| | | | | | close-ups; the dark and silent pitching of the battleship's bows; the unfurling of the St. Andrew's ensign; perhaps a dolphin's leap; and the low flight of seagulls." 2 To stage a film therefore is to reimagine the screenplay, to make people and objects speak anew. It means to require this movement, this gesture, this color, this light, this shadow, this camera position, this perspective from the lens. It means proposing ideas and instructions that transform one's immediate surroundings. Beyond this, one must also remember that the director works with human beings, not signifiers. To stage a film goes beyond language, it is to act in the world, to find, transform, and animate people and things in a certain way. As Maurice Merleau-Ponty put it so well, in the world words are said "not by a mind to a mind, but by a being who has body and language to a being who has body and language, each drawing the other by invisible threads like those which hold the marionettes making the other speak, think, and become what he is but never would have been by himself."3 Hence, to direct a film is not just to act upon the world. It also means understanding and accepting that the world talks back, continuously addressing, changing the director through countless recoils. On the set then, the director is placed in a distinct environment whose thickness, materiality, and resistance simultaneously arise and provoke him or her. To direct is to inhale as well as to exhale. To direct is to be promiscuous with everything and everyone around. To shoot means to fornicate with the world in order to procreate. | | | | | | | | | Enter a studio, strike a few lights, look around, listen. The place is magical. The cavernous size, the high ceilings, the catwalks, the unused equipment, all contribute to the impression. Think of The Bad and the Beautiful (Vincente Minnelli, 1953), Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950), or Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1959): these films were made in places like this. Alfred Hitchcock, Max Oph ls, and William Wyler worked here or could have. What you see and hear is what they responded to as well: the emptiness, the silence, the stillness that is the mark of sound stages the world over. Marcel Carn in France and Fritz Lang in Germany experienced them also. It is a place where you can let your imagination soar, your mind dream for a while. In the empty stage indeed, nothing stands in the way. It is but an empty container. You can fill it up with your own creation. Overnight, sets can be built to duplicate any location whatsoever | | | | |
