Luciferjones

The principles of visual ‘truth’ in media production.
Essay by Mike Jones
August 2004

[first presented at Get real and all that spiel: English Teachers Association Conference. Darling Harbour, Sydney. July 2004. First published in Australian Screen Education magazine, September 2004]

‘Reality TV’ may dominate the broadcast channels of late, documentaries of ‘fact’ may rake in more dollars at the box office than the latest Hollywood comic book remake, but make no mistake; your TV is lying to you…!

Frightening enough as this idea may be you should also strap yourself in for a second disturbing ‘truth’; this is not a new development - your TV has always lied to you.

There isn’t now, nor has there ever been, any such thing as ‘reality’ in media production; whether for the small or large screen. Even the most earnest and intimate of documentaries is as false and un-real as any Hollywood fantasy epic.

What is often misconstrued and taken for ‘reality’ should more correctly be labelled ‘truth’; the ‘truth’ of what a filmmaker can get an audience to believe. What visual and aural messages can the filmmaker deliver to an audience to coerce them into believing that what they are seeing is, in some way shape or form, ‘real’?

Obviously this idea in turn prompts questions from the sceptical of “what can you get an audience to believe?” to which, of course, the answer is… Anything.

The cinematic form (encompassing visual-based media of all types and screen sizes) has, in essence, a single core tenet - cinema is a construction; a deliberate series of choices, decisions and motivations all combined to produce a product that prompts the viewer to feel or think in a very specific direction. This isn’t to say the product need be a heavy political documentary, even the most coarse of schmaltzy of romantic comedies demand the viewer feel very specific emotions for specified characters and events. The cinema is an architecturally specific world where (no matter the genre) every bolt and screw has an effect and whether conscious or not, has direct impact on the ‘truth’ created. A ‘truth’ that has nothing do with any sense of what is ‘real’, actual or of fact.

Moreover this sense of constructed truth, one that is as flexible and malleable as any clay, doesn’t just occur within narrative or creative decisions on the part of directors and screenwriters, but is in fact rooted in the production process itself. The lies are built into the cinematic form from the dolly-grip up..!

As example let’s take one of the central principles of cinematography and editing; the 180 degree rule. The concept of the 180 degree rule, (aka crossing-the-line) can be found on page #1 of any cinematographers textbook. It is, in essence, a guiding principle for creating a spatial truth around the rather un-natural habit of cinema ‘cutting’ from camera-position to camera-position and thus moving the audience metaphysically and immediately through space.

Simply put, the 180 degree rule says that in any scene involving two central subjects (more often than not a conversation of dialogue between two actors) a line is drawn between the two to create a barrier for the camera. The camera should not cross the line (i.e. be edited so that two shots from opposite sides of the line are shown in the same scene.

The images above illustrate the effect of crossing the line in a basic two-person dialogue scene and so demonstrate the defiance of ‘reality’ in favour of ‘visual truth’. When the line is crossed, and the images edited in sequence, the effect is to have the two actors appear to be facing the same direction rather than looking at each other. Reality and truth collide.

The ‘reality’ of the scene is that the actors were not facing the same direction, they were, in physical-reality, facing each other squarely. But the shooting and editing of the sequence makes this ‘physical-reality’ a problem. A false ‘reality’ of invisible guidelines and camera position rules has to be imposed and adhered to in order to create a visual ‘truth’; a reality the viewer will accept.

This is an excellent example of constructed truth for the viewer that has little to do with the reality of its shooting or creation. This example deals directly with the ideas of montage, the construction of tension and drama through cutting and sequencing as championed by seminal Russian filmmaker, Sergi Eisenstein. However the construction of truth divorced from reality is as much a part of the mise en scene; the framing sensibilities of composition that come to filmmaking from traditional painting.

Obviously physical positioning of actors, objects and sets within the frame is central to the mise en scene but so to, in a manner just as impactful, is light and sound. Here again the divorced nature of ‘reality’ and ‘truth’ can be seen.

Most cinematic lighting is built around a principal three-point lighting array; a method of lighting a subject using three lighting sources: Key-light, Fill-light and Back-light.

The Key-light generally represents the light ’source’ of the scene often related to the physicality of the set. i.e. nearby window, overhead light, spotlight.

In ‘reality’ a Key-light is often the only light. Small indoor rooms often only have one light overhead, or a lamp on a table, or light through a single window. This may well be adequate lighting for ‘reality’ but it is no good at all for cinema. In fact, rather ironically, single point lighting most often looks unnatural.

Cinematic lighting often demands two tenets that seem quite opposed; the scene must look ‘real’ and the audience accept that the light illuminating the subject is derived from a ‘realistic’ source. But, at the same time, a single light source, a key-light, is rarely enough to satisfy the practicalities of filming; i.e. that there be enough light and that an actors face not be obscured in shadow.

A single Keylight might be ‘realistic’ for the scene but it wont illuminate the actor sufficiently for a good shot or to adequately allow the audience to see their face without deep shadows that are caused by single light sources. Shadows of this sort create very specific tone and atmosphere and will inadvertently be imbued by the audience with some sort of significance because they appear ‘unnatural’.

This creates the irony that in ‘reality’ the world is not lit by Three-point lighting arrays, but on the screen anything not lit in a balanced way from multiple sources, will appear as stylised, constructed, moody, deliberate. In other words, Fake.

In this context Back-light and Fill-light serve to be invisible lights. Invisible in the sense that they aim not to draw attention to themselves as visible and real-world light sources but, for purely practical reasons of sufficient illumination, counterbalance the Keylight.

In the example above, the opening scene from Blade Runner (Scott, 1982) uses a very bright and dominant Key-light that radiates from a large window, in almost glaring white brilliance, into an otherwise dark and smoky room.

The close-up shows a man (soon to be revealed as a Replicant) with an obvious Key-light emanating from the window. If this were a ‘real’ environment with just that single major light source, the subject’s face would be almost totally cast in black shadow on the side not facing the light. It would be virtually impossible to make out detail in facial features and would achieve the same effect as the placing of a flashlight under your chin around the campfire. Certainly this scene in Blade Runner is aiming for a particular film-noir tone but there is also the simple practicality of creating a environment where the actors face can be clearly seen.

In this shot from Blade Runner the balance between mood and practicality of lighting is achieved by using a low level fill light on the opposite side of the actor to the window to lift the near side of their face out of the dark without disturbing the natural direction of the visible light source in the room. In essence this process is faking reality for practical reasons which ultimately achieve a much stronger visual ‘truth’ for the audience.

Fill-light and Back-light are the key elements of constructing very particular tone and attitudes from audiences without overtly creating lighting scapes that are obviously false.

A principle example of this being the use of Back-lighting for the illumination of Hollywood stars, particularly women, from the black and white days of the 40’s and 50’s.

In the above example from Casablanca, Ingrid Bergman is shown in a typically flattering close-up. Apart from the letting out of the focus ring to create a soft and complexion-friendly portrait, the most important aspect to this depiction of the female Hollywood star of eminent beauty and grace, is the precise and deliberate use of Back-lighting.

In this shot, as with almost any shot of a female star from this period of cinema, Bergman is lit with a rather intense back-light positioned low and behind her head. The result is a virtual halo. Bergman’s hair glows and shines and the shadow cast by the Back-light delivers to her the most impressively precise high and chiselled cheekbone in the history of cinema.

The Key-lighting in this shot is still dominant from the front, clearly illuminating the face. The overt lighting from behind is not designed to be a Key-light or lead the audience to think that the light source is behind Bergman. Rather the Back-light is simply there to lie to the audience, to subtly (or not so subtly) promote a feeling of beauty inspired awe, of angelic qualities and re-enforce the image the Hollywood studio wants its starlets to have; that of being above mere mortals and somehow ‘of the angels’.

Far fetched? Only just, but the result is none the less apparent from this deliberate lighting construction. No other character in Casablanca is lit in this way, certainly not the male characters who are more readily depicted as moody, brooding, dark heroes. The Back-light has no place in the ‘reality’ of the scene but it is central to the ‘truth’ being constructed and for the very deliberate emotive responses the filmmaker wishes the audience to have towards the characters.

These same principals of lighting a scene that don’t always, or indeed rarely, have all that much connection with an illuminated reality, are just as relevant for the creation and use of sound in cinema.

In Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (Coppola, 1972) the pivotal scene where the young Michael Corleone steps into his father’s shoes, and thus crosses the line into the gangster life, uses an extraordinary example of subtle, unrealistic (but none the less emotionally truthful) sound design.

As Michael retrieves the planted gun from behind the toilet cistern, with which he is to assassinate his enemies, the screeching sound of a train grinding to a halt blares into the scene and rumbles through as Michael hesitates to return to the restaurant.

In this scene, and the scenes preceding it, there has been no clear suggestion that the restaurant is near, or somehow connected with, a railway. The addition of this sound effect (which comes not once but twice, louder still and right before Michael pulls the trigger) is purely an artificial addition to the dramatic tension of the scene. Representative of the turmoil in Michael’s head of the choice he is about to make, (the line he will cross from which he may never come back) the sound is an excellent example of an audio design choice that is not based in reality but is purely delivered as reinforcement of an emotional ‘truth’ the filmmaker wants the viewer to engage with.

The ideas of constructed ‘cinematic truth’ are tightly linked with the sensibilities of a widespread cinematic language built up over the past century of cinema. This visual language is rarely articulated but is extraordinarily widespread in its cross-cultural understanding. What’s more, it is rarely based on any sense of tangible visual ‘reality’ but is inextricably linked to a visual acceptance. There is no better example than the use of POV shots through a simulated pair of binoculars.

For the better part of a century of western cinema there has existed an international cinematic sign for POV through binoculars; a hazy figure-8 type shape masking the cinematic frame.

In the above image from David Fincher’s Se7en, a helicopter shot shows the point-of-view of a person watching the events unfold beneath him through a pair of binoculars using the traditional figure-8 shape mask.

If you, like I, have ever looked through a pair of binoculars you will know that it Never looks like a figure-8…! And yet we, as viewers, never question what the hell that figure-8 smudge is doing on our screen. Rather we immediately draw upon the vocabulary of cinematic language that we inherently possess to make the instant summation that we are looking through binoculars.

The symbology of the figure-8 has no real-world reality but in the constructed world of cinematic imaging this widely comprehended icon for binoculars taps into inescapable visual truths that we as viewers accept and process without question.

Cinematic thinking is, for the most part, guided along two parallel schools of thought - The Mise En Scene, essentially the construction of meaning within the frame by composition. And Montage, the construction of meaning between the frames through juxtaposition and sequence.

We’ve seen in the above examples how composition and arrangement within the frame builds a visual ‘truth’ divorced from reality. Montage and the creation of meaning through editing is just as powerful, if not more so, in exploiting ‘cinematic truth’.

The principles of Montage were first articulated by the seminal Russian filmmakers and theorists, Sergi Eisenstein and Lev Kulesov in the early part of the 20th century. Their core thinking centred on the idea that meaning is not inherent in the shot but is created in the mind of the viewer based on a frame work delivered to them by the filmmaker.

Lev Kulesov illustrated this idea using a series of basic exercises, built around the 3 Shot Sequence, to demonstrate the principal of Montage to his students in the early 1900’s, post-revolution, Russia. The 3 Shot Sequence is a core film technique used across all genres of cinema; live action, animation and documentary. The 3 Shot sequence, as the name would suggest, consists of 3 individual framed shots shown in (usually) quick succession. The first shows a character looking off screen at some unseen action or event. The second shot shows the event or action that the character is witnessing. And the third shot, known as the Reaction Shot, shows the character’s ‘reaction’ (usually facial expression but might also be action or dialogue) to the event just witnessed.

Kulesov, to demonstrate the power of Montage to create meaning, created two separate Three-Shot Sequences. He used a very famous and respected Russian actor of the day called Mosjoukine and filmed two shots of the actor. The first was a close-up of the actor looking off-screen with a blank expression. The second was an extreme close-up of the same expression. These two shots became the First shot and Third (Reaction) shot in both of the three shot sequences. For the second shot, representing the action that was drawing the actor’s attention, Kulesov spliced in non related stock images. The first sequence used a shot displaying an injured and limping young girl as the second image. In the second sequence the inserted second shot was a close-up of a bowl of soup. Kulesov then displayed these two sequences to his students and recorded their comments.

The students viewing the first sequence with the injured girl commented on how the actor had effectively conveyed a sense pity and sorrow towards the victim. For the second sequence they remarked how vividly the actor had displayed a subtle sense of hunger, longing and poverty upon seeing the bowl of soup.

What this experiment demonstrated (other than over zealous enthusiasm of Russian students!) was what Sergi Eisenstein would later refer to as the 3rd Meaning. Unto themselves the three shots carry little meaning, certainly there was nothing in the way of direction on the part of Kulesov to the actor (or the bowl of soup for that matter…) The actor had no knowledge of ‘what’ he was meant to be seeing or how he ’should’ be reacting to it. The meaning drawn from the sequence came purely through the Montage of the images. The 3rd Meaning is that which is created in the mind of he viewer based on the relative and juxtaposed meanings of images placed in sequence. The 3rd Meaning is an element that doesn’t exist physically, visibly or audibly within the Mise en scene but rather is constructed in the mind of the viewer. The Actor existed, the Soup existed, the Injured Girl existed but it was only through Montage that Hunger and Pity existed.

This again reinforces the notion of visual truth. The simple ‘reality’ of the sequences that Kulesov created were that there was No story, No character nor character motivation. However the ‘truth’ constructed for the viewer by the sequence was quite different; a particular story imbibed with specific emotive responses.

The understanding and comprehension of cinematic ‘truth’ divorced from ‘reality’, and thus the constructed nature of cinematic media, goes to the core of what the cinema is and what it means as dominant media discourse in our culture.

Moreover, it reminds us that cinema is, above all, a techno-cultural form; technological change results in direct cultural impact. You cant separate the art of cinema from the technology that creates it. Cinema is technology. To fully comprehend how we read, interpret and analyse cinematic form, and the mass media as a whole, on a socio-cultural level we must have some understanding of the technical cinematic process. To analyse and stuffy film without a comprehension or attention to the technical cinematic process is like reading only half the words on the page.