Audio-visual language, you come and translate for me what is "rhythm"!
We often hear the word "rhythm" in movie reviews. It seems to be some kind of "high-end vocabulary", and it's a class of words. This is actually because the concept of "rhythm" in the film is relatively abstract, with multiple defining angles, and it is difficult to generalize it intuitively and concretely. Today, I would like to help you understand what rhythm is through the Safdie brothers, a cutting-edge director known for their fast-paced style. See how the "Rhythm Master" "brings the rhythm" and creates anxiety in the movies "Good Times" and "Uncut Diamonds" to make the audience unable to stop.
Let's start from the scene
In daily life, our audiovisual perception is almost the same rhythm, but it is also easily provoked by emotions, which allows us to have a differentiated perception of the passage of time. The charm of movies lies in the fact that special effects such as speeding up, slowing down, strengthening, and weakening the audio-visual effects can be achieved through the combination of various elements, and the rhythm can be summarized as the regular changes of various elements in the film and television.
One of the most perceptible external rhythmic elements is the "view". For a better understanding, we can try to focus only on the changes in the film's scene, try to abstract the concept of rhythm, and see how "Good Times" creates tension and unease at the beginning of the film.
("Good Times" 1:02-1:20) From the big vision of the city to advance the narrow view into the story.
(1:20-1:45) Close-up of the eyes, one of the protagonists, Nick with intellectual disability, appears
Pull back a little, start the narrative, Nick starts answering questions
(-5:20) Talking back and forth until Nick breaks down
Usually this kind of dialogue scene with characters with dull eyes, stiff expressions, and communication barriers is a common practice to relax to a medium or close-up view. Such a close-up is very likely to cause a strong sense of oppression.
Let's compare it to the opening scene of the classic film "Blade Runner" where the clones are interrogated. They both have very similar "signified" content, but have different "signifier" emotional effects.
"Blade Runner" (5:19-), close-up replicators being questioned.
(5:44-) Switch to close-up, the atmosphere becomes awkward
(-5:49) Close-up, suddenly tense
Do you feel the effect of this change of scenery? Compared with "Blade Runner", the close-up of "Good Times" seems to be repeating on the heaviest "note" all the time. Let's look at the short dialogue with the communication-impaired person in "The Prisoner", which is always repeated on the lighter "note", and finally comes a close-up accent.
("Prisoner" 37:05-) Close-up in the narrative
The police officer asked to talk to the suspect alone, keeping the medium shot in front and back
In this regard, we have made some demonstrations of the effect of the single element of scene difference in the film's regular changes. Now that "rhythm" has been abstracted, we will talk about "rhythm" more systematically.
[External Rhythm and Movement, Styling]
The rhythm is generated in the change, and the external rhythm leading to the editing of the shot is affected by two factors - one is the amplitude of the shot , which is the scene we just focused on; the other is the length of the shot, that is, the duration and content of the shot sense of time continuity.
We can draw an axis "from the relaxed, steady, soothing, peaceful and slow-paced end to the tense, impulsive, impatient, lively fast-paced section, with the normal rhythm of our daily visual habits in between." The effect is more inclined to the left, and the small scene is inclined to the right; the effect produced by a long lens is more inclined to the left, and a short lens is inclined to the right... This is a bit like the exposure of a camera, between underexposure and overexposure, the aperture , shutter, sensitivity, the combination of these three elements affects the degree of exposure. But the film is much more complicated than the camera. The elements that affect the overall rhythm axis of the film cover everything in the film, and they are often interrelated and interlocked, acting between images. Effect and style presentation.
The telephoto close-up that originally showed this kind of staring at the character's face is what the Safdie brothers frequently used. Let the audience focus on specific information, and the compression of the depth of space brings dreamy daze, which has also become the hallmark of their film style.
Only one character's face can be captured in a single shot, which means that to fully display a dialogue, it is necessary to cut shots multiple times, and the frequency of switching shots increases. This means that the time of a single shot at the same time is greatly shortened, and the rhythm is faster.
From 10:50 to 11:09, the simple dialogue was cut back and forth 6 times.
Of course, the rhythm cannot be separated from the movement and modeling of the film. In fact, the rhythm is established on the dialectical relationship between them. Motion includes the movement of the object being photographed and the movement of the camera. Don't shrink the space for the small scene, then showing a complete action requires more moving shots to swing with the rhythm of the character's action, and the sense of movement is naturally enhanced.
Compared with the objective statement of the fixed shot, the camera movement is more rhythmic and stimulates, and the time delayed by the movement is exactly the expression of emotion.
18:15 Begins with a prison fight.
As for the shape, it includes the color, light, composition, and sound in the picture. The sudden appearance of colors, altered lighting effects, the position of characters in the picture, the sound of background music, etc., these changes are also closely related to the rhythm.
13:00 In sharp contrast to the foreplay scene, the sudden appearance of red.
Internal Rhythm and Mental Skills
If the external rhythm is the choice of viewing methods and perspectives, emphasizing "how to see", then the internal rhythm is rooted in the narrative itself and points to "what exactly happened in the picture?" It is a complex synthesis of many factors, such as Events, plot, scene scheduling, which requires us to analyze from another angle. While maintaining the visual style of "Good Times", "Rough Diamond" has more mature internal rhythm skills and is a good sample.
Howard, the protagonist jeweler, originally expected to sell a piece of opal at a high price in the story. He boasted to star Kevin Garnett that it was an opal that would be sent to the auction house for appraisal. borrow. When the protagonist started to act, he experienced a series of gaps and accidents, and did not get back the opal on time as he hoped. In addition, the character himself is also in all kinds of troubles - unpaid debts, addicted to sports gambling, family relations are in a mess, the most deadly account collectors come to the door again and again... The context of the narrative and the ambush of details are themselves. Create a density of events, and more macroscopically speaking, the same time and space where multiple lines of movies occur at the same time greatly strengthen this density and create a rhythm.
The film progresses to the middle part of the scene where Kevin Garnett returns to the store to return the diamond, which can be described as the most representative part of the whole film (63:10-71:40). Let us take a look at the process of passing through a series of events in just eight and a half minutes. Turns, the outbreak of contradictions, to create internal rhythm.
At the beginning, Howard received three consecutive calls: the auction house's urging for diamonds, the response of Kevin's team personnel to Howard's complaints, and his lover, Julia, who wanted to restore the broken relationship. (burden)
Kevin and Demani came to return the diamond and greeted (positive) with a smiling face, but found that the door could not be opened, and the group was trapped in the small security door glass door compartment. (burden)
The door finally opened (positive). But Kevin demanded the return of the championship ring as collateral, which had been pawned by Howard for money gambling (negative).
After lying, he finally got back the diamond he was thinking of (positive), but had a complete conflict with his partner Demani (negative).
Amidst the abuse, the doctor called to tell Howard the good news (positive) that the result of his rectal cancer test was fine.
Going out and going down the stairs, encountering the entanglement of lover Julia, and a direct confrontation (negative).
Look at the event density and sentiment line in just eight and a half minutes. There are also many similar bridges in the film. One wave of unresolved, one wave after another, positive and negative emotional events alternate repeatedly, irritability, happiness, excitement, embarrassment, and annoyance. Annoyed mood changes in one thought, this is a strong rhythm The production of rhythm.
This section also shows a major feature of Safdie's film, in a scene, multiple characters talk at the same time, several phone calls come in at the same time, and the sounds are superimposed. The influx of a lot of information is very noisy, and the use of small scenes prevents the speaker from appearing in one shot. This audio-visual dual-track processing deliberately makes the natural development law of things conflict with the audience's audio-visual viewing habits, so that the rhythm changes in the audience's heart.
In the scene of "Good Times" (27:14-), the four characters often speak at the same time, with their voices superimposed on each other. This was an earlier attempt by the Safdie brothers.
In "Rough Diamond", such dialogue scenes are used more frequently and further escalated. (65:30-) In this scene, three people trapped in the door are talking, and three people outside the door are also talking. There are some All the dialogues are completely stacked together in an instant, not to mention how many permutations and combinations of overlapping forms of dialogue sounds (6*5*4*3*2*1) - try playing two songs at the same time, or What is the effect of two courses at the same time, experience it.
There is a cognitive phenomenon called "McGurk effect", that is, the interaction between hearing and vision in the process of speech perception. Sometimes human hearing is too much affected by vision, resulting in the phenomenon of mishearing. For example: myopic classmates, when they take off their glasses to communicate with others, there will always be a feeling of inaudibility in a trance. This reflects the dependence on vision in the process of human language perception. When we hear multiple paragraphs of dialogue, we all instinctively see the speaker's facial gestures and eagerly look forward to the next cut. When this anxiety is mobilized, the rhythm has changed in our hearts
Intensive plots, large amounts of information, and impatience can also make people tired. And in the midst of all kinds of contradictions and turns, a small trick is repeatedly inserted-splitting the action, close-up of the button that makes the iconic sound, while forcing another rhythm, it also reminds the tired audience to stay awake like an alarm clock.
such as phone keys (64:08, 09, 10)
Doorbell (65:41, 65:48)
Elevator keys (71:15, 71:23).
[theme kernel]
In addition to the content of audio-visual language, I personally believe in the use of film themes, materials, and intentions, where the film connects with reality. It also secretly affects the viewing of a movie and affects people's perception of the rhythm of the movie. The life of the protagonist Howard in "Uncut Diamonds" is on the verge of collapse. Family, relationships, and debts make every action he makes to anticipate a gap after another, which is the source of dramatic tension. So what does he want, what is said in his lines in the film: "The way for a person like him to win back a ride"? I think it's more money, the diamonds he's handed over, the sports betting that he has to play even if he doesn't repay his debts, all for more money. It's like telling us some kind of old fable - black people, Jews, Ethiopian diamonds, debt, pawns, gambling, even if it all happens in a concrete jungle New York, with an electronic soundtrack...
Sociologist Simmel once reflected on modern money: "Money has become this unconditional goal which, in principle, can be pursued at any time... This gives Modern life provides a constant stimulus. Money puts an unstoppable wheel on modern life, and it makes the machine of life a 'perpetual motion machine', which gives rise to the restlessness and restlessness of modern life. frenzy."
Perhaps we, together with Howard, were agitated by the various forms of money in Uncut Diamond. Money has no ethical connotation. Under the condition of commodification, it is a road that seems to lead anywhere. It is increasingly becoming the absolute and full expression of all values. It is like the God of modern society. This "God" replaces the full and rich experience of human sensibility with a feeling - a sense of possession of property, and the relationship between people is opposed to a rigid "material". I think this may be what Marx called "alienation" Bar.
" Money is only a bridge to ultimate value, and man cannot inhabit a bridge. - Simmel"
[all in all]
Joshua Safdie said: "Movie is against nature, it is the most counterintuitive art form, it tries to reproduce life." Rhythm is everywhere, it is about every breath, every word, it is an internal combustion engine The roar of the pistons, it's the rhythm of the current hertz, it's the binary code of 0101 uploading everything into cyberspace, that's the rhythm that fascinates us and roams through it, it's… right on the silver screen.
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