor should consider the following checklist. Not every edit can fulfill each "check," so part of the editor's job is to weigh the importance of each concern and decide what "works."

CONTINUITY CHECKS

1. New information
The main concern at any single cut, if one is really going to use the language of moving images, is that the cut give the viewer new information. Otherwise, why cut?

2. 3-D Continuity (Matching)
To create a believable action, a cut must "match." That is, if one cuts from a wide shot of a baseball pitcher to a close up during a pitch, the position of the throwing arm at the cut must "match" between the two shots, even if the shots are filmed months apart.

3. 2-D Continuity (Eye Trace)
No one takes in a frame all at once; the eye moves around the screen. Take this attention into account when making a cut -- one may wish to cut so that the focus of attention is at the same place on the screen, or at a different place, moving the same direction or moving in opposition, depending on the effect desired.

4. Composition
It is generally less jarring to the eye and brain when a cut is made from a well-composed shot to a well-composed shot.

5. Camera Angle
It usually helps if one is cutting to a camera angle that is different enough from the current one so as to be easily understood as a new shot; also it is generally better to cut from a good camera angle to a good camera angle rather than when at a "messier" point in a shot.

6. Audio
Cut in such a way that visuals work with audio and vice versa. Also, maintain sensible audio continuity (e.g., if we cut from a shot inside a speeding car to a close up of a helicopter following it, the audio may need to change with the cut based on where we "are" in relation to the sources of sounds).

THE "R.E.S.T."

7. Rhythm
We can set up "expectations" in a viewers mind by setting up a rhythm; this can also mean making edits work with the beat of a piece of music or with a certain pace of action.

8. Emotion
If a character is in a certain state of mind, editing may reflect their perception, or if the viewer is expected to feel a certain way then editing may amplify that state of mind, sometimes purposefully breaking the "rules" of the six continuity checks. For example, it may make sense to cut a fight scene in a discontinous manner.

9. Story
Each edit ultimately serves the telling of a story; the idea here is that one may cut on a certain frame or to a certain shot to serve that story rather than the conventional continuity concerns.

10. Timing
Sometimes an edit is motivated by that intangible idea of timing -- the point where it just feels right.

Postcritical

Critical Themes was fun, and I heard some very intriguing papers. I would do it again, though anyone who knows me understands I'm afraid of public speaking even if I can do it when necessary -- so probably not soon.

I did want to go on record about the keynote address by Alexander R. Galloway, though. He gave an excellent presentation, and brought out some ideas I found very useful and illuminating. I'll make a point of reading his books and papers this summer (I'm hoping to have some reading time then). Still, being a betting man, in one sense, I wanted to place my wager on the table.

Montage is not in decline.

Galloway's thesis -- that it is in decline -- may be perfectly understandable: correctly, he points out that "First-Person-Shooter" games are unblinking subjective shots, with no cutting, and one could even take a quick trip around YouTube and notice that the uncut video clip is now common language. Lev Manovich made a similar assertion, placing the tactic of compositing as ascendent and montage in decline, back in 2001 in "The Language of New Media." I disagreed then, and disagree now.

I would place against the evidence provided by video games and the television show "24" (where multiple screens float about at transition points, clearly based in compositing technique) the fact that the most significant works I've seen lately bring editing / montage techniques to new and more sophisticated levels. Iraq in Fragments has incredible editing, as does Wide Awake. And both films use them in a way completely at the service of the other elements of the film.

While techniques / strategies / tactics in media production do naturally rise and fall, I think we are only now getting to the point where virtuoso use of montage is arising. While I am an admirer of Eisenstein et al., I don't think we're at the end of a golden age of montage (and the expectation Galloway and Manovich set up is that we're 'naturally" moving on to visual effects / compositing / virtual cinematography as central techniques) but at a transition to a more advanced period. I've gone through Eisenstein set pieces frame-by-frame a lot of times, in the way a music student might go through a piano composition note-by-note, and I can fairly compare that to the editing that is happening today. And today montage is still on the ascent.

I think the parallel is found in music history. At a certain point, various factors -- especially an improvement in instruments and a growing sophistication in the audience as piano lessons became common in middle class families -- "set free" new generations of piano composers, and the type of music written became increasingly sophisticated. I think that's where we are moving, and I think montage is at the center of it.

Critical Themes

On Saturday, I will be presenting a paper at the Critical Themes in Media Studies conference at The New School.

Follow the link to the conference, or you can read Cutting Rope: Theorizing Montage and its Absence in Alfred Hitchcock’s "Rope" online, but without the visuals.