Before Sound

Before Sound

By: Benjamin Kandt

            Before sound, before color, there was just the camera and what was placed in front it. Shots were organized around what was being presented to the viewer. As film has developed, this has been the mainstream (Hollywood) method of shooting, where the audience's attention is directed to specific pieces of a scene edit by edit. This isn't a universal approach however, in Hou Hsiao-Hsien's films, what isn't present is often more important that what is. But John Woo's highly stylized editing for his action films does accord with this approach. Obviously, as one of the fundamental aspects of  film, frame construction is important, but what kind of impact does the method of implementation have upon the viewer?

Figure 1: Close up of Chow Yun-Fat

Figure 2: Highlighting the similarity of the heroes

     Let's start with the more standard director, John Woo. The Killer (1989) is a story of a hit-man growing a conscious, and trying to make amends through one last job. The editing style of the movie uses cutting techniques like shot counter-shot, the reaction shot and close ups.  Shot counter shot simulates conversation, alternating who the audience ought to be listening to, the reaction shot helps frame how the audience should be feeling about events on screen, and close-ups allow actors the total attention of the audience in order to convey their emotions.[1] An example of these elements combined can be found in the Dragon Boat Assassination sequence.[2] This part was personally edited by John Woo, when the editor wasn't sure what to do with it, and it took Woo three weeks to complete. There are three separate narratives woven together in this scene, and it switches between each as the action develops. The interplay between the edited scenes builds a ominous tension. Just before Jeff (Chow Yun-Fat) fires the shot, there is a back and forth between a close up of a drum roll and Jeff's face. The two images replace each other in shorter and faster intervals, until Jeff fires.

            The same editing method is also used to establish the relationship between Chow's character and the cop played by Danny Lee. "I wanted to shoot it at the same angle, and put them in the same position and almost use the same line and camera movements, the same cutting, just try to try to [sp] show them have the same feeling..."[3] Woo uses editing to underline the doubleness, the mirror-imaging, of the two main characters.[4] If Woo were deprived of the chance to edit in this fashion, he would lose the ability to create his chase scenes, his duplicated characters, his conversations. They all revolve around showing events from at least two different vantage points, something impossible from an individual's perspective. It seems as though Woo plays at God when he films, by attempting omniscience. When filming Hard Boiled (1992), Woo said, "we had more than fifteen bombs going off everywhere, and we had seven cameras set up in different positions"[5] This is one limitation of his style, in that to create a connected narrative, he needs to be able to hop between perspectives in a way that doesn't disorient the viewer, but that still shows what he wants to convey. Using so much film and editing down to so little allows Woo to clearly present his case, but is very expensive.

            With a very different budget and aesthetic in mind, Hou Hsiao-Hsien works from a single viewpoint, usually objective, and lets the camera roll for a long time. He does this for stylistic and practical reasons. Filming long shots is cheaper, easier to edit, and distance is forgiving if your actors aren't very good with close ups.

"Amateur actors are often very nervous in close-ups... I let them [the nonactors] use what they were familiar with - their usual habits and gestures - so that they need not "act": for example, having a meal or smoking in sunlight and so forth. In order to not make them nervous, I would deliberately put the camera quite a long distance away, and not move it."[6]

Figure 3: Hao-Hao obscured behind door

Figure 4: Shu Qi obscured by objects on table

Millennium Mambo(2001) contains dense mis-en-scene, and organizes itself in an chronologically ambiguous way. It results in a film that seems disordered and lost in time, mirroring the states of its characters. The chronology, narration and camerawork combine to disorient the viewer and alienate the inattentive. The narration talks about things that don't show up until later, and the camera is slow in tracking action. This style attempts to offer the audience an insight into the mind of the narrator, who can't put the events in that period of her life in the correct order any more than the viewer can. To compound these distancing details, Hou often works with a telephoto lens[7], which is how he can produce highly focused shots even from a great distance. This results in a dense, almost cluttered mis-en-scene because the long lens minimizes the size differences of objects on different planes. Minor action passing in the foreground or background gains more prominence by being nearly the same size as the shot's prime subject.[8] This can be seen in Figures 3 and 4, both capturing a view of the bedroom and objects on the table, with the actors in between, and obscured by the foreground. This causes irrelevant actions and objects to have the same focus as that of everything else, creating a need for careful attention on the part of  the observer in order to comprehend the narrative. "In... The Flowers of Shanghai, by Hou Hsiao Hsien, a character commits suicide in the background of the shot, and it is entirely possible the viewer will miss it because they have been focusing on what is going on in the foreground."[9]

            In contrast with the guided tour given by John Woo, Hou allows for exploration on the part of the viewer. Instead of rigidly taking the viewer along, Hou offers obstacles and distractions; He forces the audience to work for it. While Woo attempts to remove the obstacles that a limited perspective imposes, Hou embraces these, and uses them to his advantage.[10] A downside of this is that Hou's method has a much harder time building tension, and must do so through silence, as opposed to the visual cues offered by Woo. Woo's method allows for the telling of multiple stories, while Hou's is limited to what is on screen in his long shots. Despite having multiple stories told synchronously, Woo's style never lets us find ourselves within the world he creates, instead giving us only what he needs to in order to get his story across. Hou on the other hand, spends time creating what he presents, in order to give it more of a sense of existence, rather than performance. The extra time that Hou 'wastes' is actually refusing to frame the film in the way of stories designed for passive consumption, and casts the audience in a role as that of the peeping tom looking in on other people's problems. In short, Hou's films make us think and savor, while Woo's films taste good, but only last for a moment.

Bibliography

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Berry, Michael, Tianwen Zhu, and Hsiao-hsien Hou. "Words and Images: A Conversation with Hou Hsiao-hsien and Chu T'ien-wen." East Asia Cultures Critique. 11.3 (2003): 675-716. Web. 9 Dec. 2013.

Bordwell, David. Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging. Berkley and Los Angeles, California: University of Califronia Press, 2005. Web. <http://books.google.com/books?id=T2aWxNkBP5EC&dq=david bordwell&source=gbs_navlinks_s>.

Elder, Robert K. John Woo: Interviews. First Edition. University Press of Mississippi, 2005. Print.

Hall, Kenneth. John Woo: The Films. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc., 1999. Print.

Hou, Hsiao-Hsien, dir. Millenium Mambo. 2001. Film. 9 Dec 2013.

McKibbin, Tony. "Cinema Style: notes." Tony McKibben. N.p., n. d. Web. 9 Dec. 2013. <http://tonymckibbin.com/course-notes/cinema-style>.

Warner, Charles. "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Optics of Ephemerality." Senses of Cinema. 39 (2006): n. page. Web. 9 Dec. 2013. <http://sensesofcinema.com/2006/39/hou_optics_ephemerality/>.

Woo, John, dir. The Killer. 1998. Film. 9 Dec 2013.

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[1] Elder, John Woo Interviews, 77

[2] Woo The Killer (1989)23:00 - 29:00

[3] Elder, John Woo Interviews, 77

[4] Hall, John Woo: The Films. pg. 123

[5] Elder, John Woo Interviews, 123

[6] Bordwell, Figures Traced in Light, 198

[7] Bordwell, Figures Traced in Light, 195

[8] Bordwell, Figures Traced in Light, 196

[9] McKibbin, http://tonymckibbin.com/course-notes/cinema-style

[10] Berry, Words and Images, 694

As part of this project, a low budget ($0) film was created to examine the effects of filming a similar scene from the two different styles would produce. The first thing I realized was that my budget was too small to create a work that would stand on its own. Nevertheless, here it is.