11 sec club crit July 08

Latest 11sec club critique with Nick Bruno

One of Nick's big suggestions concerned staging and shot flow (similar to how Kevin Koch's discussions on it)

Basically he was emphasizing that you want to grab the eye's attention (through the usual means, contrast and movement) before you do something, and you want to think about where the eye is and where it's going to go. Leow Chan Ghee had chosen large gestures describing the emotions, which worked fine as acting choices, but Nick says that they are all at 100%. Nick recommends Leow keep the big tip forwards as the 2nd golden pose and then work within that, and that allows the eye to be focused in one spot easier so it won't miss anything, and it allows time to soak up the subtle clues that indicate the unique shadings of this moment in this characteres life. In other words it's smaller so you can focus and see more. So little movements within the leaning forwards, so the gestures are at 40% but the intention is just as clear, with maybe one 80% hand exclamation point gesture within it. You wouldn't have a paragraph with an ! after every sentence, you'd pepper those in rarely.

leading gestures. he's standing and not doing much really. If you bring the hand up before the lean in, while he's still standing then the movement will pull the eye, and then we'd know where what we'd be following. Just a couple frames before. So eye is following the hand because it started with that leading gesture, the hand is moving and the eye follows and feels the body moving along too but the attention is on the hand, the body stops, the hand hits and recoils, the recoil comes back towards the head which is anticing up. So the hand bouncing back is passing the baton back the head, for the audiences attention.

That was an interesting point, that a small area of the screen is carrying the baton of the viewer's eye and attention, and you should consider how you're carrying it and moving it around.

eyes change expression, then the body changes shape, suggesting that there was a thought and then the body reacted to the thought

pivotal change in his life at the end of the scene. That's how Nick talked about the scene, as if it were pivotal to the character. Another good lesson, if you get a scene, figure out (or make up) why this is a moment in the character's life that they will remember when they are 85.

Often on a reaction shot you might think "man I just have to get this guy, put him in a pose, and make him blink, the director must not have liked my earlier scenes". But this kind of shot gives context to the whole scene, if he just straight blinks it's like "are you done? get out of my office." if blinks and looks to the side it's like he's considering what was said. So even though the character's not moving a lot, it's a scene where the gears in their minds are moving a lot, so a little trickier to pull off but good potential.