All language subtitles for 7 - Directing and Technology

it was able to get my hands on an 8 millimeter camera

at one point

a friend of mine had it

and I shot out a little silly film

The Rooftops of Lower East Side back

I think in 1962 or so

but the very idea of

making a film

a narrative film

even though I was aware of all the excitement around me

and maybe because of that

to the excitement of the American underground cinema

the American avant garde

European avant garde

all these things were developing and um

and we're being available now

that cinema could be anything

cinema was anything

you make it

all these things um

fed the desire to make a narrative film

I wanted to make a narrative film um and

when I finally saw the film shadows

by John cassavetti's

I think it was 1959 or 1960

what it proved to us was that

if you had a desire to tell a story

as strongly as he had

and you were able to break away

or not even being cumbered

should I say

not being cumbered

by a studio system

a way of the industry

way of making a film with the very big crew

very very heavy equipment

and that was that was

that was stopping the creative impulse in a way

so what happened

was that there was very lightweight equipment

this enabled the filmmakers

like Cassa Betty's

like Shirley Clark

like many others

to be able to just open up the field and shoot

almost as if you have today

for example

an iPhone would be a similar thing

and so these became truly

truly independent films

you realize

of no more excuses

if they were able to make a film this way in New York

and 16 millimeter

the camera didn't have a tripod

and that sort of the very

very little lighting maybe none

there's no excuse now

you have to be able to do it

but the only thing you need

and this is the most important thing

is the spark and the desire and the passion to

to say something utilizing film

it turns out that where

and it's some

it's difficult to to

to try to try to say

encompass all of this

but there are many different aspects

different kinds of films

that I was inspired by

Cassa Bettys work

within the scenes

with the people who happen to be actors

but with the people

um gave it a sense of authenticity in life

that I felt like it was gonna live off the screen

the screen couldn't inhabit it because

couldn't hold it

but the case of Eddie's thing was to explore that life

and push it to the edge

and still try to keep um

if you're so inclined

a particular narrative in storyline

and see if I can combine it all

wasn't intentional that way

but that's what I felt

because of the

the extraordinary technology around us at this point

I mean they

people talk about the

the fact that anyone can make a film it's true

anyone can express themselves in visual images

but what's happening

one has to remember is that technology is a tool

um the same principle supply

which is your

your need to tell that story

your need to go through the process

and you happen to be using digital

as opposed to film or

or an iPhone

I have no idea

but the key thing is that the technology does not

dictate the art

the art dictates the technology

the art comes first

and you use the technology for the art

whatever that art may be

you know and I think there's a misconception today

that because of the equipment

um the equipment does it

easily done

you can press a button

and you have different sorts of visual effects

I Learned this back with the study Cam

back during Raging Bull

I had design fight sequences in the film

nine of them and very

very specific ways

so much so that they were all drawn images

I have storyboards for everything

and designs and outlines and diagrams

of the choreography of the fights themselves

and myself and cinematographer

worked out the camera moves

that is the physical

actual use of the equipment at that time

with no video assist

none of that sort of thing we have today

so for my director

photography Chapman

it did take longer than we thought to create

these images that you see in those fight scenes

because of the nature of the equipment and it

which means that it took

we had planned five weeks to shoot the fight scenes

it took 10 um

there was one fight scene that I thought we would um

do with this new instrument called the Study Cam

and we started shooting it

I did not design the shots

I just use the sense of the

element that I thought the city cam would give me

um and after shooting for a day

I realized there is no way of getting around the design

in other words

the technology of this beautiful instrument

was not going to direct the film for me

something else was happening

and I scrapped it all and reshot it

and of course

use the study cam for the long takes that I

that are in the film

and then eventually understood the nature of it

to the point where we were able to do that long take

for example

in Goodfellas

which goes into the Copa Cabana

but I had relied on the

this new technology to create um

to create a certain aspect of cinema which I

which was still mysterious to me

and I realized at that point

that I still had to be there

you know it wasn't gonna do it for me um

I wanted to see what that equipment gives me

but I still have to direct the equipment

and know what the equipment is capable of

what I can use it for

so this is a very important point

the issue of technology carries over

particularly into the post production to

in the editing itself of a film um

or of a visual narrative

so speak um

in the days when we first started

of course it was a separate track and picture

um if one wanted to make a dissolve

or see a call for a dissolve

or call for any special effect

had to do a temp

so to speak

it had to go to a lab

very often we didn't see these dissolves

until the film was finished

um but in this case

what's happening now is that this uh

it's kind of exciting

because you can see these different elements um uh uh

pretty much immediately

uh with the computer editing

many different effects

can be seen and experienced right away

so that you could

you could react immediately to it

yet there is a drawback

and that is the immediate nature of it

very often I found that

once we made the switch from editing in 35 millimeter

to computer

I found that

discussing how to make a change in a scene

what we were used to

would take maybe 25

30 minutes or so

as it working on that change

splicing film cutting

sinking up or whatever they were doing

you think about it possibly

or at least if you weren't thinking about it

you were in the presence of the change in a sense

you experiencing travel in a way

from one version to the other

and at a certain point

when we started using the computer

it asked for a change

so why don't we try this

why don't we try that

and within two to three minutes

it was done

and so I had to learn

um to do without that process

a very valuable process

of another way of filmmaking of waiting

waiting and absorbing what you're doing

this was something else that threw me for quite a while

because it was immediate

and almost at a certain point

because one's able

one is able to do this with the technology

that maybe too many choices

and what I began to understand is that one has to

steal yourself against all these choices somehow

and learn how to

how should I put it

tame them in a way

and that the only way to do that

is to keep focused on what you want to say

you see um and so

the extraneous

cutting away the extraneous

sometimes it works for me

sometimes it doesn't

but it is a different

um it's a different medium this way

in terms of cutting that quickly um

and having everything at your fingertips at this point

um I always think it's interesting

because if you have everything at your fingertips

and such rate of speed

then you really are committed to the essence

of what you're doing

you know there's no excuse to say

I've got to wait for this or got to wait for that

you really have to know what you're doing

even more so