Cinema Canada (Dec 1976-Jan 1977)

It doesn’t take much of a genius to realize that the best way to teach people how films are made is to show them films, lots of them. The trouble is that films are expensive to rent and often, in order to make some point about editing or camerawork, you are interested in only a short excerpt. For two years now I have been teaching film esthetics at the junior college level to a mixed bag of students. I give a nuts-and-bolts course in an effort to show them, first, that films are in fact made and don’t somehow appear on the screen by magic and, second, some of the elements that go into their making. A large part of my course makes use of films produced by the National Film Board, not only because they are free (although when you require five or six films per class, this certainly is an important consideration) but also because the NFB catalogue is a gold mine of material covering just about every aspect of filmmaking. With its hundreds of films exhibiting a wealth of subjects and techniques, the NFB can be regarded as a vast, traveling national cinema _ school and anyone teaching film or media is a fool not to make full use of it. My introductory course divides the study of film into lectures dealing with camera, sound, editing, structuring and special effects. What follows is a listing of some of the best NFB films I have found to deal with each of these particular areas. Obviously other films could have been selected, and their selection does not even mean that they are particularly good films. I use them as tools and they have proved valuable in trying get hold of this most elusive of mediums. Camera 60 Cycles, a 16-minute film directed by cameraman Jean-Claude Labrecque, is an excellent introduction to the art of the camera. The film is without narration and documents a 1,500-mile bicycle race which used to take place across Quebec. This is unquestionably a cameraman’s film; Labrecque uses every lens in the kit, every camera angle and camera movement to capture the strain and tension of the race. The film begins with a spectacular telephoto shot of Ronald H. Blumer is currently an instructor in cinema at Vanier College in Montreal. Prior to this he taught at Marianopolis College and was a teaching assistant at McGill University and Boston University. Concurrent with teaching, he has also been working on a series of films on aging. 50 / Cinema Canada the approaching cyclists. The compression effect is so extreme they seem not to be moving at all. From then on the camera goes into helicopters, holes in the ground, tracking, panning, tilting shots and at one point even joins the race with a camera somehow mounted on a_ bicycle. Watching this film several times, you come up with a powerful teaching tool; a virtual encyclopedia of camera technique. The Wish, a 27-minute film by director-cameraman Martin Duckworth, is among the most beautiful films A 60 Cycles: an encylopedia camera technique 60 Cycles: to get a low angle shot such that the cyclists appear to be flying through the air, Labrecque constructs a ramp with a glass window, below which is the camera ever made at the board. In terms of style, it is very different from the technical virtuosity of 60 Cycles. No fancy lenses here, no helicopter shots; in fact the entire film stays very much on the ground with a hand-held camera and a standard zoom lens. The film is about Duckworth’s eight-year-old twin daughters and their exploration of the world around them, particularly their grandparents. Like other _personal films, such as Neil & Fred and Coming Home, the fact that the filmmaker is filming his own family results in an intimacy not usually possible in most documentaries. In terms of the camerawork, we are not outside looking in, but fluidly, movingly part of the young girls’ lives. This is a difficult film to approach from a technical point of view, but if you are able to distance yourself from its captivating content, you will see the flawless compositions, the impressive camera movements and an amazing eye for light and shapes which characterize all of Duckworth’s camera work. Sound Most conventional theatrical dramatic films make very predictable use of sound, using mainly dialogue and. music. Documentary films often use sound very imaginatively, and hidden in the NFB catalogue are a few masterpieces. Pollu-sons (14 minutes, black & white) is one of those NFB films which exist in a sort of limbo. Although listed in the catalogue, it is very difficult to get hold of. Supposedly a French film, although its language makes very little difference, the film is not even available in the Montreal regional office, so good luck in Moose Jaw. The film, made by soundman Claude Hazanavicius, is rather dull as a film but brilliant as a teaching tool. It consists of a simple visual sequence of a man walking to a farmhouse, entering, writing a letter and going out to mail it. This sequence is repeated four times in the film, each time accompanied by totally different sound tracks consisting of music, synchronous sound, sound effects and poetic narration. Naturally, the nature and meaning of the image is totally changed by the different sound tracks, which of course is the object of the exercise. Jour apres jour (also available in a less-satisfying English version Day After Day, 30 minutes, B & W) was directed by Clément Perron, who among other things wrote Mon Oncle Antoine, and is about the monotony of life in a town dominated by a paper