Many thanks to the student who helped with things on the openday event... you know who you are....
In our very last lesson we cross-compared two films: The Lake House and Belles of St Trinians. We watched the opening 5-10 minutes of each and what came out of it for me was the obvious difference between how the camera tells the story in The Lake House and the actors carry the plot in St Trinians.
St Trinians is a far cheaper production which relies on a few locations being recycled in different scenes in order for the actors to carry on revealing the narrative. The mis en scene is either incidental or driven by the script. So you end up with "The Head's Office"; "A science lab"; "A gym class" - stock backgrounds in which to act out the scene.
The Lake House is much more lavish. The camera takes part in the telling of the story: for example it pulls out to reveal a busy city and then pans and zooms in to isolate two figure in the midst of the crowd; a dolly shot tracks an actor so we effectively walk with the character along a jetty; and all the time the weather and environments of the actors are having an effect on the actors; some shots contain no dialogue; music and silence also take a part in generating mood or telling the story. The soundtrack picks up other characters and things that are happening elsewhere, so again, the story evolves inside the setting, not infront of the scenery.
Edward Gordon Craig was trying to challenge the idea of theatre actors performing in front of scenery in the early 1900s - so it fascinating to see that some film makers hadn't learned that lesson (or could not afford to) until much, much later.
The point for our devising teams is this: The actors performing St Trinians perhaps only need the locations to be generated in a manner which is incidental to the plot. The locations will be stock locations and could be simply anounced to the audience. - which is exactly where working in John Godber's style will lead them. So, great - just more evidence to suggest we are barking up the right tree on that project.
What it means for The Lake House is that we are looking to create mis en scene which uses colour, movement, sound, music, silence and image to help tell the story. This would seem to be close to what the Kneehigh theatre company actually do. The eclectic, multi-layered approach to setting - which involves puppets, live music, projection, physical images, choreography, song, sound effects and so forth - is the stage equivalent of letting the format of the medium take part in telling the story. - Which is just a posh way of saying that The Lake House group need to be creative with a range of production and performance elements in order to tell their story. More on this later...
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What's All This?
Everyday I have hundreds of conversations with staff and students. I would like to think that each and every one of them is super-important. Some of them certainly are. The purpose of this blog is to record some of the verbal decisions and ideas that would otherwise be lost.
Please read regularly and try to keep up. Especially read the notes on other groups' projects because they will shed light on your own processes. I obviously welcome comments and would encourage you to both read and post comments.
Cheers!
Please read regularly and try to keep up. Especially read the notes on other groups' projects because they will shed light on your own processes. I obviously welcome comments and would encourage you to both read and post comments.
Cheers!
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