Tuesday, 13 November 2018

Story / Screenplay / Cinematography




















Story - is what the director is trying to tell the audience. It is the plot. Well, almost. It is like saying "I was on way home from the office today and met a cop on the way. As we were talking, someone shot him. Being scared that they would kill the witness too, I shot off from the place instantly, and panicked my way home." (the plot could be, whether the guys who killed the cop, manage to catch the witness, or whatever.)
Screenplay - is how the director wants to tell the story, to the audience. It is how the story plays out - the scenes, their order and their style. What is revealed, and when? He can first show the guy panicking at his own doorstep, looking around, hiding, trembling as he slowly crawls his way inside. Then it gets into a flashback, and shows the shooting, and the guys chasing him, and how he manages to reach home safe, or otherwise.
Cinematography - is how the director wants to show the screenplay. It is about how the scenes play out - their shots, their lightings and their movements. It is about how the guy crawls, it is about how he looks around... it is every shot that is included that brings to the audience the emotion that is needed in that *moment* from that scene.
(note that I say the director wants because it is his ship at the end of the day. whatever the cinematographer brings to the table, is null and void if the director brushes it off.)
Let's take Memento.
Story - how a man, who has a certain memory issue, kills the man who killed his wife.
Screenplay - Let the man's present condition be shown, and then show what he had done, before coming here. And then before. And then before that. And so on.
Cinematography - Apart from just the camera, the lens, the angles used in every scene, the Black and White treatment here is an additional way to visually tell the story (this may have been the director's vision, but how this is executed, or brought into reality, into 'shots', is the cinematographer's imagination.)

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