300-400 words.
Howard Hawks is known for his pacing. In his screwball comedy, "Bringing Up Baby" a breathless sense of narrative pacing is crucial.
Pick a scene involving one of the manic exchanges between stars Cary Grant (David) and Katherine Hepburn (Susan) and describe (using prompts from the Reading a Film Sequence hand-out I gave you) how the use of CAMERAWORK, EDITING and CHOREOGRAPHY help screenwriter, Dudley Nichols' rapid fire dialogue come to life. Give examples - camera angles, rhythm of cuts, movement of characters, etc. How do the three formats work together to create a frantic repartee and subsequently move the story along?
(NOTE: Each response should be formal. Include your full name. Remember - you are not texting me. Capitalize appropriate letters. Use punctuation, spell check, etc. The assignment is DUE ON THURSDAY by 8 P.M. Any late entries will not be counted - you will receive a zero for the assignment. You can either post your assignment or you can print out a hard copy for me and hand it to me at lecture on Tuesday. I will not accept any hard copies at discussion on Friday.)
Name: Hillary Palmer
ReplyDeleteAssignment Number 2:The scene that I chose to talk about is the one that we had watched in class where Susan (Hepburn) and David (Grant) are at a restaurant. David is suppose to meet a doctor there and Susan is sitting at the bar playing with olives. We first see a medium shot on Hepburn throwing the olives around at the bar, and then Grant walks in and slips on the olive that fell to the floor. So we have a shot of Grant coming up from his fall and we see Hepburn helping him up into the medium shot of the two of them. But before we see both of them we have Grant on the floor, the fall did seem choreographed but we see him slip in a very funny matter. They stay in a long shot for a few seconds, they converse about how he fell on top of his hat, squishing it. Then we cut to just Hepburn in the shot from the waist up and in a matter of seconds Grant follows by Hepburn helping him up. Next they converse in a two medium shot for about a half a minute. The fall combines with the funny dialect going on between Grant and Hepburn. After they both walk away from each other, she talks with another person and after that walks over to Grant again, picking a fight with him. We first see Grant sitting down when she walks over, but once she gets there he looks frightened and stands right up moving away from her. Having Grant do funny little gestures, makes the conversation and chemistry between the two of them better than ever. Then we have this purse problem going on. By Susan being oblivious, she picks up the wrong purse at the table mistaking it for her own. Then we get into the conversation between the couple at the restaurant and Grant and Hepburn. This conversation is really where Nicolas’s comedic dialect comes into play. So because of the purse problem we go into David wanting to leave so therefore by having him want to leave, Susan tries to make him stay. By her trying to do that comedic choreography comes into play when she rips the back of his coat. After that she rips the back of her dress, showing everyone her underwear. All while this is going on we have very funny dialect going on. One example is when David is trying to her that her dress has ripped in the back. All while she keeps going on and on about, why finally does he want to pay so much attention to her all of a sudden. Which then leads us to the end, where both of them walk outside together by having Grant walk literally right behind Hepburn. It seems to me is what is actually leading us to all these events is the kind of personalities both these characters have. Then once the personalities are shown then choreography comes into play then which therefore leads to a comedic scene.
Elle Brosh
ReplyDeleteHoward Hawks’ 1938 film, Bringing Up Baby, is an incredibly chaotic screwball comedy that embodies aspects from both mainstream cinema and art cinema. The narrative, written by Dudley Nichols, is full of breathless pace, outlandish antics, disasters and misunderstandings, while simultaneously being a light-hearted and romantic comedy. Though the film’s story is considered in a sense, a typical mainstream comedy where the characters attempt to achieve specific goals, the plot is extremely confusing to follow, the characters are fragmented and anxious, and the end is exceedingly arbitrary, thus additional exemplifying characteristics of art cinema.
Hawks is well known for his individualized style; with the help of Nichols’ writing, camerawork, editing, and choreography, he produces a rapid, yet natural dialogue that acts as the major catalyst for the swift movement of the film. There is a scene in the beginning of the film where Susan (Katherine Hepburn) and David (Cary Grant) coincidentally encounter one another for the second time in a high- society restaurant. Susan runs after David, accidentally rips his coat and David subsequently proceeds to then, by mistake, rip the train of her dress. The entire restaurant scene is extremely overwhelming not only because of the situation, but also because of the brisk dialogue, continuous long shots, and, quite simply, the setting. The scene is mostly long shots – the camera work here works extremely well because according to filmmaker, Jean- Luc Godard, “a story told in long shots is a comedy and that the same story told in close- ups is a tragedy. The first produces detachment, the second fosters involvement” (146 Nichols). With reference to the plot of the film, Godard is rather on point. Though they are together for the entire film, David and Susan are not initially romantically involved; in fact, David is rather vexed by Susan’s presence. Hawks’ use of long shots conveys a distant and rather distracted tone to the scene. Ironically, the closest the camera gets is to a medium shot capturing David demanding Susan to “go away”. In addition to the use of long shots, Hawk also implements a pan shot following the characters as they frantically waddle out of the restaurant sandwiched together, seeking to hide Susan’s exposed undergarments. While this shot swiftly moves the plot along and literally, the characters out of the restaurant, it also stirs up feelings of madness and confusion in the audience. The dialogue in this scene is also constructed in a way that evokes a sense of commotion for the viewer. Both Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn execute their lines at a breathless pace. They build on top of each other’s lines, interrupting one another, never finishing their sentences. This creates somewhat of a friction between the characters; their overlapping dialogue in addition to the blather of the restaurant makes the scene very chaotic, yet moves the film along quite rapidly. Finally, this scene works extremely well due to the setting. The loud restaurant full of high society socialites is a perfect background for the bantering characters. This milieu enables the viewer to become involved in their, quick moving, topsy- turvy, chain of events.
Alyssa O'Connor
ReplyDeleteIntro to Screen Studies
Assignment 2
Bringing Up Baby, directed by Howard Hawks, is a fast paced, screwball comedy from 1938. The whole film has the sense of a chaotic environment filled with chaotic characters. This sense is mostly made up from the incredibly fast rate in which this film is taking place. The sequence that I chose to work with from this movie is the sequence called “Let's Play A Game”. This is when David, played by Cary Grant, and Susan, played by Katherine Hepburn, are in the bar and Susan accidentally rips David's coat and David accidentally rips Susan's dress. They have to find a way to leave the bar without anyone noticing these most unfortunate accidents. This is one of my favorite scenes from the movie, mostly due to the impeccable staging that has taken place in order to make this scene something out of the ordinary. I think first I would like to focus on the staging or choreography of the scene because this is what the camera then can go off of. The character's themselves in the scene move around a lot. They move from the bar to the stairs, then down the stairs and back up the stairs, and then finally back into the bar and out the front door. They also are very physical actors. They say a lot with their body movements. For instance, when they are on the stairs and Susan has just ripped David's coat, David comes up the stairs, invades Susan's high status territory, literally, and get's right in her face. She backs off, something uncommon for this confident, aggressive character. Another highlight of staging for this scene is the whole slap-stick sequence of David trying to cover up the ripped back of Susan's dress with his hat. They are almost doing a sort of dance going back and forth and around and around with this hat trying to cover up her under garments. The last real choreographed piece is when they are walking out of the club. They walk, as mentioned in class, very much like Charlie Chaplin, with this sort of synchronized waddle out of the room, right through the middle of the high-society people in the bar. This staging creates the scene so that the camerawork and editing can then come in and work to emphasize the chaotic, face paced motion of these two characters. The shots pan a lot, creating this constant sense of movement. There are only about three visible cuts throughout this almost three minute scene, this creates a sense of flow that helps with the movement that is created. The viewer is not able to just sit back and relax, they have to be going along with all this energy that is created by the actor's staging and the camerawork and editing.
David Hess
ReplyDeleteAssignment #2 - Bringing Up Baby
Bringing Up Baby is my favorite movie. The way Howard Hawks put together film sequences communicated well the quick and witty dialogue of screenwriter Dudley Nichols. From the first interaction between Dr. David Huxley and Susan Vance it is easy to tell the immediate friction they encounter in communication alone. In that first scene which they share the timing between the two of them is impeccable. Just as Susan swings to hit David’s ball he is arriving to reclaim it. Even better is that she cannot take her eyes off of her shot to even pay attention to the complaints of David. As they begin to speak face to face Hawks cuts perspectives back and forth in order to emphasize the quickness and sharpness of their dialogue. It is as if they are going line for line. David spends most of this scene following Susan around in hopes of getting her full and undivided attention. With the camera on a dolly Hawks follows while Susan leads the way over to the end of the course as David tries to explain what his ball looks like and that, surely, she is mistaken. The entire shot Susan is sort of distant to the words of Huxley and not at all truly concerned with what it is exactly that he’s in need of. She also takes some time in this long take to poke fun at David whose unable to express himself clearly enough. It’s pretty obvious here that Susan likes to play around with David’s words and demeanor without him fully knowing it. However, most of this sequence is done with medium shots, encasing both characters in plain view of each other. This helps to establish that they, in fact, are establishing a relationship, albeit a shaky one. This scene fully embodies the dynamic between the two. With this relationship in place we see the film begin to take a new direction, as what develops is David’s inability to “escape” from the tyrannical actions of Susan.