Practical Skills - Health and safety, when on set.

Health and Safety

Professional film crews take health and safety issues very seriously. The line of responsibility runs from the Producer to the Production Manager and 1st Assistant Director and finally on to all crew members who have a duty of care which is recognised by law. If someone can see the potential for an accident and does nothing to try to prevent it, they can be held responsible in some way, probably along with their senior colleagues.


When filming, people have many things on their minds, things can get rushed, and risks can increase. Even simple things can become dangerous because this is not an ordinary situation. Of course, all of life presents hazards, but if someone is asked to run down a hill repeatedly to get the scene right, for example, the risk of them tripping and falling on their face is increased with each time they do this. If the hill is pavement rather than grass the risk of serious injury is increased.

Risk assessment

The way to stay safe is to look at each shooting set up or location individually and think of what exactly could go wrong. This is called a risk assessment.

It's a three step process

• Identify all the hazards 
• Evaluate the risks 
• Identify measures to control the risks 

Then put in place safeguards to eliminate or minimise risk. You should make a record of any risk assessment to ensure the students are clear on how to stay safe. This can save time during your shoot. Rules about listening to each other, respecting a chain of command, looking after equipment properly, and not rushing, will all help to keep people safe and happy.


'Hazard' refers to the potential for harm. while 'Risk' is the chance of that harm actually happening. Though some hazards might seem very obvious, people might still need to have them pointed out.

Weather

Extremes of weather are one commonly overlooked hazard. If you are filming outside all day, it is essential to make sure the crew are dressed appropriately. A lot of the time you may be standing around and people will get cold very quickly even in what seems quite mild weather. Layers of clothes are best, and get everyone to bring a waterproof and a woolly hat - they keep out wind as well as rain and are invaluable.

Sunburn and heatstroke are other outdoor hazards. Always have high protection sunscreen on hand and make the students put it on. Try to get students to wear some kind of sun hat or stay in the shade when possible and make sure lots of water is available to drink. The other reason for sunscreen is to stop the actors' appearance changing drastically and messing up the continuity of the film!

Time pressure

Rushing to finish in time is when hazards get missed, or people start taking risks. If this starts to happen, take a moment to calm everyone down and remind them: this is only a film. If you feel really pressured try to think of how to lighten the work-load: can you cut out some shots or set ups to give you the time to get the most essential stuff for the film without a panic? Or can you come back tomorrow to finish?

Other common hazards

Tripping hazards

Move or gaffa tape down cables and objects that could be tripped over.

Lifting hazards

Go carefully when moving or lifting heavy or dangerous things, ask someone to help you.

Camera risks

When a camera operator or cast member is walking during a shot, make sure they are comfortable with their route and there is nothing that could cause problems (a camera operator who needs to walk backwards for a shot should have an assistant to guide them and/or check their route).

Water

Shots that involve water.

Precarious

Shots from high up or near the edge of something.

Shots that look illegal

Shots might look illegal if you didn't know a camera was there. This could cause distress to members of the public &/or cause a police call out.



Bibliography -

Moving image education, Health and Safety. Available at: https://movingimageeducation.org/create-films/production/the-production-department/health-and-safety (accessed 31st October 2019)

Images -

Safety first - available at: https://www.direct365.co.uk/blog/health-and-safety-signs/ (accessed 31st October 2019)

Time - Available at: https://nationalpost.com/entertainment/books/how-the-world-became-obsessed-with-time-and-efficiency (accessed 31st October 2019)

Weather - available at: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/long-range-weather-forecast-uk (accessed 31st October 2019)

4 hour film challenge - unusual perspective

We were tasked with making a short film exploring a different perspective of what would normally be seen, in knowing this I based my film around a persons day to day life of going and sitting at a bench,  when shooting this I decided to follow the protagonist throughout the film using different angles and distances that could be considered unique for this sort of movement, such as extremely long shots from a weird angle or close up shots of the protagonists feet while walking. In editing this short film I learned how to create "bins" in premiere pro and learnt the importance of renaming and organising clips as it makes the editing process a lot simpler, especially if you are coming back and continuing with the edit at a later date, helping you know what shots are what and whether the clip is particularly useful or not.

4 hour film challenge 1920's

Contextual Studies - American new wave short film task

Brief - 

I am tasked with investigating a New Wave of my choice from a recognised era,  critically assessing the key factors surrounding a range of films and assessing the impact of their reception, alongside that I am tasked with creating a short film that is around 2 minuets long, demonstrating the techniques of the new wave I have been assessing, I have chosen American New Wave as my area of study for this assignment.

Planning - 

• Car scene, 
• Pub scene.      all of theses because of ease of accesses the weekend I will be filming will be at 
• Skating.          the last 2 locations and a friend has agreed to use his car.

• Long shots and jump cuts prominent in filming, due to the use of them in new wave film.
• Lack of script due to the objection of the conventions of classical cinema

Techniques of new wave

focus on crime and drugs
real conversations non scripted
jump cuts
punchy dialogue
mistakes
long takes
inspiration - the godfather and pulp fiction
In particular the car scenes

Narrative

my narrative changed over time, originally I was going to do a short clip about 2 guys buying drugs from a crime lord, however now realising the complications of such, with a limited time to film, I changed my idea to a simple 2 minute video of my weekend, done In the style of American New Wave Film.

Test Footage - 

This is some of the test footage I took, using a tripod and camera and adapting the iso settings to get some footage that looks natural, the dialogue in the videos is non scripted and is natural conversation between the subjects of the film,  the shots are a mix of mid and long shots focusing on a subject, and they are all long takes, in editing I will add them together including jump cuts and non diegetic sound in some places to add to the stylism of American New Wave.

Bibliography:

Pulp Fiction scene. Available at: https://youtu.be/LBBni_-tMNs (accessed 7 NOVEMBER 2019)

4 hour film challange - editing found footage

given the brief of using found footage to crete a short video editing to a given song, the song that was given was about you by xxyyxx. i found it hard to create a narrative using found footage, if i was to this differently next time i would choose a different song that would allow for a narrative, however creatively speaking using the editing skills from other tasks it was easy to edit to the music and the effect given was a creative effect and the feedback given from my peers was that it was .....

4 hour film challange - illusions

Given the brief of using jump cuts to create illusions, we chose to edit to a soundtrack of the popular Wii theme tune as it was easy to define the beats in which to do the cuts to, creating the illusion of people appearing and disappearing to the tune. For this we had a camera setup in the corner of the room facing to the other corner so the front of the room wasn't in shot allowing for a free space to use for holding props and keeping the actors out of shot, as well as making it safer to shoot stopping people from tripping over the tripod legs. the only health and safety risk we came across was when stacking things on tables like rolling chairs etc, but that was overcome by making sure we marked out where we were putting things. I feel like I could improve the video by adding more jump cuts to the beat when there are longer durations between cuts to stop the video from looking weird, however after getting feedback from the clip I was told that it made audience members laugh, showing that I got engagement from the audience and when doing a group critical analysis of the clip we agreed it was creative, we had Thought of sound first for ease of editing we used a tripod to make sure the camera didn’t move so we had a stable image however it was slightly out of focus, wasn’t the best footage, due to the exporting process so maybe we needed to use a different clip type.

Contextual studies - Easy rider analysis

Easy Rider is a record of a certain time in American history, and a chronicle of a culture clash that never quite ended. But it’s no mere historical document or cinematic curiosity. It’s a freewheeling take on freedom—what it means and what it costs.


Billy and Wyatt—who goes by the nickname Captain America, and has the star-spangled accessories to earn it—cross the United States in two senses of the word: in traveling from Mexico to Los Angeles, through the Southwest, and on to New Orleans, and in giving offense. They disrupt, oppose, betray. Like so many of the fringe characters the duo meet on their journey, Billy and Wyatt don’t have regular jobs, families, or homes. They live from one drug deal to the next, go where they please, and stick around until they feel like moving on again. This isn’t a philosophical statement on their part; it’s just how they happen to live—and Billy’s initial puzzlement at George’s analysis suggests that he’s never thought of himself as a symbol of anything. But the representatives of America’s dominant culture—the go-along-to-get-along proletariat that then president Richard M. Nixon would describe as the Silent Majority—have been thinking in those terms, and as far as they’re concerned, these moon-child freaks are walking provocations. Billy’s and Wyatt’s appearances challenge prevailing notions of manhood (the bikers are routinely harassed for their long hair and eccentric clothes, and mocked as girls or queers). The born-wild bikers’ nomadic existence proves it’s possible to survive without becoming tranquilized zoo animals.The word freedom also describes the mind-set that created Easy Rider. The film was shot totally outside of studio channels, for around $350,000, and was cowritten by Hopper, Fonda, and novelist and screenwriter Terry Southern (Dr. Strangelove, Candy), all representing facets of the counter­culture—a multigenerational catchall term that covered so-called Beats, or beatniks, in the fifties and early sixties and hippies in the late sixties and early seventies. They were united by their embrace of a bohemian lifestyle and their dissatisfaction with postwar America. Fonda came up with the germ of an idea for a modern western keyed to that sensibility and brought in Hopper and Southern as collaborators. Southern, who had been traveling in hipster artist circles since the late 1940s (his friends amounted to a who’s who of midcentury arts and letters—Nelson Algren, Kenneth Tynan, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Henry Green), was the most aesthetically grounded of the trio, and he took the first pass at the script in 1967. (And despite later revisions and on-set improvisations—and Hopper’s attempts to diminish his role—Southern’s influence on the final film can be strongly felt. Visual flights of fancy notwithstanding, Easy Rider is a spare, poetic work, marked by a mix of spiky humor and tenderness that’s characteristic of Southern.) Hopper treated Easy Rider as a laboratory in which to test his theories of what constituted truly adventurous writing, directing, and acting. And he drove himself and his castmates to give intuitive, risky, confessional performances. (For the New Orleans sequence with Karen Black and Toni Basil, Hopper persuaded Fonda to talk to a statue of a woman in a cemetery as if it were his mother. “Oh God, how l loved you,” Wyatt sobs.) Hopper’s background as a photographer and art director informed the movie’s loose, inventive visuals. He encouraged his cinematographer, László Kovács—a survivor of the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, who adored the American landscape—to shoot most of the film’s exteriors with natural light. (Kovács’s highly expressive on-the-fly photography is a tour de force in the possibilities of the zoom lens, and an incalculable number of subsequent movies have tried to ape Easy Rider’s visuals.) Most daringly, Hopper eschewed straightforward plotting and instead devoted long stretches of the film’s running time to footage of the guys riding their bikes, while cities and towns and mountains and trees roll past them in a continuous geographic slipstream. He told his crew that he wanted the film to be a mind-blowing visceral experience, like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which came out a few weeks before Easy Rider began production. Easy Rider also transcends its cultural moment, because it’s about more than bikers and hippies or the tension between libertines and reactionaries. It’s about the difficulty of escaping social conditioning and economic imperatives and sustaining a truly free life. In the oft-cited campfire scene near the end, Wyatt tells Billy, “We blew it.” That line has been taken as an indictment of the American counterculture, which, like so many protean revolutionary movements, started self-destructing once it gained enough power and prominence to effect real change. One can read it that way. But the line strikes me also as a more personal sort of confession, an admission that they have ultimately succumbed and bought into their own outlaw version of the capitalist rat race—the idea that a man is not a true success unless he has accumulated enough money to stop working and take it easy.

Contextual studies - Bonnie and Clyde analysis

Bonnie and Clyde – The French New Wave in Hollywood

Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967) was the start of the Hollywood Renaissance Movement – one that is filled with previously taboo topics that cinema tried to stay away from. The initial release was lukewarm and it was only though Pauline Kael’s lengthy essay, that praised the film, allowed the film a second chance. The graphic violence and sexual nature of Bonnie and Clyde’s relationship excited the American public, who thought of the real duo as noble populists. Penn did not shy away from the gritty and dirty lives of the criminals and that cemented Bonnie and Clyde within global iconic film status. The film reused techniques of the French New Wave, to draw the younger generation of moviegoers back to the cinema.

The film is based on the real-life Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, criminals in American West during the Great Depression. The film scandalised the conservatives, starting with a nude scene of Faye Dunaway who plays the titular character of Bonnie and ending with the graphic rampage of their death. The film showed blood and gore explicitly and the audiences enjoyed each violent scene. However, despite such strides in portraying the lives of violent criminals realistically, the film uses the subtleties of the French New Wave liberally and the connection between the two movements are palpable.

Warren Beatty who plays Clyde, also acted as the producer of the film, and had originally approached French New Wave directors to make the film. So, the influence of the French New Wave had begun at the very conception of the show and would go on to influence Penn’s version of the pseudo-autobiography. The tone of Bonnie and Clyde utilised French New Wave techniques of characterisation of the protagonists, fast cuts, and spontaneous music to shift tone abruptly.

Bonnie and Clyde echoed one of the most well-known French New Wave movies, Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960). We see similarities in the protagonist Michel and Clyde, anti-heroes who were arrogant, rebellious and believed themselves to be above the law. Both characters have a hyper masculine and sexual façade, Clyde putting on the mask of a Western outlaw and Michel as the classic Hollywood gangster. Their downfall is the very thing that makes them so attractive, their brutality and confidence that serves to attract characters and audiences alike. The audience grows to root for these morally repugnant characters even though they know that these crimes cannot go unpunished and their eventual deaths are not celebrated by the audience.

The camera techniques in Bonnie and Clyde are also distinctively like the New Wave movement. A scene that shows this perfectly is the ending scene where Bonnie and Clyde are viciously gunned down. The abrupt change in tone occurs when Mr Moss suddenly ducks for cover, the characters go from carefree with long takes to an abrupt burst of short and fast cuts. The change of tone is particularly jarring as within that few minutes of the scene the audience go from feeling carefree to free. The film does not even allow the audience to process their emotions as the characters are shot at in a long slow motion that seems almost beautiful in its choreography. The loud gunshots start of jarring but becomes almost like background music as the characters fall in slow motion with blood spewing out from wounds. Their deaths becomes a performance despite the horrific, almost cruel, killing.

Lastly, Bonnie and Clyde uses banjo music to convey a change in tone in the film. In scenes where the characters are robbing banks, the sombre and serious tone of the robbery itself is quickly switched to a fun and spritely one through the sudden quick strum of banjo music during the duo’s getaway. The song, Earl Sruggs’ “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” becomes emblematic and undercuts the seriousness of the show. It is comedic in nature and such a song paired with car chases immediately after a stick up allowed Penn to shift the film’s tone precipitously.
Hence, Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde is hallmarked for triggering a whole new set of Hollywood films that were unabashedly violent and sexual. It opened the cinema up for the wider audience and revived a dying industry by bringing New Wave techniques directly into the Hollywood studios.


Bibliography:

Narelle (2017), Bonnie and Clyde – The French New Wave in Hollywood.
Available at : https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/narelle001/bonnie-and-clyde-the-french-new-wave-in-hollywood/ (accessed 13th November 2019)

Images in order

1 - found at: http://crimefeed.com/2017/01/serial-killer-cinema-10-movies-based-bonnie-clyde/ (accessed: 13th November 2019)

2 - found at: https://journeysindarknessandlight.wordpress.com/2015/06/28/growing-up-with-movies-introduction-and-episode-1-bonnie-and-clyde-1967/ (Accessed 13th November 2019)

3 - found at: https://www.express.co.uk/pictures/pics/4230/Faye-Dunaway-60s-American-actress-pictures/Faye-Dunaway-and-Warren-Beatty-star-together-in-the-1967-film-Bonnie-and-Clyde-95600 (accessed 13th November 2019)

4 - found at: http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2017/8/16/bonnie-clydes-50th-anniversary.html (accessed 13th November 2019)

Contextual studies - Godfather analysis

At first sight, The Godfather seems like a crime picture or a gangster movie. And we should remember that in its day it was the most successful film there had ever been, as well as winner of the Oscar for best picture. So it seems like a triumph of the mainstream.

However with The Godfather containing elements of American new wave it is a great example of a film that takes it's place in American new wave cinema but diverts towards the rise of mainstream Hollywood cinema. its focuses on the truth of what is going on at the time focusing on the crime and violence with the mafia. Making people see a different reality rather than the reality of the Vietnam war.

The scene in particular, is a brilliantly sustained exercise in suspense in which we hear about the meeting arranged and follow the plan to conceal a gun in the lavatory of the small, neighbourhood Italian restaurant chosen for the rendezvous. We wonder, will it work? So there's the night-time car ride where Michael is frisked and approved. There are the ominous chords of Nino Rota's score building. And there is the restaurant itself, a quiet but welcoming place – "Try the veal", says Sollozzo. There's Italian talk at the table, with subtitles, and then Michael asks to be allowed to go to the bathroom. It figures. He should be very nervous.
Then you hear the noise. It's the rise and fall of a subway train passing. Through the restaurant? No. But did you ever hear of a successful restaurant, even one with great veal, where every passing train drowns out conversation? Of course not. The train is an artistic device, a heightening effect, a vibrato supplied by the great sound designer Walter Murch. With New wave films dialogue  drowned out by noises was used as a sense of verisimilitude to show audiences that they are watching a film that has a sense of reality written within, that and most shots were only filmed once due to a lower budget, The Godfather may have had a larger budget but shots were still usually done in one to save time and create a sense of verisimilitude.

The coup works. Michael comes out with a gun and leaves the two men for dead. He walks out of the restaurant and remembers his instructions – drop the gun. The music rises in triumph. Game, set and match to the Corleones. But something else has happened – Michael, the good boy in the family, the Ivy League student with a glowing military record, the son Vito was hoping to save, has crossed over. He has come of age – he is a made man. Coming of age films were a large part of 1960's/1970s cinema in Hollywood giving the audience something to connect to. The Godfather suddenly reveals itself as not just a gangster chronicle, or even a series of magnificent set pieces, but the progress of Michael towards evil. And evil is a subject for art.

With that thought we begin to appreciate the cumulative artistry of the film – not just Murch's plans with sound, or Rota's operatic music, nor even the overwhelming period authenticity of the production design by Dean Tavoularis, but hanging over everything, the Rembrandt browns in the photography by Gordon Willis. What makes The Godfather so ambitious is that atmosphere in which the true-to-life gloom of Italian-American interiors takes on a moral force.

The influence of The Godfather is unequalled. Not just in the new vogue for gangster and mafia pictures, but in the stress on family and the unsentimental attraction to darkness and evil, and in the career of Francis Ford Coppola as a model new director. The American movie comes of age in 1972. The old distinction between good guys and bad guys will not pass in an America suddenly aware of its own corruption and compromise. (This is the time of Watergate.) Finally, a pregnant confusion has set in: what is the mainstream and what is art? Michael Corleone is our modern Charles Foster Kane, and every bit as tricky.

Camera and Lighting - Lighting research and experiments

Rembrandt
- is a lighting technique that is used in studio portrait photography. It can be achieved using one light and a reflector, or two lights, and is popular because it is capable of producing images which appear both natural and compelling with a minimum of equipment. Rembrandt lighting is characterized by an illuminated triangle under the eye of the subject on the less illuminated side of the face. It is named for the Dutch painter Rembrandt, who often used this type of lighting. like the use of split lighting it can be used to create a softer chiaroscuro effect making the subject look mysterious.

Edge
- Split lighting is a technique that produces a sense of drama to a scene. This form of lighting is when half of the subject's face is lit, while the other half is left dark. The light is evenly divided over the subject. this creates an effect that in cinema is referred to as chiariscuro with makes the subject seem mysterious and evil and is usually used to show that a character has a duel personality, its very common in film noir.

Butterfly 

- Butterfly lighting is a portrait lighting pattern where the key light is placed above and directly centered with a subject's face. This creates a shadow under the nose that resembles a butterfly. It's also known as 'Paramount lighting,' named for classic Hollywood glamour photography.

                                    

         

other lighting techniques I found by searching around on google looking at different ways to use lighting techniques used with portrait photography, and how I can apply them to the moving image to generate a specific mood or feel to a scene or to create a New wave style technique.

experimental lighting,

Using a silver reflector and the light to the right hand of the subject with the camera facing straight on I created several different moods and feels, using a mixture of coloured filters over the led lights and also by changing the iso settings ion the camera and by using the reflector to either angle light back at the subject or to block out light completely, here are some still images and some clips to show what I did.

Bibliography:

Butterfly Lighting - https://www.slrlounge.com/glossary/butterfly-lighting-definition/ (accessed 7 October 2019) 

Edge lighting - http://blog.backdropexpress.com/lighting-series-profile-and-split-lighting/ (accessed 7 October 2019)

Rembrandt lighting - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rembrandt_lighting (accessed 7 October 2019)

Images - 

Butterfly 

- https://www.dpmag.com/how-to/shooting/classic-portrait-light-2/ (accessed 7 October 2019)

- https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/6772/what-is-butterfly-lighting-and-when-do-i-use-it (accessed 7 October 2019)

Edge lighting 

- https://clickitupanotch.com/split-lighting-made-easy-with-5-steps/ (accessed 7 October 2019)

- https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/6656/what-is-split-portrait-lighting (accessed 7 October 2019)

Lighting guide 

- https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/tutorials/cheat-sheet-pro-portrait-lighting-setups (accessed 7 October 2019)

Rembrandt lighting

- https://expertphotography.com/rembrandt-lighting-photography/ (accessed 7 October 2019)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rembrandt_lighting#/media/File:Rembrandt_lighting.png (accessed 7 October 2019)

Contextual Studies - My Choice of American new wave films.

American new wave films i'm going to study and look at.




Bonnie and Clyde






Bonnie and Clyde is a 1967 American neo-noir biographical crime film directed by Arthur Penn and starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as the title characters Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. Also featured were Michael J. Pollard, Gene Hackman, and Estelle Parsons.


Easy Rider






Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper), two Harley-riding hippies, complete a drug deal in Southern California and decide to travel cross-country in search of spiritual truth. On their journey, they experience bigotry and hatred from the inhabitants of small-town America and also meet with other travelers seeking alternative lifestyles. After a terrifying drug experience in New Orleans, the two travelers wonder if they will ever find a way to live peacefully in America.


The Godfather



Widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, this mob drama, based on Mario Puzo's novel of the same name, focuses on the powerful Italian-American crime family of Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando). When the don's youngest son, Michael (Al Pacino), reluctantly joins the Mafia, he becomes involved in the inevitable cycle of violence and betrayal. Although Michael tries to maintain a normal relationship with his wife, Kay (Diane Keaton), he is drawn deeper into the family business.

Camera and Lighting - Frame rate research

Frame rate is the speed at which those images are shown, or how fast you “flip” through the book and it’s usually expressed as “frames per second,” or FPS. Each image represents a frame, so if a video is captured and played back at 24fps, that means each second of video shows 24 distinct still images.

The speed at which they’re shown tricks your brain into perceiving smooth motion.
Why does frame rate matter?

Frame rate greatly impacts the style and viewing experience of a video. Different frame rates yield different viewing experiences, and choosing a frame rate often means choosing between things such as how realistic you want your video to look, or whether or not you plan to use techniques such as slow motion or motion blur effects.

For example, movies are usually displayed at 24fps, since this frame rate is similar to how we see the world, and creates a very cinematic look. Video that’s broadcast live or video with a lot of motion, such as a sporting event or video game recording, will often have a higher frame rate, as there’s a lot happening at once and a higher frame rate keeps the motion smooth and the details crisp.

On the other hand, people who create animated GIFs will often sacrifice detail for a smaller file size and choose a low frame rate.

Frame rate doesn't effect the amount of light the camera receives however it works in conjunction with the shutter speed to create a smooth image.

Bibliography : Brunner D(2019) Frame Rate: A Beginners Guide Available at: https://www.techsmith.com/blog/frame-rate-beginners-guide/ (Accessed 1 October 2019)
Gif available at: https://www.techsmith.com/blog/frame-rate-beginners-guide/ (Accessed 1 October 2019)

Contextual Studies - What is American New Wave?

New Hollywood was a movement in filmmaking from the late 1960s through the 1970s. The movement started with The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde, both released in 1967, and continued through the 1970s as auteurs crafted films that would influence the future of movie-making. These films saw less influence from their production studios and more influence from their directors, allowing new brands of creative authorship that broke away from people's existing expectations of what Hollywood films could be. Representing a productive union between studio and director in which the director takes creative control of the film, New Hollywood resulted in commercially viable pictures that explored previously taboo subjects in innovative new ways.

New Hollywood isn’t so much a style of filmmaking as it is a movement and a period of time. It refers to a post-Hays liberation of creativity ushered in by a generation of young filmmakers who took the primary authorial role away from studios and into their own hands. Their style, production process and storytelling approach opposed what people expected of Hollywood films prior to this point. No longer were studio films produced solely for commercial gain; instead, the studio system worked in conjunction with viewing film as an art and reviving creativity of expression. Autheur filmmakers explored unconventional storytelling techniques, examined risky subjects and did it in style, on Hollywood's dime.


Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde
Televisions started appearing in homes in the 1950s, disrupting the comfortable Hollywood status quo. By the 1960s, attitudes were shifting and commercial success was down as the “Golden Age” of Hollywood became a distant memory. The big-budget studio productions were failing to draw crowds, and some of the most expensive films ever made were flops that shoved studio funds down the tubes. With the Production Code disbanded and studios scrambling for something new, clever young filmmakers saw an opportunity to create lower-budget, uniquely engaging films. New waves of cinema coming from Europe and Japan were making their way through American film schools, as the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman became all the rage among American cinephiles. From this cinephilia, New Hollywood was born.

The first films generally attributed to the New Hollywood movement are Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Mike Nichols’ The Graduate(1967). These films ignored taboos and appealed to the youth, addressing sex and violence with now iconic moments in motion picture history. While Mrs. Robinson was trying to seduce a young Dustin Hoffman with that legendary under-the-leg shot, this new brand of filmmaking was bewitching audiences and generations of eventual filmmakers. These films were centered on complex themes with morally ambiguous messages, reflecting the nonconforming generation disillusioned by Vietnam, upset with the elite and rich with contemplation, which re-tooled American film into a means of looking critically at the country's history and future.


Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate

Arthur Penn and Warren Beatty first collaborated on Mickey One in 1965. After Bonnie and Clyde was passed from Francois Truffaut to Godard to Warren Beatty and finally to Penn, the latter was originally reluctant to take the directorial chair. But it didn’t take long before he realizedBonnie and Clyde isn’t just another gangster picture but a searing social commentary on violence and hypocrisy in America in the 1960s. It is a period crime story with a contemporary lesson.

While the studio, Warner Brothers, was still blind to the untapped potential of what would be the New Hollywood movement, they gave Penn and Beatty free reign to fill the film’s cast with unknown stage actors like Gene Hackman and Estelle Parsons and to shoot the film in Texas. When the film was complete, the studio and its executives hated it, as did middle-brow film critics at a number of national papers. Only Pauline Kael of The New Yorker praised the film (she would go on to offer the same congratulations to The Graduate). Then Bonnie and Clyde did well in Europe, and it was Time's cover story and “best movie of the year.” When Warner Brothers re-released the film in America, it became one of the biggest money-makers of the era and was nominated for ten Academy Awards. The possibilities afforded by this elevated, disaffected, auteur-driven filmmaking became clear.

As the culture of American cinema widened after Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, many European directors came to join the movement so that they could couple their artistic desires with Hollywood budgets. Roman Polanski, Stanley Kubrick, Milos Foreman and John Boorman all crafted some of their best work within the wave of New Hollywood’s current. Their films boasted an outsider approach that spoke to New Hollywood’s nature of exploring and exposing American morality with a fresh eye.

Film studies professor and author Todd Berliner believes five principles govern the narrative strategies characteristic of Hollywood films of the New Hollywood movement:

• Seventies films show a perverse tendency to integrate, in narratively incidental ways, story information and stylistic devices counterproductive to the films’ overt and essential narrative purposes.
• Hollywood filmmakers of the 1970s often situate their film-making practices in between those of classical Hollywood and those of European and Asian art cinema.
• Seventies films prompt spectator responses more uncertain and discomforting than those of more typical Hollywood cinema.
• Seventies narratives place an uncommon emphasis on irresolution, particularly at the moment of climax or in epilogues, when more conventional Hollywood movies busy themselves tying up loose ends.
• Seventies cinema hinders narrative linearity and momentum and scuttles its potential to generate suspense and excitement.

Many legendary films are considered part of the movement, including 

Easy Rider (1969)

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Badlands (1973)

American Graffiti (1973)

The Dirty Dozen (1967)

MASH(1970)

Catch-22 (1970)

Don't Look Back (1967)

The Godfather (1972)

Apocalypse Now (1979)

A Woman Under the Influence (1974)

Chinatown(1974)

The Sting (1973), 

Barry Lyndon (1975)

The New Hollywood era lasted until around 1980, when big-budget Hollywood pictures began to re-dominate the market. It is challenging to put an “end” point on a movement. Perhaps it is Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart (1982), or perhaps Warren Beatty both opened and closed the movement with Reds (1981), the epic drama in which he directed, starred, produced and wrote. Regardless of which picture closed the books on New Hollywood, the movement's run through the 1970s altered the landscape of cinema forever. Filmmakers continue to be inspired by and draw from the works of the New Hollywood auteurs, who produced many of the art form's most revered works.

A New Hollywood

In the late 1960s and early 70s, a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence in American cinema. Their work was thematically complex, formally innovative, morally ambiguous, anti-establishment, and rich in mythic resonance. They spoke for a generation disillusioned by the Vietnam War, disenchanted by the ruling elite, and less willing to conform than their parents.
Dubbed the "New Hollywood" by the press, their films were mostly financed by the major studios, but they introduced subject matter and a new stylistic approach that set them apart from studio tradition. Influenced by the revolutionary new waves of cinema coming out of Europe, they re-worked, and re-imagined, some of Hollywood’s classic genres – such as the crime film, the war film, and the western – and by doing so, presented a more critical view of America, past and present.
In front of the camera, a brilliant new generation of actors and actresses, often trained in acting schools in New York, brought a new level of realism and intensity to the screen. While behind the scenes – writers, cinematographers, editors, composers, and other creative figures – changed the way American movies looked and sounded.
Although the new generation’s ambition to overturn the system and create something better in its place may have ultimately failed, they did succeed in producing a body of work now considered a golden age in American cinema.

Bibliography :
Hitchman.S (2013) New Hollywood: American new wave cinema. Available at : http://www.newwavefilm.com/international/new-hollywood.shtml (accessed 1 October 2019)
Saporito.J (2016) Filmmaker's Handbook: What is the New Hollywood movement. Available at: http://screenprism.com/insights/article/the-filmmakers-handbook-what-is-the-new-hollywood-movement (accessed 1 October 2019)
Images available at: http://screenprism.com/insights/article/the-filmmakers-handbook-what-is-the-new-hollywood-movement (accessed 1 October 2019)