Did Movie Posters just get better!?

2010-11-12T15:34:00.000+11:00

Recently I've noticed these great movie posters for upcominf films, more importantly from Hollywood!

How great do these things look!? They are so simple, unique, but most importantly: visually appealing. Compare to the formulaic, over complicated, and most importantly boring posters that Hollywood has been posting up recently:

People accuse Hollywood of having formualic plots... hell the entire industry is formulaic!

One upon a time Movie posters were original (based on what ever the movie was actually about) and iconic.

2010-10-11T22:51:00.003+11:00

"...the strip of celluloid is put together like a musical score, and this execution is determined by the editing; just like a conductor interprets a piece of music in rubato, another will play it in a very dry and academic manner and a third will be very romantic, and so on. The images themselves are not sufficient: they are very important, but are only images. The essential is the length of each image, what follows each image: it is the very eloquence of the cinema that is constructed in the editing room."
-Orson Welles
Source

"The great majority of critics, whether they treat me well or badly, always treat me as a formalist and I’m not a formalist! I am most concerned with rendering a musical impression. Music and poetry. It’s that, rather than a mere rendering of visual imagination. The visual side comes out of a method of thinking, if thinking is the right word. I hate to use pompous words like “creating,” but I’m afraid you have to. For me, the visual aspect of my films is dictated by poetic and musical forms. I don’t begin with the visual and then try to find poetic or musical rhythms and try to paste them on to the film. The film ought to, on the contrary, follow that rhythm effortlessly."
-Orson Welles
Emphesis added by me.
Source

There is little more that I can add to this statement, beyond the idea that if the choruses of Ancient Greece were drama to a melody, then perhaps so to should modern cinema embody a musicality.

The potential pretenciousness of classicism aside, I'm somewhat of a failed musician, and I love the idea of using cinema as a kind of musical form "visual music" with the same power to create a progression of moods, to create an atmosphere, and to tell a story.

Non-Submersible Units

2009-04-11T15:31:00.007+10:00

If you want to understand the thinking behind the way Stanley Kubrick edited his films, or how he told his stories. - you have to know about Non-Submersible Units.

Non-Submersible Units are the most, well, "Non Submersible Units" of a story, the most essential scenes or sequences in a plot needed to make the story coherent. Take for example a man going to work, any good storyteller knows that if you show him getting up in the morning, then cut to him getting out of the car at the office - the audience will know he's driven to work. This is what Kubrick was a master of, he knew what the audience was capable of working out for themselves.

The best example is in 2001: A Space Odyssey - the bone, thrown up in the air by a proto-human and cut to a satellite- not only does this show the huge influence of Sergei Eisenstein on Kubrick (this could be called an "Intellectual Montage") but it also shows that Kubrick knew the audience would work out 4 million years have passed, and that the audience would make the thematic, conceptual relation between the Bone and the satellite.

Two other filmmakers who have this amazing skill to know what the audience can work out for themselves, to imply are Alfred Hitchcock and Steven Spielberg. Take E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, Spielberg intercuts between Elliot at school and E.T. getting drunk, without literally saying it, he implies a symbiotic relationship between the two - he's using the audience's intelligence. Or Jaws, were we barley see the Shark, much like the shower scene in Hitchcock's Psycho - Spielberg is leaving things to the audience's imagination, relying on their intelligence - and that is exactly what Kubrick's Non-Submersible Units are all about.

Let's look at the first 3 scenes of A Clockwork Orange:

1. Karova Milkbar

2. Underpass - beat up the tramp

3. Old Casino - fight with Billy Boy

Now, there is no explanation how Alex and his Droogs got from the Karova Milkbar to the Underpass and then to the Old Casino, because its irrelevant. Kubrick keeps this off screen, and as a result is an episodic collection of scenes, that are totally necessary to the story. This is the basic philosophy behind Non-Submersible Units, that everything unnecessary is cut out.

And this can even be seen in Kubrick's editing, in the scene where Alex and the Droogs fight Billy Boy and his gang - the editing during the actual conflict is not linear, it cuts between various shots of them fighting - not only does this give a greater sense of chaos, but also it exemplifies Kubrick's fat-free story telling, he didn't show the whole fight, but he cut between the most exciting, most physical parts of the fight.

The most important thing about this is it works, people watch A Clockwork Orange and they understand what's going on. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, people understand the significance of that cut, and realize that time has passed. Just like how in E.T. the audience deduces there is a symbiotic relationship between E.T. and Elliot, a telepathic bond.

Kubrick understood the capacity of the audience's intelligence, and he constantly relied on that, and so does Eisenstein, Hitchcock, and Spielberg - for the reasons I've just cited.

The most obvious sign that a Non-Submersible Unit has ended in a Kubrick film is a fade out - almost where ever he uses a fade out, it means that one NSU has finished, and we are jumping ahead in time to the next. Either that or a title card, such as the title card "16 months later" in 2001: A Space Odyssey, or the title cards in the Shining.

Non-Submersible Units are perhaps not a totally original creation of Kubrick's - as I've already said it owes a lot to the likes of Sergei Eisenstein, and probably another influence on Kubrick Veselvod Pudovkin - another early pioneer of Soviet Montage theories. In fact in his book "Film Technique", which Kubrick said was the most helpful film theory book he'd ever read - Pudovkin says that plot is a collection of events or episodes with a common theme.

However, another Russian Filmmaker seems to have adopted the fragmented, distilled filmmaking of Non-Submersible Units. In Andrei Tarkovksy's highly unusual film, "Zerkalo" (Mirror), the film is a collection of non-linear vignettes, episodes, from a man's life. Each one of these vignettes could easily be compared to a Non-Submersible Unit, because its a episode, which is temporally separate from the rest of the film. When put together all these episodes form the whole, they form a complete film with a thematic thread -much like 2001: A Space Odyssey, one might ask "What does the Dawn of Man, a space voyage to Jupiter, and a psychedelic stargate have in common?" just as much as one might ask "What does a man talking about Spanish bullfighters, a man on his deathbed getting a call from his mother, and a boy at a house burning down have in common?" - however they do have something in common, in context. While Zerkalo didn't seek to tell a story, these disparate episodes are all related, and and are like tiles in a mosaic that form a larger, coherent picture. Same with 2001: A Space Odyssey.

A similar phenomenon can be seen in Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" seemingly disparate stories, vingettes, all are interconnected. Butch is working for Marsellus Wallace, so are Jules and Vince who get caught up in a hold up with Pumpkin and Honney Bunny. While, the whole is less cohesive then 2001: A Space Odyssey, each of the vingettes presents an interesting contrast to Kubrick's use of Vingettes (Non-Submersible units), compare The Shining which makes uses of Title Cards, just like Pulp Fiction. Each title card means we are making a temporal jump, we will go to another period in time to see another vignette. The difference is of course, that while Tarantino meanders, Kubrick is distilled and compressed.

And it is that distilation of plot and episode that marks Kubrick's films, it is Kubrick who said that a novel can have almost infinite scenes, but a movie is limited (if the average movie is 120 minutes, and the average scene is 2 minutes, that means a film can have only about 60 scenes) - Interestingly Tarantino (who might I add was inspired by Kubrick's The Killing, to tell non-linear stories) has often compared his writing style to novel writing.

One could argue, Kubrick is trying to write the most cinematic stories possible - he's not writing plays, he's not writing novels - he's writing visual things: films. However, like Tarantino - he is relying on the audience's intelligence, their imagination, he is making an "off-screen movie" (the zenith of which is perhaps Reservoir Dogs). This is one of Kubrick's skills, in his editing, in his storytelling - he knows what to leave out - and in the end that's almost as important as how good the stuff he leaves in, he distills and distills but leaves enough to entertain the audience, and to let them figure out for themselves what's going on.

A Constantinework Orange

Did Movie Posters just get better!?

Non-Submersible Units