Primary navigation
BFI links
Technical codes
Introduction
In this section we briefly cover technical codes in relation to the films in the pack. You can also refer to the Basic teaching techniques, many of which are premised on learning about technical codes and practices (Sound and image; Freeze frame; Spot the shots).
Camera
Analysing and understanding how the camera mediates moving image material often consists of an instrumental 'naming of parts' - in relation to camera distance, movement, height, and angle (see Shot List, PDF for more information). This can lead us up a kind of conceptual blind alley, however, if the naming of shots is seen as being an end in itself - akin to the learning of literary techniques that lead to the apocryphal GCSE student asserting 'there is no onomatopoeia in this poem'. In order to get students beyond the equivalent ('low angle shots make the policeman look powerful'), we would like to step back a little from simply naming camera shots and think instead of the work that the camera is doing in relation to audience or viewer.
The prime function of the camera, and of where it is put, is to position the viewer in relation to the action, subject or setting being represented. The first question to ask of any shot in one of these films, therefore, is, 'Where am I being positioned in relation to the action here, and why?'
Broadly, there are a number of different ways of positioning a viewer: for example, amongst the action, or separate from it; at an oblique relation to it or alongside it. In each case, other elements of film language become important: how are the elements of the shot (props, landscape and space, colour and light) composed and presented to us? If there are people in the shot, do they look at the camera, or is the camera meant to be unobtrusive? How is the sound accompanying the shot working with (or sometimes against) the image?
I Expect Joan Feels the Same
The camera presents people to us in these films in a number of distinctively different ways. In I Expect Joan Feels the Same, the camera is positioned alongside the two women, in medium close-up. The convention in emotive filming is often to linger in close-up on people's faces, but a decision has been taken here to keep things more restrained, more dignified, and less intrusive. The women are kept for the most part in two-shot - so it is clear that this is a shared reminiscence, more generalisable than a single memoir.
In Housing Problems, the people offering personal testimonies are presented in three-quarter shots, or long shot. This might be because the convention of filming close-up in documentary had not yet evolved (these were more restrained and arguably more respectful times), but also because it was important to show the people in their home environments, the subject of their testimony. It is instructive to contrast this - people almost as indivisible from their habitat - with the councillor and unnamed narrator who we don't see, only hear, as if they have no 'habitat' of their own.
In Bush Bikes, the camera is much more mobile, but similarly not intrusively close: these are people who are not named or introduced formally to us, so it would seem odd if the camera came very close (but there might also be an unconscious, almost benignly racist, dimension, in the fact that we are presented with 'others', in a habitat alien to our own).
The Urban Savannah
The use of camera distance to present groups of people as 'other' is consciously a part of the wildlife programme parody of The Urban Savannah - long lens photography, long shots, subjects framed by their environment.
Blight presents a different use of the camera palette altogether. In the films above, the camera is used 'invisibly', always positioned where a viewer might naturally position him or herself to watch the action or eavesdrop on a conversation - not too close, not too far away. In Blight, however, a dizzying array of positions, heights and angles are used, and all of them to 'defamiliarise' our sense of what we are looking at. In just the same way that the developers are taking apart a familiar structure, and way of life, the film deconstructs the way we look at and experience it.
Composition (or mise-en-scène)
Just as the camera is always positioned deliberately to set up a shot, so the actual elements in the shot are often deliberately chosen and composed. In non-fiction film, the conventional idea is that the emphasis is more on 'capturing' some pre-determined content, but without attempting to 'stage' the action. However, there are a number of examples here where the composition is deliberate - either as in the case of the animations, because the only 'documentary' material is the sound recording (Giancarlo's voice in Hidden, and the protagonist's voice in Silence), or as in The Urban Savannah, where the source of the spoof is in the staging of the action.
The compositions in Housing Problems are also deliberate, for the most part, except in the final sequence where the camera is left recording outdoor street activity, while residents' voices play on the soundtrack. The deliberate composition is perhaps the biggest single clue to the fact that the film is polemical: nothing has been left to chance, and even the interviews sound, if not rehearsed, then at least premeditated.
In Blight, the shots are deliberately opaque representations of reality: they are not masquerading as real life, but conscious attempts to make us see its subject from a fresh perspective. Thus we see consequences of actions (buildings falling, timbers crashing, rafters smashing) without ever seeing their cause, as if the human agency is at one step removed from the devastation it is wreaking.
Editing
Editing is about much more than cutting from shot to shot - it is also about macro-structures, the sequencing of ideas and events and material, covered in the 'structure' section above. On a more micro-level, the length of each shot, and the move from one shot to the next is deliberately chosen, and has specific effects.
Bush Bikes
In Silence, the transitions between images are closer to morphing dissolves, reproducing the elusive feel of memory: dream logic is primarily about juxtaposing unrelated images. In Blight, the editing is rhythmic; repeating shots, or timing them musically, and cutting them deliberately to the rhythm of the soundtrack. There is rhythmic editing too, in Bush Bikes and Holiday, but in both, the editing foregrounds the elements of story (both 'day in the life' narrative structures), while in Blight, the editing is more 'purely' musical.
A much more conventional use of editing - the juxtaposition that structures a montage sequence - is featured through I Expect Joan Feels the Same. The inserts of photographs of the husbands work poignantly in contrast to the present-day interview. They reproduce the experience of memory and how it freezes time, and how it is always present.
In the Mitchell and Kenyon films, there is no editing, as the films were shot as single takes, on complete reels of film. They present a unique portrait of Edwardian society, made before the development of the codes that constitute film language. This means that the layer of the mediation that characterises film and television now is missing and we get to see people's behaviour and movement, the movement of the city, and traffic, uninterrupted, from a single vantage point, unedited.
Sound
Sound and image first of all work closely together: sound is an integral component in any edit, for example, so it is inconceivable that a sequence of film would be put together without attending to the soundtrack. In addition, sound is often used to 'bridge' a cut, especially if the director doesn't want the audience to notice the cut. Housing Problems features a number of sound bridges, where the voice-over narration continues over cuts between shots of models and estates.
Making film language seem 'invisible' in this way is referred to as the 'continuity system' - a system of rules or conventions for ensuring that the spell of a film isn't broken. Blight is a powerful example of a film that breaks all of the rules of continuity - to draw the audience's attention to the film's political position, as well as, perhaps, because the film's subject is the destruction of that community.
The study of sound can be broken down into a number of constituent categories (see the Tell Me section, on grids for sound), typically: dialogue, music, sound effects (which sometimes include atmospheric sound), and silence. Sound can further be categorised as either diegetic (sourced from within the world of the film), or non-diegetic (such as extraneously added music or voice-over), and diegetic sound can be on screen or off screen.
The importance of these categories is not merely to spot them, but to reflect on how they position a viewer (or listener). Without a narrative guide on the soundtrack of Tomorrow's Saturday, for example, we have to make up our own minds about the status and purpose of the sounds on the soundtrack: the feel and effect is almost like an anthropological essay, presenting a culture in as unmediated form as possible. A comparison of that film with Holiday shows us that: even the minimal voice-over on the latter film directs us to interpret the images, as does the music.
Holiday
A feature of both films should be noted: as they were both examples of Free or Direct Cinema, in the 1950s and early 1960s, the film-makers were experimenting with filming on location with hand-held cameras. However, these portable cameras did not have a synchronised sound recording facility (which is why all Super-8 films are silent), so the sound was recorded separately though sometimes simultaneously, and added later, begging the question is it diegetic or non-diegetic?
The role of music in structuring some of these films, and directing the viewer's attention, has been mentioned already. The function of music on a film's soundtrack is about much more than 'underscoring' some emotional content. That formulation relegates music, and sound, to a supporting role. The structure of Blight is so musical that it is hard to distinguish the music from the images (and the 'music' largely comprises re-edited spoken language). The music in Silence - the mournful piano and violin - 'speaks' for the lead character, especially as so much of her experience cannot be articulated in words. The musical interludes in Tomorrow's Saturday are all diegetic - they constitute the film's content, rather than underscore or support it.
Similarly, silence on a soundtrack is a key structuring device - though one has to talk about silence 'approximated' because actual silence never features on a film soundtrack. Even the 'sound of silence' has to be recorded - as 'room tone', for example. The interview with Giancarlo in Hidden is punctuated with his silences, and the edited interview with Joan and her friend in I Expect Joan Feels the Same is careful to maintain some of the pauses in their talk. In Tomorrow's Saturday and Holiday, changes in location or time are signalled by a hiatus on the soundtrack.
Documents on this page are available in Adobe PDF, which requires Adobe's free reader.
If you are having trouble viewing PDFs, please consult our help page.
