MarkBarbieri
Semi-retired
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2006
As I've mentioned in other threads, I write a weekly essay about whatever I happen to feel like writing about. Most have nothing to do with photography, but last week's was on artificial intelligence and photography, so I reposted it in this forum. This week's is about how filmmakers communicate more to us than we realize with the way they shoot scenes. I thought people here might enjoy it, so I thought I'd repost it here. Oh, and don't read any further if you don't want any spoilers about The Sound of Music.
Visual Communication in The Sound of Music
Last week, I talked about how artificial intelligence was being used to create and augment photographs and videos. I mentioned the possibility that AI tools will be able to generate movies for us when fed a plot. That got me thinking about how different movies are from written stories. With books, the author can write about things that are hard to show in a movie; things like the thoughts of the characters or the reasons things are happening. With movies, you have to communicate almost all of that visually.
We’re preparing for a trip to Austria, so I thought it would be fun to rewatch The Sound of Music. While watching the movie, I thought that it would serve as a good example to talk about the way that filmmakers use visual images to communicate with their audience.
The scenes I’m going to discuss cover Maria’s leaving the Abbey, going through Salzburg, taking a bus out into the country, walking down a lane to the Von Trapp home, and spending her first few minutes in the home. I picked these scenes primarily because they were what I was watching when I first thought about writing this. It also helps that virtually everyone is familiar with the movie. Also, I reviewed Robert Wise’s director’s commentary and he said very little during the scenes, so I can make up whatever I want without fear of him contradicting me.
This scene starts with Maria preparing to exit the Abbey. The music is somber. We can barely see Maria as she stands deep in the shadows. She looks at a crucifix and says, “When the Lord closes a door, somewhere he opens a window,” which primes us for the figurative uses of doors throughout the scene. She starts her song in the shadows by singing “What will this day be like.”
We quickly get an answer as she steps out of the darkness and through the Abbey gate into the sunlight. It’s going to be a brighter future. In the sun, she sings “What will my future be,” and then closes the gate behind her. She is stepping into the light and closing the door (or gate in this case) on her life as a nun.
Pay attention to the direction she walks and faces. When she was talking to the crucifix, she was looking at the right side of the screen. When she leaves, she faces the left side of the screen. This is her path forward for the scene.
As she's walking away from the abbey, she’s walking to the left. Then she stops, unsure of her new path, wondering “what’s the matter with me.” With her uncertainty, she’s looking back to the right, which is where her old life was.
It’s not just her direction, but also her pace that helps tell us how she feels. When she is unsure of herself, she slows or stops. When she is more confident, or more resolved, she picks up her pace and moves forward.
She also changes her posture. When she is scared about her future, her arms slump to her side, as though her guitar and her bag are heavy burdens. As her confidence grows, she opens up, swings her arms, and moves in a much more animated fashion. As she nears her destination, she is dancing and flailing her stuff about as though it is weightless.
Having her carry that guitar is another way that the filmmakers communicate with us. They want us to know that music is very important to her. We can’t just infer that from the fact that she is singing because virtually everyone we’ve seen so far has been singing. Instead, they communicate that by having her carry a guitar. She’s the only person we’ve seen with an instrument so far.
I like this shot. Maria is nicely framed by the central arch. The camera is set low, so that the increasingly confident Maria looms large above us. Her hat looks like a halo. Moments later, she stops again, slumps her shoulders, and bemoans that she is seeking the courage she lacks.
You’ll also notice that she’s now walking toward the camera rather than to the left. This is important because she’s about to board a bus heading to the right. If she didn’t spend a little time walking toward the camera that would be confusing.
In filmmaking, there is something called the 180° rule. The rule requires that all camera angles be on the same side of the actors when they are talking to each other or when they are going somewhere. If they showed Maria going toward the left of the screen and then switched to a camera on the other side of her, it would now show her moving to the right of the screen. The audience would be confused, thinking that she has turned around. To avoid that, the filmmaker has to include some footage showing her walking directly toward (or directly away) from the camera. Then we can more easily accept that the apparent change in direction doesn’t indicate that the character has turned around.
When she gets to the local bus, it does travel to the right of the screen. I thought it was a curious choice, probably resulting less from an artistic decision and more from a practical need. They needed to show her getting on and off the bus and the door was on the right side of the bus. Ironically, that’s an anachronism. They depict the bus as being left-hand drive, but Austrians drove their vehicles on the left side of the road until the Nazis took over the country and required that they switch. I don’t know if the filmmakers weren’t aware of that when they made the movie or they thought it was cheaper and simpler to pretend that it wasn’t that way.
As Maria rides the bus towards the Von Trapp estate, the filmmakers wanted to communicate information about the setting. We’re leaving the city of Salzburg (which was communicated with writing on the side of the bus) and driving out into the countryside. They did this by showing a reflection of a lake and mountains in the window of the bus in front of Maria.
When she arrives at the estate, we once again see the gate/door metaphor. At first, she is standing outside the gate looking in. Then she opens the gate, steps through, and closes it behind her, figuratively committing herself to this new life. She doesn’t do it boldly. She closes the gate by backing herself up against it with her face showing intense concentration and effort. Then she starts by creeping forward away from the gate before she breaks into a run toward the house.
She stumbles on her way to the house, but I don’t believe that symbolizes anything. She just stumbled while they were filming it and the director liked that take.
She still has one last door to get through. This one is guarded by the Nazi butler, but we don’t know that he’s a Nazi yet. By the way, I’m sorry for any spoilers, but the movie is older than I am and so I think it is fair to assume that people know the story.
Shooting this scene required careful planning. The front of the house was shot on location. The interior was shot back in Hollywood. The parts filmed looking at Maria were filmed in Austria and the parts filmed looking at the butler were filmed in Hollywood. There were months and thousands of miles between the cuts back and forth.
This is another shot that I thought was very well designed. I love how Maria is framed by the arch of the door. The lines of the balconies, the stairs, and even the chairs lead our eyes toward her. She looks so small in the huge room, giving us a sense of how overwhelmed she must feel.
Shortly after entering the house, Maria steps into an abandoned ballroom. There is a dramatic change in the lighting, giving the sense that this room is very different from the rest of the house. It doesn’t bother the viewer that the direction and color of the light coming in from the windows is significantly different from what we saw minutes ago at the front of the house. As viewers, we’re remarkably tolerant of shifts like this when done well, especially when it is done with a purpose. And here it was necessary to have very unusual lighting because this room is meant to feel unusual and mysterious. Maria is kept in the shadows during most of the scene. I don’t know if that is to metaphorically show that she is in the dark about the room or just to heighten the sense of drama and her drifting off into fantasy. As soon as the Captain throws open the doors, the light on her changes and brings her back to the “real” world.
When the camera switches to show us the Captain, he stands stretched between doors. This is how we are first introduced to him. He stands there blocking the doors. It’s a bit of a scary pose, but he quickly steps to the side allowing Maria to leave the room. What he doesn’t do is enter the room. This lets us know that this isn’t just a room forbidden to her; even he will not enter it. As the story later develops, we see that this is part of the musical world that he has closed out of his life, but for now, we only know that there are parts of his world that he has closed himself off from and that Maria has already started to trod upon them.
I’ve only scratched the surface of what is communicated visually in these scenes and they are only a small part of the movie. And beyond the visuals, a lot is communicated with music and other audible clues. Movies are so much more than just visual representations of the activities of stories. They have their own rich language that is used to communicate far more than is obvious. The next time you rewatch a movie, take some time to pull yourself out of the story and watch to see how the filmmaker is using non-verbal communication to tell you far more than is obvious at first glance.
When I was reading about that, I came across some more odd trivia. The director said that he had the actress who played Liesl (Charmin Carr) change her last name from Farnon to Carr. Yet I saw that she had a sister with the last name Carr. It turns out that her younger sister, Deborah, also adopted Carr as her stage name. I’m not sure why other than the obvious reason that she wanted to be associated with her sister. Their older sister kept Farnon as her stage name.
One of the nuns in the movie, Sister Sophia, was played by Marni Nixon. She was the singing voice for Deborah Kerr in The King and I, Natalie Wood in West Side Story, and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. It was nice to see her physically appear in a movie, even though it was a brief appearance.
Visual Communication in The Sound of Music
Last week, I talked about how artificial intelligence was being used to create and augment photographs and videos. I mentioned the possibility that AI tools will be able to generate movies for us when fed a plot. That got me thinking about how different movies are from written stories. With books, the author can write about things that are hard to show in a movie; things like the thoughts of the characters or the reasons things are happening. With movies, you have to communicate almost all of that visually.
We’re preparing for a trip to Austria, so I thought it would be fun to rewatch The Sound of Music. While watching the movie, I thought that it would serve as a good example to talk about the way that filmmakers use visual images to communicate with their audience.
The scenes I’m going to discuss cover Maria’s leaving the Abbey, going through Salzburg, taking a bus out into the country, walking down a lane to the Von Trapp home, and spending her first few minutes in the home. I picked these scenes primarily because they were what I was watching when I first thought about writing this. It also helps that virtually everyone is familiar with the movie. Also, I reviewed Robert Wise’s director’s commentary and he said very little during the scenes, so I can make up whatever I want without fear of him contradicting me.
This scene starts with Maria preparing to exit the Abbey. The music is somber. We can barely see Maria as she stands deep in the shadows. She looks at a crucifix and says, “When the Lord closes a door, somewhere he opens a window,” which primes us for the figurative uses of doors throughout the scene. She starts her song in the shadows by singing “What will this day be like.”
We quickly get an answer as she steps out of the darkness and through the Abbey gate into the sunlight. It’s going to be a brighter future. In the sun, she sings “What will my future be,” and then closes the gate behind her. She is stepping into the light and closing the door (or gate in this case) on her life as a nun.
Pay attention to the direction she walks and faces. When she was talking to the crucifix, she was looking at the right side of the screen. When she leaves, she faces the left side of the screen. This is her path forward for the scene.
As she's walking away from the abbey, she’s walking to the left. Then she stops, unsure of her new path, wondering “what’s the matter with me.” With her uncertainty, she’s looking back to the right, which is where her old life was.
It’s not just her direction, but also her pace that helps tell us how she feels. When she is unsure of herself, she slows or stops. When she is more confident, or more resolved, she picks up her pace and moves forward.
She also changes her posture. When she is scared about her future, her arms slump to her side, as though her guitar and her bag are heavy burdens. As her confidence grows, she opens up, swings her arms, and moves in a much more animated fashion. As she nears her destination, she is dancing and flailing her stuff about as though it is weightless.
Having her carry that guitar is another way that the filmmakers communicate with us. They want us to know that music is very important to her. We can’t just infer that from the fact that she is singing because virtually everyone we’ve seen so far has been singing. Instead, they communicate that by having her carry a guitar. She’s the only person we’ve seen with an instrument so far.
I like this shot. Maria is nicely framed by the central arch. The camera is set low, so that the increasingly confident Maria looms large above us. Her hat looks like a halo. Moments later, she stops again, slumps her shoulders, and bemoans that she is seeking the courage she lacks.
You’ll also notice that she’s now walking toward the camera rather than to the left. This is important because she’s about to board a bus heading to the right. If she didn’t spend a little time walking toward the camera that would be confusing.
In filmmaking, there is something called the 180° rule. The rule requires that all camera angles be on the same side of the actors when they are talking to each other or when they are going somewhere. If they showed Maria going toward the left of the screen and then switched to a camera on the other side of her, it would now show her moving to the right of the screen. The audience would be confused, thinking that she has turned around. To avoid that, the filmmaker has to include some footage showing her walking directly toward (or directly away) from the camera. Then we can more easily accept that the apparent change in direction doesn’t indicate that the character has turned around.
When she gets to the local bus, it does travel to the right of the screen. I thought it was a curious choice, probably resulting less from an artistic decision and more from a practical need. They needed to show her getting on and off the bus and the door was on the right side of the bus. Ironically, that’s an anachronism. They depict the bus as being left-hand drive, but Austrians drove their vehicles on the left side of the road until the Nazis took over the country and required that they switch. I don’t know if the filmmakers weren’t aware of that when they made the movie or they thought it was cheaper and simpler to pretend that it wasn’t that way.
As Maria rides the bus towards the Von Trapp estate, the filmmakers wanted to communicate information about the setting. We’re leaving the city of Salzburg (which was communicated with writing on the side of the bus) and driving out into the countryside. They did this by showing a reflection of a lake and mountains in the window of the bus in front of Maria.
When she arrives at the estate, we once again see the gate/door metaphor. At first, she is standing outside the gate looking in. Then she opens the gate, steps through, and closes it behind her, figuratively committing herself to this new life. She doesn’t do it boldly. She closes the gate by backing herself up against it with her face showing intense concentration and effort. Then she starts by creeping forward away from the gate before she breaks into a run toward the house.
She stumbles on her way to the house, but I don’t believe that symbolizes anything. She just stumbled while they were filming it and the director liked that take.
She still has one last door to get through. This one is guarded by the Nazi butler, but we don’t know that he’s a Nazi yet. By the way, I’m sorry for any spoilers, but the movie is older than I am and so I think it is fair to assume that people know the story.
Shooting this scene required careful planning. The front of the house was shot on location. The interior was shot back in Hollywood. The parts filmed looking at Maria were filmed in Austria and the parts filmed looking at the butler were filmed in Hollywood. There were months and thousands of miles between the cuts back and forth.
This is another shot that I thought was very well designed. I love how Maria is framed by the arch of the door. The lines of the balconies, the stairs, and even the chairs lead our eyes toward her. She looks so small in the huge room, giving us a sense of how overwhelmed she must feel.
Shortly after entering the house, Maria steps into an abandoned ballroom. There is a dramatic change in the lighting, giving the sense that this room is very different from the rest of the house. It doesn’t bother the viewer that the direction and color of the light coming in from the windows is significantly different from what we saw minutes ago at the front of the house. As viewers, we’re remarkably tolerant of shifts like this when done well, especially when it is done with a purpose. And here it was necessary to have very unusual lighting because this room is meant to feel unusual and mysterious. Maria is kept in the shadows during most of the scene. I don’t know if that is to metaphorically show that she is in the dark about the room or just to heighten the sense of drama and her drifting off into fantasy. As soon as the Captain throws open the doors, the light on her changes and brings her back to the “real” world.
When the camera switches to show us the Captain, he stands stretched between doors. This is how we are first introduced to him. He stands there blocking the doors. It’s a bit of a scary pose, but he quickly steps to the side allowing Maria to leave the room. What he doesn’t do is enter the room. This lets us know that this isn’t just a room forbidden to her; even he will not enter it. As the story later develops, we see that this is part of the musical world that he has closed out of his life, but for now, we only know that there are parts of his world that he has closed himself off from and that Maria has already started to trod upon them.
I’ve only scratched the surface of what is communicated visually in these scenes and they are only a small part of the movie. And beyond the visuals, a lot is communicated with music and other audible clues. Movies are so much more than just visual representations of the activities of stories. They have their own rich language that is used to communicate far more than is obvious. The next time you rewatch a movie, take some time to pull yourself out of the story and watch to see how the filmmaker is using non-verbal communication to tell you far more than is obvious at first glance.
A Few Trivia Notes
When you watch The Sound of Music now, you are watching a digitally edited movie. The actress playing Liesl fell during the gazebo dancing scene and they had to tape her ankle. They tried to mask as well as possible, but the wrap was still visible in the theatrical release. Now, they’ve been able to digitally remove the wrap and so you can’t see it anymore. Another interesting fact about that scene is that the exterior of the gazebo was filmed in Austria and the interior of the gazebo was filmed in Hollywood. To give them room for the dance sequence, the interior is significantly larger than the exterior. Harry Potter would be proud.When I was reading about that, I came across some more odd trivia. The director said that he had the actress who played Liesl (Charmin Carr) change her last name from Farnon to Carr. Yet I saw that she had a sister with the last name Carr. It turns out that her younger sister, Deborah, also adopted Carr as her stage name. I’m not sure why other than the obvious reason that she wanted to be associated with her sister. Their older sister kept Farnon as her stage name.
One of the nuns in the movie, Sister Sophia, was played by Marni Nixon. She was the singing voice for Deborah Kerr in The King and I, Natalie Wood in West Side Story, and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. It was nice to see her physically appear in a movie, even though it was a brief appearance.
