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Group F (continued) Ft
31 C.U. shooting upward; block I4£ descending slowly and unevenly
without anything attached to it. It finally comes to a stop.
32 M.S. Driller and the boy. The I0£ Driller points upward, the boy
smiles at him and then looks up too. Then the Driller secures everything tightly at his machine, signifying the end of this particular operation.
33 L.S. Derrick-man climbing down 15 the ladder outside the steel
girders.
In sequences like this,1 one cannot neglect the undeniable logic in the chronology of the operation. Chaos and confusion during the technical process will bewilder the audience and prevent it from perceiving the inner meaning. But it is not the chronology which is most important, nor the purely formalistic movements of the all-powerful machine, however impressive, which should come to the foreground. These mechanical elements should be subjugated to the emotional content.
What is the total emotional impact you want to convey and how can you break it down into separate elements ?
In the oil-drilling sequence, the first one is a negative one, but of great importance. The sequence should never become didactic. We are not making a teaching film and there is no place for a purely technical explanation. Instead it should be the " observation of men and machine at work."
The positive elements are :
(1) Admiration for the skill of these men and for what they can do with their machines. The extraordinary co-ordination between the movements of the men and the movements of the machine. As it is, their movements and actions often resemble a sort of super-ballet.
(2) Danger — the slightest slip from one of these men will end in disaster. For example, if the Roughneck who handles the chain will miss by a splitsecond, one or the other might be decapitated by the slashing chain.
(3) Awe, from the boy whose only previous contact with technology has been his rusty rifle and an occasional glimpse of a motor-boat passing his father's shack.
(4) Excitement and Magic. The machine and men at work observed through the wondering eyes of the boy who accepts this complex machinery with the same confidence as he accepts the magic of his own half real, half imaginary world.
How does one go about choosing the scenes to portray all these elements, either separately or combined ?
The continuity of the scenes is not entirely built on the external nature of the separate images, nor on a technical detail or a specific rhythmic-spatial movement. Instead it is based on the total impression or " feeling " of the shots, which in turn is a result of all the elements inherent in each shot. Behind its general indication, one shot may have the dominant " Danger," another the dominant " Awe," still another " Magic " or " Human strength and skill." Each image may possess either a single one of these dominants or several others in any given combination. These dominant elements, plus the external nature of the shot, plus its combined emotional content, plus the sound, are
1 Notes by Helen van Dongen.
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