According to David Bordell, explain how and why continuity has intensified in Hollywood cinema. Also consider whether anything has been lost with this change.
Please include a minimum of 3 quotes from the article in your response.
According to David Bordell, the author of Visual Style in Contemporary American Film, continuity in Hollywood cinema has intensified. He believed that continuity had intensified because of the 4 stylistic tactics. The stylistic tactics included; rapid editing, extreme's of lens length, close framing in dialogue scenes, and a free-ranging camera.
Touching on each stylistic tactic, the first one was the use of rapid editing. Rapid editing had increased over the years, starting in 1930 & 1960 at an ASL (average shot length) being between 300-700 shots; whereas in the 1980's it boosted up to about 1500 shots or more. The rate of the ASL would increase more and more with music videos and action movies. As time went on, the cuts were getting faster and faster. Bordell thought that, "... editing rates will soon hit a wall; it's hard to imagine a feature-length narrative movie averaging less than 1.5 seconds per shot" (2). He also touches on the fact that no film is a long action sequence as well. There must be a median. As time gradually moved on, he expressed his relates his findings to Kuleshov and Pudovkin. He says that they pointed out that, "... classical cutting contains built in redundancies: shot/reverse shots reiterate the information about character position given in the establishing shot, and so do eyelines and body orientation"(2). Here he is saying that over time Kuleshov and Pudovking both thought that many filmmakers started to drift away from realism, realizing that it became dull because of repetition. The shorter shots and when establishing shots are brief, the eyelines and angles in a film become more unclear.
The next stylistic tactic has to do with the extreme of lens lengths. Between the 1910's and 1940's the average focal length was about 50mm (2 inches). The longer lenses ranging from 100mm to 500mm were merely used for close ups (soft-focus close ups). The shorter lenses (25-50mm) were used mainly to create a good focus in several different planes in one shot (great depth of field). Bordell talks about how, "... filmmakers used wide-angle lenses to provide expansive establishing shots, medium shots with strong foregrounds/background interplay, and grotesque close ups"(2). Here he is stating that the wide-angle lenses allowed for a wider variety of shots. Wide angles were able to distort reality by bulging edges creating a sense of exaggerating distances in a frame. Another type of lens that was used was the long lens. The long-lens allowed filmmakers to be far away from an object while still providing an advantage to shooting exterior scenes. The longer lenses helped save time with multiple camera shootings. The longer lenses allowed cameras to stay out of range of one another when shooting an interior scene. The longer lenses also helped with rack-focusing and the "wipe-by" cut.
The third technique of stylistic tactics is close framings in dialogue scenes. "Singles allowed the director to vary the scene's pace in editing and to pick the best bits of each actor's performance" (3). Medium shots and close ups were used to highlight the actors and their performance. A standard tactic used in order to get away from having to reemphasize lines or facial expressions in shots, differentiation in shot scales was considered. But over time, this became less common. Therefore, creating the over-the-shoulder medium shot for dialogue scenes. This created a narrower scale for filmmakers to work with; medium two shot to extreme close-up singles. When widescreens were introduced into the film industry, filmmakers felt obligated to use long-shots and medium shots. But then Panavision's sharper came into play allowing less distorting lenses, which allowed directors to present closer widescreen framings.
Lastly, the fourth technique of stylistic tactics is a free-ranging camera. "Today's camera movements are ostentatious extensions of the camera mobility generalized during the 1930's" (4). The prolonged following shot was where the camera would track a character moving along a lengthy path. This technique was developed in the 1920's. New technology along the years made this technique more ubiquitous. Same goes for the crane shot, which marked a film's dramatic high point. But today's films it is a casual embellishment. Crane shots can help "enliven montage sequences and expository moments"(4). Also, the "push-ins" build continuous tension along side giving a moment of realization. A way to introduce all the people who are present in a scene is the circling shot. The circling shot would have the camera spiralling around them and may be long takes or brief shots. The free-ranging camera came into play around the 1970's where it was popularized in horror films. The free-ranging camera would give the audience a hovering, slightly shaky camera. This would give the audience a feel for the monster's point of view.
Cinematographer Phil Meheux stated that,"It's a shame that most films rely so much on tight close-ups all the time, filling the screen with an actor's head like you might for television, when there is so much more than you can show. The style is really just a result of what producers want for video release" (5). The change and usage of different shots can help hold the viewers attention by the constantly changing of the visual display. It makes the audience focus more on the film rather then feel bored because of the lack of differentiation in shot range.
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