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Hi my name is Tony and
this is Every Frame a Painting.
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When I say a film is poetic,
what pops into your head?
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Do you think it's slow?
Pretentious? Plotless?
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"Is she gonna wake up and do something?"
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These are the clichés.
-"No."
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But to me, poetry in cinema is when
I can ignore the plot
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and just appreciate the picture and
the sound doing something unique.
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Scorsese: "The films that I constantly
revisited or saw repeatedly...
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...held up longer for me over the years
not because of plot...
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...but because of character...
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and a very different approach to story."
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"The Wrong Man, for example. I talked
about the paranoid camera moves
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the feelings of threat, the fear,
the anxiety, the paranoia
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it’s all done through the camera
and the person’s face."
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-"It is the same."
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Lynne Ramsay’s work
has this same quality.
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Everything is conveyed through the
camera, the person’s face & the details
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"Some things I shoot are very controlled
I know exactly why I want them...
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...I will spend ages to get that exactly
right and it’s because for me...
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...the details in that are saying
everything about the scene."
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But what can we learn from a detail?
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Here’s an example. In this scene, a son
taunts his mother by misbehaving
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just before his father…
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-"Hey guys."
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-"Hey dad, how was work?
Take any cool pictures?"
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Notice that the father is placed
just on the edge of the frame,
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because while he’s around,
he doesn’t really pay attention.
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Later on,
when he tries to ignore her fears
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-"He’s a sweet little boy.
That’s what boys do."
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We still don't see his face.
Instead, we get this shot.
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What does this detail tell us? Literally
they haven’t cleaned up the mess
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and it's gotten worse.
But what about metaphorically?
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What does this say about
them and their son?
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What’s interesting about
Lynne Ramsay’s work
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is that the entire story is implied
through these detail shots.
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And she doesn’t get this effect
by putting lots of stuff in the frame
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but by taking things out, so that
you focus on one detail at a time.
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"I think that Robert Bresson had a
really good quote about that...
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It was something like...
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'When the image is doing everything,
don’t have any sound.'
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“And when the sound’s doing everything,
don’t have any image."
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I mean, don’t do something
too fancy with image."
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This is one thing film is great at:
evoking a state of mind
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purely through image and sound.
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When you work like this
everything depends
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on the framing, the person’s face,
and the repetition of details.
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So let's go one by one.
First, the framing.
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Ramsay often frames so that important
information is cut off from the viewer.
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Notice here,
we never see the woman’s eyes.
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Meanwhile here, we have a character
who’s literally cut in half by a door.
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In all of these shots,
you can guess what someone is feeling
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but the frame doesn’t let you
see them in full.
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"There's no place like home.
No place like home."
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So as an audience, you’re never told
what to feel about these people.
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There’s something mysterious about them.
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Which brings us to #2: faces.
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I don’t know why, but some people just
look right when you put them onscreen.
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Even when they aren’t professionals.
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In most of her work, Ramsay mixes
professional and non-professional actors
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until the two are indistinguishable.
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"The best actors for me are the people
who are like non-professional actors...
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...You can’t tell where the film
ends or begins...
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...As if they were the same offscreen.
They just feel real."
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And she picks people who can convey
what’s going on inside their head
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without any dialogue.
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"He's the double of my Ryan, innit he?
The same eyes."
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And #3, there’s
the repetition of certain details.
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When you’re watching one of these films,
pay attention how & when images repeat
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For instance, notice how mother and son
imitate each other’s body language.
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And in the next shot, they do the
exact same thing, ten years later.
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At one point, the son
does this with his fingernails
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While later in the film, his mother
does the same thing with eggshells.
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A more conventional film might
explain the meaning of this
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but here, all we get is one image.
And then another.
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And we have to work out
the connection for ourselves.
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So let’s consider all this over
the course of a single short film.
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This is Gasman, made in 1997.
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I’m not going to tell you the
big plot point. I’m just going to show
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some details from before and after.
See if you can guess what’s happening.
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"Gonna lift me up, daddy?"
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At the beginning of the film, Lynne and
her father meet a girl on the tracks.
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A girl she doesn't know.
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Before the event, they bond over
her dress and hold hands.
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Notice this shot chops off their heads.
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After the event, we see them
holding hands again, but this time...
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-"What’s the matter?"
-"She’s hurting me."
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To appease them, Lynne’s father
picks them up and does this.
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Which mirrors the beginning of the film,
when he did the same with just Lynne.
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At the end, the other girl
rejoins her mother.
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And we’re left on the tracks,
watching the back of Lynne’s head.
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Can you infer what’s going on?
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What if I showed you this?
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Get it now?
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A film like this is basically a before
and after portrait of one kid’s mind
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presented through parallel images
and situations.
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In other words, it’s indirect.
Poetic filmmaking.
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It might not hit you while you watch it
but it can linger long afterwards.
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-"So then what you're saying,
it's the eye that's going to captivate-"
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-"The vision, the vision that he puts
on the film, which I… the vision...
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meaning the actual picture in the frame
and what he puts in the film."
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-"Which is, I imagine,
the way a painter would...
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...in terms of his aesthetic."
-"Exactly."
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-"Ow!"
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-"For God's sake,
look at the state of my curtain."
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-"Because it opens up every possibility
for sound, for sight, for form."
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Exactly.
There aren’t many films like this
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and they teach us a very
different way of making movies.
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Instead of going big, they go small.
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They focus on details.
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They show us less instead of more.
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And through simplicity,
they find poetry.
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And if anybody ever asks you
what poetry means…
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I don’t know, make something up.