Visual Look
The director chose to raise the money to shoot this film in 16mm, which gives a unique visual aesthetic to the piece. The vintage feel of the 16mm film made it seem as though you were watching a film that had been shot in the late ‘70’s or early ‘80’s, with the more subdued colors especially reminiscent of certain ‘70’s films. Although the camera shots were nicely laid out, the expense of the 16mm film meant there were fewer angles of coverage for many scenes. Like an early scene in Owen’s former boss’ office that consists basically of a single master and a reverse medium shot for an extended dialogue scene, rather than CUs (Close Ups) and reversals most commonly used in dialogue scenes.
The overall editing in the film was fairly good, especially for a first film. There is a scene between Owen and Halina early in the film, after they first go to the bar together, that works really well. Owen walks her to her car and they talk about why it has taken so long for him to ask her out. This slow scene manages to be extremely sweet and tender, using both long shots and medium long shots, combined with well-chosen music, which makes you care about the two of them as a potential couple. The use of long shots is unusual in this sort of scene and comes together surprisingly well here. In fact, it managed to remind me of the sweetness seen in Swingers when Mike walks Lorraine out to her car.
While the slow paced editing worked well for the romantic scene early in the film, it was unfortunately, extended for most of the editing throughout the film. This meant that much of the dialogue became too sluggish in its timing and caused a number of scenes to drag, with too much time between when one person stops speaking to when another begins. Undoubtedly, this may have been designed to more accurately represent actual conversations, but since film is a representative art, minimizing silences in between sentences is imperative, except at moments of extreme stress or romance. If the editing were tightened up in the film, it would minimize some of the performance issues, too.
Because this film was shot with 16mm film, there was a lot more light latitude than there would be on DV. Therefore, even though some shots were underlit, they could be seen clearly. If they had been recorded in digital, they would have been entirely too dark. Nonetheless, a night scene later in the film, where Halina calls James because she is worried about Owen, seems extremely dark.
Another issue that arises in the area of lighting comes from a desire to create a noir aesthetic. Noir films utilize many strong key lights with little fill lighting, to give a film a harsh “look”. This might seem like it should be easy to pull off. However, it is a fine art when done right, but when improperly done it looks as though your lighting was amateur and unprofessional. This is because most viewers associate amateur lighting, on a subliminal level, with coming from a single unspecified source and casting extremely harsh shadows. (This is especially because most modern lighting utilizes a three light setup called “Triangle Lighting” which consists of a strong key light, a soft fill light, and a soft backlight.) Classic noir films would often use a known lighting source to be the supposed source of a scene’s light (referred to as a “practical” light), whether it be a spotlight, a streetlight, or an interrogation room light. Additionally, some fill lighting or reflected lighting would be used to prevent shadows from being too harsh.
For future films in which noir lighting is sought, I would recommend adding at least some fill lighting on both the main subject and the backgrounds to reduce the shadows a bit. For some very reasonably priced lighting training, Bill Holshevnikoff’s The Power of Lighting for Film & Video DVD series is an excellent place to start. Even if you are not using the ARRI lights he uses, he covers the basics of lighting quite nicely.
