Please click "Follow" before reading the article, so that it is easy to discuss and share, and in order to return your support, I will update the quality content daily.
Text | Dalton notes
Edit | Dalton notes
The audiovisual language of Jason Reitman's films
A work of art is "an object of aesthetic appreciation created by the artist using a certain material medium and artistic language, through artistic conception and artistic creation, materializing the unified aesthetic image of subject and object formed in his mind." "A work of art consists of three levels: artistic language, artistic image and artistic meaning.
Marcel Mardan wrote in The Language of Cinema: "Since cinema has its own calligraphy, one by one, it is embodied in each director in the form of style, one by one, it becomes language.
"So film is not only an art form, but also a language, which is composed of two important parts, visual and auditory, which is what we call audiovisual language."
The director expresses the spiritual core of the characters through rich audiovisual language and reveals the main ideas of the film. Therefore, the analytical study of audiovisual language in Jason Reitman's films is essential.
"Unconventional" lens narrative strategy
Each film is composed of the most basic shots, and the use of each lens condenses the director's thinking.
The use of the lens serves the theme and style of the film, and the composition of an excellent film is inseparable from the accurate use of the lens, and the clever use of the lens movement can not only make the lens language richer, but also have stronger expression ability.
The famous theorist Mardan commented on the movement of the film lens: "The emergence of cinema as art began on the day the directors thought of moving the camera in the same scene". ”
Jason Reitman loves to use close-up shots when shaping and expressing characters.
Close-up lens is a common shooting method in movies, generally used to show the expressions and eyes of characters, and often uses close-up shots to express intimate conversations between people and subtle expressions and small movements of characters. When the audience is close to the person or object being photographed, the audience's heart will have a sense of identity.
Therefore, when the film enters an emotional climax, the director will often use close-up to impress the audience. But the close-up shots in Jason Reitman's movies don't create that atmosphere.
On the contrary, his use of close-up lenses gives the audience a feeling of "anti-closeness" or "anti-privacy".
Or it can be said that Jason Reitman tries to create a kind of compartment in a seemingly real environment through the repeated use of close-up shots, so that the audience can not only get information and pleasure when watching the film, but also widen the distance between the audience and the film, so that the audience can better observe and understand the characters.
This "unconventional" camera narrative strategy is one of Jason Reiter's unique visual language. In Thank You for Smoking, the dialogue between Nick Naylor's son and his ex-wife uses close-up camera switching.
It seems to be intimate, but the opposing views of the two are shown through the switching of close-up shots, and the last shot of this clip freezes on the surprised face of the ex-wife, announcing the victory of the son in this dialogue.
In "Juno", when Juno knows that the perfect family in her heart is about to break up, she sits in the car and breaks down crying, gradually calms down, and finally becomes resolute, this series of close-up shots shows Juno's emotional changes during this time, and the final expression also suggests that she has made a decision in her heart, as long as Vanessa does not give up, then she will continue to persevere.
In "Teens" also gave Mavis several close-up shots, from her sitting in front of the mirror to make up, reflecting her delicate makeup, her expression changing with the music as she sat in the car, and the change in her eyes at different people in the bar.
These shots not only allow us to observe the details, but also reflect the changes in Mevis's mood through these details. Jason Reitman uses such close-up shots to attract the audience into the movie situation while keeping the audience at a distance from the characters in the situation, so as to better trigger the audience's thinking.
From the perspective of film history, long lens is the earliest and most simple and original form of existence of film, long lens through the recording of the world as a whole, showing the real time and space, ensuring the objective, transparent and polysemy effect.
The long shots used in Jason Reitman's films are more pure and monolithic than conventional.
In his long shots, as the camera pulls away, the content in the scene does not change much, which gives the audience enough time to reverie and think.
As Abbas puts it: "In a long shot, the viewer can choose a close-up based on their feelings. In Jason Reitman's films, the use of long lenses gives the film a unique charm.
It creates a lyrical atmosphere in the slow movement of the camera, showing his care for the individual in the gaze. In "In the Clouds", Ryan Bringham returns to the hotel after going to find Alex, sitting alone in front of the window drinking.
The camera pulls away from the window he faces, surrounded by dark windows, only Ryan Bringham has light, and the whole picture sets off Ryan Bringham's loneliness at this moment showing the inner sadness of an otherwise lonely person after seeking warmth and hopelessness.
At the end of "Juno", Juno and her boyfriend sat face to face in front of the door, the two sang while playing guitar, as the camera opened, the picture was bright and warm, accompanied by a light singing, the film pulled the curtain, with such a long shot not only let the audience feel the warmth in the film, but also left the audience with room for aftertaste.
In "Labor Day", Adele and Frank reunite at the end, the color of the picture shows a warm yellow at dusk, and the two slowly walk along the country road into the distance, the figure gradually shrinks, but the affection between them is long.
Erasing the depth of the lens to present a near-two-dimensional picture is another "unconventional" strategy that Jason Reitman uses lens narrative.
At the beginning of "Thank You for Smoking", Nick Naylor participates in an interview show, and Reitman introduces the guests in this interview in a freeze-frame manner, including the president of the Anti-Youth Smoking Mothers Association, the president of the Lung Association, the chief adjutant of the health and human services agency, the boy with cancer, and the male protagonist Nick Naylor.
When Nick Naylor was introduced, the audience in the audience sighed, and the picture froze again to the audience's expression at this time, with spit, contempt, disgust, and even hatred.
Through this simple and clear introduction, the audience has a clear understanding of the nature of the actor's work and the world's attitude towards him, and also lays the groundwork for his subsequent debate to reverse the audience's attitude.
At the end of the film, such a scene reappears, but the feelings shown by the unemployed are very different from before, because of unemployment.
They felt the care and love from friends and family, they were touched by the beauty of having a home, and they showed that people's anxiety and anxiety in the economic crisis can be comforted by their families.
"Anti-stability" composition
Film art is first and foremost a visual art, and exquisite composition can ensure the success of art. A good composition can accurately convey the author's ideas, express the plot, and at the same time have independent appreciation value, reflecting the aesthetic literacy of the creator.
Arnheim once said, "In a work of art, the distribution of all the elements that make it up must reach a state of equilibrium." ”
Generally speaking, what can give people a sense of balance and stability in the film is the triangle composition.
In "Thank You for Smoking", the "MOD" party appears many times, and the three people sit around a round table, their shots are mostly triangular compositions, and the three represent the tobacco, alcohol, and arms industries, calling themselves the "MOD Group", that is, "Death Businessmen".
They get together every weekend to discuss anecdotes about their work, as well as advice on how to face the siege and blockage of them from all walks of life, and who is in the industry that causes the highest number of deaths.
The relationship between the three is stable, but the industry they represent and the topics they talk about are unstable factors in society.
In "Juno", when Juno and his father go to the adoptive family to learn about the adoptive parents, Juno and the adoptive father Mark are discussing childbirth music upstairs, and Juno's father and adoptive mother Vanesa sit downstairs.
The lawyer sits in the center, Juno's father and Vanessa sit on either side, forming a triangular composition, which on the one hand shows the lawyer as the coordinator of the relationship between the two parties, and on the other hand, it also shows the awkward atmosphere between the three.
When Ryan Bringham brought his girlfriend Alex to his sister's wedding in "In the Clouds", the two first met Ryan's sister, and the position between the three was also triangular, Ryan and Alex stood together, and the sister stood on the opposite side, through the conversation between words, you can feel the strangeness between Ryan and her sister and the embarrassment of not having a topic, and finally had to end the conversation hastily.
Also at the dinner, the conversation between Ryan and his sister is the same, the long flight trip has led to the estrangement between Ryan and his sister, and the only thing that can be done about his sister's marriage is to bless him.
By creating such a contrast between formal stability and content "anti-stability", Jason Reitman expresses serious social topics in a relaxed and humorous way, making them more acceptable to the audience and easier to improve the audience's understanding of marginal characters and sensitive topics.
Fast-paced footage editing
The editing and combination of shots can create colorful audiovisual effects, and the speed of editing rhythm is an important means to infect the audience emotionally.
Fast-paced footage editing has always been favored by Jason Reitman, and he has played the role of fast editing, not only to complete the story, but also to avoid the tedium caused by long shots.
In "Juno", Juno goes to the hospital to have an abortion, and when filling out the form, Jason Reitman quickly cuts the nails of the people around him, and the images and sounds of flicking nails, buttoning nails, scratching nails, and applying nail polish are inexorably amplified, showing Juno's anxious and contradictory emotions at this time through this fast pace, and also making the audience's hearts feel noisy and uneasy.
In "In the Clouds", the complaints of the fired people to the camera after they know that they are unemployed are also quickly edited, which not only shows the irritability and anger of these fired people at the moment, but also indirectly reveals the anxiety that is full of American society under the economic crisis: Ryan Blingham's preparations when traveling and a series of neat movements when passing through security are also quickly edited.
On the one hand, the fast pace of modern social development shows that Ryan is familiar with travel, and the process from packing to security has become part of his life, and hotels, airports and planes have become his "home".
On the other hand, it also creates Ryan's calm and capable professional image, and it is his unusual lifestyle that creates his alienation from feelings, making him a "lonely old man".
"Labor Day" quickly edited the footage of Frank's cooking, and the picture is clean and neat, which not only avoids the tedium of long-shot recording, but also shows Frank's proficiency in cooking.
Through such a quick editing, Jason Reitman not only shows the logic of the development of the film's story, but also reveals the inner changes of the characters, so that the film can not only create a full character image in a relaxed and humorous atmosphere, but also reveal the theme and enhance the artistic appeal of the film.
Bibliography: