Appendix IV
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Notes by John Goldman
[EDITOR'S NOTE: John Goldman (now John Monck), the editor of Man of Aran, has specialty contributed the following notes about Robert Flaherty's methods and techniques which he had the opportunity to observe at firsthand during the shooting of the film on the Aran Islands and the subsequent editing in London. They are considered likely to be of such technical interest to filmmakers and admirers of Flaherty that we include them for study and information.]
1. Flaherty's Attitude Towards Lenses in Cinematography
Flaherty's use of the long-focus lens was not solely dictated by the need to photograph objects at a distance from the camera, though he recognised its use for this purpose. Nor was it dictated solely by the greater naturalness he could get from his real-life actors, a lack of self-consciousness by having the camera a long way off instead of being right up close to them. The more important factors in his choice of lenses were his feelings for texture, composition and "colour" in his photography.
He hated the short-focus lens; I never knew him to use it if it could he avoided. Once I asked him why he said that the short-focus lens is flat and colourless, whereas the longer the focus the greater the degree of roundness and the greater the effect of cushioning the object being photographed. The short-focus lens cuts the atmosphere, whereas the long-focus lens photographs the atmosphere and gives "colour" and texture to the space between the camera and the object. Further, he argued, the short-focus lens photographs everything within its range with equal emphasis and light value and with no shading; whereas the long-focus lens throws the centre of interest into relief and emphasises the centre of interest, gives the shot rhythm. Your eye is not distracted by extraneous objects all in sharp focus as in the short-focus lens. The long-focus lens ranges the surrounding objects and lines in a gradual decline of clarity and emphasis. A long-focus lens adds drama,
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whereas the short-focus lens destroys it. Moreover, the long-focus lens alters the relationship between the object and its background and surrounding objects, giving it force and directness. The making of a film, he would say, is the art of eliminating the non-essential. The long-focus lens was one of his main tools in so doing.
Flaherty's use of lenses lay at the heart of his photographic quality. They were inseparable from his approach to films. It was not just that with a long-focus lens you could photograph a girl, as he used to say, changing her mind a mile away; it was that you could see her rounded and in relief. This question of relief was very important to him. He strove always for a kind of stereoscopic effect. If an object was moving, he wanted to feel it moving, see it moving and he would argue that if seen at certain angles with a long-focus lens, you could feel you were seeing round the object, that it was moving out from its background. To get this effect, it was also necessary to include the atmosphere that lay not only between the object and the camera but also between the object and its background. Only by doing so could you feel the object in space. Thus the long-focus lens was necessary in composition, giving emphasis to the centre of interest and eliminating the non-essential; but it was also essential to the texture, to the relationship between the centre of interest and its surroundings, its position in space.
Further, there was the question of "colour." I have always thought that Flaherty's photography was outstanding for its "colour"; its gradations were such that you really felt you were looking at a polychrome image and not one in monochrome. This was ever of the greatest importance to him. His first use of panchromatic film in Moana was one big step on this road. His use of lenses the other. In spite of his often disparaging remarks about actual colour film, I have seen him very excited by it especially when he saw what could be done by closeups in colour. And also he was stimulated by the effect of colour in shadow, away from bright light. Many times he said he would like to make a film in colour. Basil Wright and I once took him to a Mr. Wagner, who lived rear London and who had done a lot of colour-filming on 16mm in Central Europe. It was the first colour film which we had seen where the whites were white; all colour photography must depend and start from a proper value for white. Flaherty came back from that visit very enthusiastic and went straight round to Newman Sinclair's to ask about equipment. Then he went to the laboratories to ask about processing and If 16 mm stock could be "blown up" to 35 mm size. But unhappily nothing came of it.
His use of black-and-white photography depends on a full range of graduated tonal values. To obtain tonal values of this kind, the camera must have something to photograph which possesses these values. They are to be found particularly in the air, in the atmosphere. Now if you use a short-focus lens and get up close to your object, you are eliminating this surrounding air. You are reducing the amount of light-reflecting matter between the camera and the object so that the camera has nothing to photograph between itself and the object. The further you get away, the greater the amount of light-reflecting matter between you and the object. This can then be captured by the camera; hence the paramount importance of the long-focus lens.
We know that sympathetic camera-movement is far more difficult with a long-focus lens than with a short-focus one. Flaherty always said that the Akeley camera was the best camera in the world because of its wonderful gyro-head tripod with which you could pan with great smoothness with almost any lens. He was delighted
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when he found a Vinten gyro-head tripod in England so that he could use the Newman Sinclair camera with its full battery of lenses. But the Vinten gyro-head gave a good deal of trouble at various times on Aran. It would get jammed and would start jumping for no apparent reason, except that it was possible that the sea-air and the sand might have got into its bearings.
All the time on Aran, Flaherty longed to be able to perform the most sensitive pan-shots with a 17 mm lens, which is no mean feat, and even with longer-focal lengths if he could find them. He would use a great deal of film in these experiments, since the flexibility of the camera was vital to him. Camera movement, he would say, was essential both to maintaining the centre of interest and also for creating that stereoscopic effect he so much desired by giving the feeling by movement that you were seeing round the object. Moreover, camera movement was vital to collect the quality of the movement of the object, that same quality which Grierson remarked on when writing about the shots of the potters in Industrial Britain.
II. A Note about Composition.
For Flaherty, the horizon had to be either high in the frame or low in the frame, never in the middle. This, of course, is the elementary rule of classic pictorial composition. But he preferred to exclude the sky altogether if he could unless he was shooting with a low horizon. It is all a question of the laws of dynamics, drama as he would call it.
For close-ups, his feeling was particular. He liked to bring his object close into the picture, to cradle it in the frame, with the most sensitive feeling for the centre of interest and excluding all that did not lead towards it. As far as human figures were concerned, he refused to shoot full-face at any time. The full-face revealed too much. The art of drama in a film according to Flaherty's tenets was to know how little you could show, never how much. A long-shot revealed too much and if used as a resolution shot, then it must be cut short before the full impact is felt, before the audience has time to take it fully in.
It will be remembered in the storm sequence in Man of Aran all the shots of the waves breaking against the cliffs and throwing up their spume of spray, these of necessity were either medium or long-shots. Every shot had to be cut off before the spume had reached its maximum, often long before, irrespective of the cutting rhythm. Many magnificent shots were rejected altogether because they revealed too much in themselves. The curragh in the seas: it would be hidden in the trough of a wave. In the instant that it could be seen rising behind the trough, the shot had to be cut off irrespective.
At the very end of the film, where it was necessary to slow down the tempo to allow the majesty of the scene to sink in, I had the utmost difficulty over many months to get Flaherty to allow those last four or five shots to play themselves fully on the screen until the spume rises up and hangs and then sweeps across the face of the cliffs with a white cloud hanging down from tile dark sky.
"What will the audience get from this film?" he was asked once. His reply was characteristic. "Wanting to know more." The discussion about Man of Aran and the Aran Islanders that arose after the film delighted him. "I've got them," he would shout, "they're interested. They want to know more. They are angry with me for not
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showing more. If I had shown them everything, they would not have discussed what they did not see. It is enough that I have aroused their interest."
That thought lay behind every shot, every scene, every camera-angle, every moment of screen-time. To arouse interest, never show more than you have to.
Such a ragged method
of cutting, such a shortening of shots can, of course, lead to
a very slow tempo, nervous and taut. That is the great danger,
and in Man of Aran that danger was not always successfully
overcome. In Moana there was a far greater ease, less nervous
tension. I remarked on this to Flaherty once and he replied that
the South Seas were full of ease, Aran was not. In this I think
that there was an element of the same danger that Pabst fell into
with his film Westfront 1918 in which he confused his tempo
with the boredom of war until the audience itself became bored.
Let us suppose that the atmosphere of Aran was tense; I myself
would question it, but let us suppose it to have been so. You
would have so to present it that the audience is aware of the
tenseness in the subject but not itself become too tense. -December,
1959.