Which films would you screen to teach 'Visual Storytelling'?

[Morgan Peline]

Hi,

 

I might be teaching a class in 'Visual Storytelling'.

Obviously, there are hundreds of great films to screen for this subject.

Personally, I would screen 'The Godfather', 'Blue' and 'Wall-E' amongst others.

 

What would you screen?

 

This could be an interesting thread to see if we all like the same films! Probably!

[Hal Smith]

Hi,

 

I might be teaching a class in 'Visual Storytelling'.

Obviously, there are hundreds of great films to screen for this subject.

Personally, I would screen 'The Godfather', 'Blue' and 'Wall-E' amongst others.

 

What would you screen?

 

This could be an interesting thread to see if we all like the same films! Probably!

 

"Stagecoach": I think a person who has never seen it could follow the storyline with the sound off.

[Dom Jaeger]

Buster Keaton's The General. A masterpiece of the silent era, and after 85 years still more entertaining than just about every modern blockbuster.

[Brian Rose]

Buster Keaton's The General. A masterpiece of the silent era, and after 85 years still more entertaining than just about every modern blockbuster.

 

Ditto. Visual cinema has to start with the silent cinema, and Keaton is the perfect way to introduce new minds to a part of cinema history they're likely to dismiss. And Keaton is the best of them all as an introduction, though I'd personally go with "Sherlock, Jr." It is his most jam packed actioner, it's a very manageable length, and it's also quite advanced in its deconstruction of the cinema.

 

After that, anything Hitchcock, who even in the sound era never really gave up being a silent filmmaker, and his films are hugely visual. Why, look at what he did in the remake of "The Man Who Knew Too Much," pulling off a lengthy climax without a word of dialogue!

[Mike Lary]

'The Sacrifice' or 'The Mirror' - Tarkovsky

'The New World' - Malick

'The Spirit of the Beehive' - Erice

'The Passion of Joan of Arc' - Dreyer

[James Steven Beverly]

I'd go with Sunrise (1927). It, in my opinion, is the single best example of pure visual storytelling available.

[Francesco Bonomo]

I took a class with Michael Goi, ASC, "camera and visual storytelling" at the Maine Workshop a few years ago.

Every day we would screen clips from at least 3 or 4 different movies (along with what we had shot the day before) and discuss them, and then at night we would pick one movie to watch. One night we watched "Visions of Light", and frankly it made us want to watch every single movie shown in that documentary.

 

Some random titles I would pick, and there's no way it's a complete list (obviously this is a matter of personal preference and I'm leaving out of this some of my favorite movies): L'avventura, The passenger, Rear Window, "il buono, il brutto, il cattivo" and "once upon a time in the west", Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, The Diving bell and the butterfly.

[Morgan Peline]

I took a class with Michael Goi, ASC, "camera and visual storytelling" at the Maine Workshop a few years ago.

Every day we would screen clips from at least 3 or 4 different movies (along with what we had shot the day before) and discuss them, and then at night we would pick one movie to watch. One night we watched "Visions of Light", and frankly it made us want to watch every single movie shown in that documentary.

 

Some random titles I would pick, and there's no way it's a complete list (obviously this is a matter of personal preference and I'm leaving out of this some of my favorite movies): L'avventura, The passenger, Rear Window, "il buono, il brutto, il cattivo" and "once upon a time in the west", Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, The Diving bell and the butterfly.

 

Which clips that he screened touched you the most?

 

Wow, I've just realized that I have never watched Stagecoach! And I haven't watched a Buster Keaton movie in over 25 years! I'd better get to then DVD shop...

[Francesco Bonomo]

Which clips that he screened touched you the most?

 

Morgan, I found my notes from the class and I realized there were many more than just 4 clips per morning (for 7-8 days), so it's hard to say. As I wrote earlier, maybe watching Visions of Light was one of the best things, because it's so packed with great shots that makes you want to watch all those movies. I must say that workshop was a really important thing for me, it affected me deeply and made things extremely clear regarding what I really wanted to do. After attending it, I went back to Italy, quit my job as assistant director and moved to the camera department.

 

The things is, the class was structured thematically, so for every topic there would be different clips.

For instance, when the topic was "breaking down the script visually", we saw clips from Rendez-vous (Lelouch), The great train robbery, a little princess, the good the bad and the ugly, la jetee, the graduate, and more. Then we were handed two pages of a script and we would go and shoot those in the afternoon. The following morning we would review what we had shot, and we would move on to the next topic(s) (like framing, camera movement, character introduction, use and abuse of the close-up, use of negative space, use of color, choice of lenses and its psychological effect, etc.)

[Robert Costello]

I would perhaps show a film like Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) by Maya Deren- She wrote a few great articles, "Adventures in Creative Film-making", "Planning By Eye", and "Creative Cutting" that the students might benefit from-

 

Also The Lumière Brothers' First Films(1996). The narration by Bertrand Tavernier does a really wonderful job of suggesting how chance and serendipity can alter the narrative within a frame that lasts only 40-60 seconds-

[Tom Jensen]

I love Keaton but as cameramen, you have to see "The Cameraman."

[Joe Zakko]

Taxi Driver/Raging Bull, chinatown for examples of point of view filmmaking and getting inside a character's head.

 

2001 a space odyssey/theshining, Children of men, Royal Tenenbaums, There Will Be Blood for examples of how the visual style of a film is one of the most important things in the film and how it influences the story.

 

The Third Man for dutch angles

 

Breathless for jump cuts (not sure if that applies here, as that is a topic for editing, and not cinematography)

 

Out of the past for low key lighting

 

Obviously you just show select scenes from some of these movies to get the point across

[Bill DiPietra]

I'm actually taking a class like that right now and it's great. My prof has shown clips from Raging Bull, The Conformist, Brazil, Run Lola Run, Stranger Than Paradise, Rashomon and others.

 

It all depends on what visual component you are discussing.

[Morgan Peline]

This is for two extra-curricular studies classes for college undergrads. One class will be a 'Film Appreciation' class. And the other will be an 'Introduction to basic filmmaking' class. Many of the student will be students in technical subjects like Engineering and the Sciences so I will probably use many different types of scene to give them an appreciation of how interesting and varied films can be.

[Brandon Brown]

I'd recommend:

 

"2001: A Space Odyssey" (Kubrick)

"The Bride Wore Black" (Truffaut)

"Carrie" or "Obsession" (De Palma)

"The Mirror" (Tarkovsky)

"Repulsion" (Polanski)

"Touch of Evil" (Welles)

"Vertigo" or "Rear Window" (Hitchcock)

[Don Norman]

I think "Lawrence of Arabia" would be another good example of visual storytelling.

 

I posted this on AICN about LOA:

 

There are many clever/brilliant touches in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA that I've discovered with repeat viewings. A few examples: O'Toole using his dagger as a mirror when he first puts on the Arab garb (he sees his virtuous, heroic self-image) and again later at the massacre of the retreating Turks where he sees his ironic "barbarous and cruel" self-image; the scene with the sour grapes which is an omen of the "bitter fruits of victory" feeling that Lawrence has after the taking of Damascus; the left-to-right movement of Lawrence in his travels which was meant to convey the idea that Lawrence was on a personal as well as physical journey. That last sequence of Lawrence in the car going back to Egypt (note the right-to-left movement) and eventually home to England has a lot in it: his love for the desert and its people (his standing up and looking at the camels and their riders going in the opposite direction), an omen of his eventual fate and cause of his death (the motorcycle passing by), and his enigmatic character (the dirty windshield obscuring his face). There's a lot of discussion of the music and how the movie works on multiple levels here:

 

http://tinyurl.com/252u4kn or: http://www.filmscoremonthly.co m/board/posts.cfm?forumID=1&pa geID=1&threadID=52145&archive= 0

[Ignacio Aguilar]

"Le Circle Rouge" (1970), Jean-Pierre Melville (DP Henri Decae).

"La Double Vie de Veronique" (1991), Krzysztof Kieslowski (DP Slawomir Idziak).

[Jonathan Bowerbank]

The opening sequence of "Up"

Any Jacque Tati film

"Run Lola Run" comes to mind, in terms of telling a story using a very kinetic style of filmmaking.

"Jaws", for its use of emoting what we can't see.

"Assassination of Jesse James", sans its narration, which I really don't care for.

"The Proposition", so many excellent visual choices in it, and every one works for the story. Especially the scene with Emily Watson in the bath.

"A Simple Plan", excellent practice in pacing and letting a film "breathe"

[Patrick Cooper]

Scarface - particularly the use of mis-en-scene in showing Al Pacino's character's gradual rise from newly arrived immigrant with burning ambitions to top gangster boss, virtually drunk with power.

 

Baraka - not so much story telling but the conveying of themes - effectively done without a single word of dialogue.

 

Battleship Potemkin - Russian piece of silent cinema with some very arresting visuals.

[Bill DiPietra]

Well, Kubrick is a must.

 

I would also make sure I exposed them to foreign masters like Bergman and Kurosawa.

[Peter Ellner]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned one of the most visually stunning films of the past decade... Tarsem's The Fall. Filmed over the course of about 4 years in over 24 countries around the world, everything from the locations, the framing of the shots, to the vibrant colors and the interesting characters, truly a film to watch for visual storytelling. You can even find it on Netflix streaming, but in the meantime, here's a little montage from it:

 

Edited June 4, 2011 by Peter Ellner

[Joe Venegas]

If you're teaching a college level course on visual storytelling, I would screen Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" and Sydney Lumet's "12 Angry Men". Both films offer an almost invisible complexity that can be broken down very easily and unlock alot of techniques for your students.

 

Kubrick's directing technique on a clockwork broke alot of rules at the time. Just a subtle hint to how masterful and consistent his directing technique is on Clockwork (and not to give anything away), I will use another Kubrick film as an example of consistent visual storytelling: The Shining with Jack Nicholson - Originally shot in 4:3, Kubrick's camera shots are 99% one point perspective and 99% image replacement....You can put your finger at the center of the 4:3 presentation and watch 99% of the film at your finger tip. I leave it to you to share with your students as to why.

 

Sydney Lumet's directing technique is notable in that you can watch the film without sound where the story unfolds through the composition and location of the characters from beginning to end. Amazingly subtle.

 

I love unlocking alot of the visual art of filmmaking and may write a short book on it.

 

 

Hi,

 

I might be teaching a class in 'Visual Storytelling'.

Obviously, there are hundreds of great films to screen for this subject.

Personally, I would screen 'The Godfather', 'Blue' and 'Wall-E' amongst others.

 

What would you screen?

 

This could be an interesting thread to see if we all like the same films! Probably!

[Phil Connolly]

Animation is good for showing visual storytelling:

 

The Snowman

Les triplettes de Belleville/Belleville Rendez-Vous

The Illusionist

The Wrong Trousers

 

And in live action:

 

The opening sequence of There Will be Blood

A Few Dollars More and The Good the Bad and the Ugly

Lots of good sequences in the Indiana Jones films - the opening of Last Crusade is great.

Broken Blossoms

[Hal Smith]

Sydney Lumet's directing technique is notable in that you can watch the film without sound where the story unfolds through the composition and location of the characters from beginning to end. Amazingly subtle.

 

He writes about some of the lens and camera perspective choices he made in "12 Angry Men" in his book, "Making Movies". I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Sidney's art.