As the "Bloody Captain" from The Michigan Shakespeare Festival (2001)
As the "The Sheriff" from Calamity Jane - Lincoln High School (2008)
THEATRE DIRECTOR & TEACHER
Lincoln High School, Ypsilanti MI
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Unit Three: Acting for Film
THE FINAL COPY OF YOUR PAPERWORK IS DUE
ON THE DAY OF THE GRADED PRESENTATION
UNIT THREE CHECKLIST
PowerPoint Study Guide (15)
Michael Caine Video Study Guide (20)
Lecture Notes (15)
Unit Quiz (45)
Common Scene Screen Test (65)
VIDEO AND WRITTEN ANALYSIS (250)
Unit Three Final Scene: A Five Minute Video Taped Film from a pre-existing film script.
There is extra credit for those groups that meet outside of class and film on location. (FIFTY POINTS!!) However, the scene must be rehearsed in class.
Born Maurice Micklewhite in London, Michael Caine was the son of a fish-market porter and a charlady. He left school at 15 and took a series of working-class jobs before serving with the British army in Korea during the Korean War, where he saw combat. Upon his return to England, he gravitated toward the theater and got a job as an assistant stage manager. He adopted the name of Caine on the advice of his agent, taking it from a marquee that advertised The Caine Mutiny (1954). In the years that followed, he worked in more than 100 television dramas, with repertory companies throughout England and eventually in the stage hit, “The Long and the Short and the Tall.” Zulu (1964), the 1964 adventure epic retelling of a historic 19th-century battle in South Africa between British soldiers and Zulu natives, brought Caine to international attention. Instead of being typecast as a Cockney soldier, he played an effete, aristocratic officer. Although “Zulu” was a major success, it was the role of Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File (1965) and the title role in Alfie (1966) that made Caine a star of the first magnitude. He epitomized the new breed of actor in mid-'60s England, the working-class bloke with glasses and a down-home accent. However, after initially starring in some excellent films, particularly in the 1960s, including Gambit (1966), Funeral in Berlin (1966), Play Dirty (1968), Battle of Britain (1969), Too Late the Hero (1970), The Last Valley (1971) and especially Get Carter (1971), he often seemed to take on roles in below-average films, simply for the money he could by then command. There were some gems amongst the dross, however. He gave a magnificent performance opposite Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and turned in a solid performance as a German colonel in The Eagle Has Landed (1976). Educating Rita (1983) and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) (for which he won his first Oscar) were highlights of the 1980s, while more recently Little Voice (1998), The Cider House Rules (1999) (his second Oscar) and Last Orders (2001) have been widely acclaimed.
1. ACTION: what the characters do.
2. ACTS: the three main story breaks in the script: beginning, middle, and end.
3. BEAT: the main emotional or action points in a story.
4. CAMERA MOVEMENT
a) ANGLE: Camera's angle of view relative to subject. High angle shot from above; Low angle shot from below; Tilt (Oblique) angle shot by fixed, tiled camera creating a diagonal. (These various angles can symbolize/represent various emotional or psychological responses)
b) PAN: Fixed camera revolves horizontally from left to right or vice versa
c) DOLLY (tracking/trucking): Moving/mounted camera follows action; may be on tracks for smoother movement
d) CRANE (Boom) Mounted camera/cinematographer moves any direction through space
e) ZOOM: Fixed camera; entire scene magnified equally often plunging viewer in or out of scene rapidly as focal length of lens is changed. Zoom in, Zoom out (telephoto)
5. CHARACTERS: the people who are in the script.
6. CLOSE SHOT: Head shot; detailed view of person or object
7. CONCEPT: a one-line description of the story--what the character wants.
8. CONFLICT: what the main characters are struggling against or for.
9. CREDITS: Who produced, directed, acted, and performed jobs of film's crew, contributors
10. CUT TO: an abrupt change in the scene.
11. DIALOGUE: what the characters say.
12. DISSOLVE TO: a slow change in the scene, when one scene merges with another.
13. EDITING TECHNIQUES (Organizing the film within a scene and from scene to scene)
a) CUT: Simple break where two shots are joined together. Jump-cut: abrupt transition between shots, sometimes deliberate, disorienting in terms of continuity of space and time.
b) CROSSCUTTING: Cutting back and forth between two or more separate scenes suggesting simultaneity and eventual convergence of the actions (heightens tension and adds suspense)
c) FADE: Gradual darkening of the image until it becomes black (fade-out) or gradual brightening of a darkened image until it becomes visible; gains proper brightness (fade-in)
d) DISSOLVE: Simultaneously fading out on one shot while fading in on the next so the first shot gradually disappears as second appears; during the dissolve, two shots will be briefly superimposed.
e) IRIS: Rare in contemporary cinema, but used as a major transition in silent film; a masking device (adjusted diaphragm or iris) placed over the camera lens will gradually open (iris-in) or close (iris-out) to widen or narrow the field of view. This is surrounded by blackness.
f) WIPE, FLIP WIPE: Somewhat dated transition in which second shot appears to push/pull the first shot off the screen.
g) MATCHES: Transitions within a scene to provide continuity of action:
Graphic matches - major compositional features in one shot continues in the next shot
Matches on action - carry over of physical movement from one shot to next to conceal cuts
Eye-Line Matches - important in continuity, character exposition and psychology. Involves two shots: character in first shot looks off-screen at another character or object and next shot shows objectively what is seen in shot one
h) FREEZE FRAME: Single frame is reprinted a number of times on the filmstrip; when projected, it gives the illusion of a still photograph
14. ESTABLISHING SHOT: L.S. (long shot) or E. L. S. (extra long shot) giving the setting and context of the action. OFTEN at the beginning of a film and/or many scenes.
15. FADE IN: the beginning of a story in a script.
16. FADE OUT: the end of a story in a script.
17. FILM TREATMENT: Description of film in narrative (story) form as if the writer were seeing the film.
18. GENRE: the type of script/movie.
19. HIGH ANGLE: Filmed from above (camera high shooting down)
20. LONG SHOT: Audience's view of area within the proscenium arch of the live theater. (what the director wants you (the audience) to see as if you were viewing a stage play)
21. LOW ANGLE: Filmed from below (camera low and shooting up)
22. MEDIUM SHOT: Relatively close shot, revealing figure/person from knees or waist up.
23. ONE-SHOT (Two, three): One figure in the shot, etc. usually at a medium distance
24. OUTTAKES: Shots, pieces of film not used in final cut; leftover footage
25. PLOT: the storyline of the script.
26. RACK FOCUS: Blurring, forcing viewer's eye to travel to in-focus areas of the frame. It is used to get YOUR attention on what the director wants you to see by blurring "unimportant images" and keeping the important image in focus
27. RESOLUTION: how the story ends.
28. ROUGH CUT: Crudely edited footage before editor tightens up slackness between shots; a kind of rough draft.
29. RUSHES/DAILIES: Selected footage of previous day's shooting, usually evaluated by director and cinematographer before start of next day's shooting.
30. SCENE: a setting where characters are and action takes place in one time period.
31. SEQUENCE (SCENE): Number of interrelated shots unified with common concern, location, etc.; action takes place in a single space at a single time. The film's smallest dramatic unit. (Using a writing metaphor, the sequence/scene is "a paragraph")
32. SETTING: the location, where the scene takes place.
33. SHOOTING SCRIPT: Shot-by-shot description of film with action/camera directions down one side, sound directions down the other; written breakdown of movie story into its individual shots, often containing mechanical instructions. Used by director & staff to film.
34. STORYBOARD: A series of sketches that lays out the set-ups of the shots. Pre- visualization technique; shots sketched in advance like a comic strip. Drawing of each shot in the script identifying kind, angle, brief description and length in seconds of the shot.
35. STRUCTURE: how the script is constructed. Three Act script.