Chapter 11 - Buildup

The XYZ’s of Continuity | When Buildup is Essential | Build Up Action Sequences Too! | Cut-ins and Cut-aways in Full Glory | Angles in Buildup | Juggling Time and Space | Time-Space Transmitions by Mechanical Effects | Curbing Uncontrolled Action | Suspense and Excitement | Contrast | Lighting in Buildup and Continuity | The Ultimate Compliment | Summary

The XYZ's Of Continuity

This chapter on buildup marks an important milestone along the route of continuity study, and we may well pause for a quick RS of the road we have just traveled.

Thus far we have been bowling along a pretty clearly mark­ed highway, where deviations from the straight and narrow have been inadvisable. Up to this point we have talked in specific terms about the structure of the sequence, about the mechanics of smoothness, coherence, and camera logic. These have been highly practical, hard-and-fast matters, with point­ers and warnings and rulings; they have been the funda­mentals, the ABC's of pictorial continuity. Now come the XYZ's.

The road ahead is no longer straight or narrow or inadvis­able to stray from. It is wide open—broad as the horizon. It has guides for you, the cameraman, but real progress will de­pend on your creative imagination, on your "feel" for motion pictures, on that intuitive extra something that can set your work apart.

We have studied pictorial continuity in terms of achieving smooth, coherent action. Now let us apply it to get good story coverage, to create audience interest, to inject variety and color into the trite and ordinary. Buildup is what does this. It puts the frosting on the movie cake.

We have described buildup by indirection, in terms of similes and metaphors. It cannot be contained in a rigid def­inition, but it may be broadly defined as the use of incidental shots or sequences which are subordinate to the main action but round out a story by giving it meaning, clarity, suspence, and excitement. Although such shots are but modifiers of the main action, they are truly indispensable to complete cover­age.

That's quite a chunk of definition. Let's look at it in picture terms: a movie of a garden party.

Your main action is simple and clear and breaks up easily into sequences. Your first sequence establishes the locale—the back lawn, with its grass, flowers, summer furniture. People come into the scene. They are greeted, served refreshments, introduced to others. You make special sequences of the punch being served, of guests consuming sandwiches, of someone playing a musical instrument, of card games, the award of prizes, and finally, of the party breaking up.

You now have a simple story containing most of the action common to all garden parties. You are going to introduce build­up to round it out, pep it up. You will seek out revealing, colorful details, shoot lots of closeups.

In your opening sequence you make sure that you get shots which emphasize the gala nature of the event and the fact that it is a bright, sunshiny day. If there are flags or streamers, you take shots of them snapping in the breeze. You shoot the glasses neatly lined up by the punchbowl, the trays of cookies, candies, and sandwiches. You get quick shots of junior mem­bers of the family looking wide-eyed at the lavish prepara­tions, of Mother hastily touching up decorations before the guests  arrive.

With their arrival, you look for details of dress which com­mand attention. Aunt Sally may be wearing a fantastic straw hat featuring a figure of a bird pecking at cherries. You make a big closeup of this, and perhaps precede—or follow—it by another CU of Junior's eyes popping at the sight. (This CU is known as a reaction shot because it is the direct result of the action of a preceding or following scene. A reaction shot is very good for building up dramatic interest. Having it precede the action which causes it is a simple device for creating sus­pense.)
Instead of shooting the arrival of each guest, you make a series of buildup inserts of Mother's band (recognizable by

its distinctive dress-sleeve and ring) shaking a variety of hands, easily identifiable as male, female, or child. This series of buildup shots suggests a number and variety of guests. saves film, and gives a new slant to the prosaic, everyday business of shaking hands. When courtly Uncle Hal kisses Mother's hand, you get a novel shot: Mother's hand is already in the view-finder; in comes Uncle Hal’s to grasp it. followed by his face as he puts his lips to her fingers.

In the refreshments sequence, you take pains to get full-frame CU's of the punch being poured; then as a tray is passed and the glasses are removed from it one by one, you follow a particular glass with the camera, show it traveling up to a guests mouth, being tipped over and emptied, and close with the satisfied expression of  the drinker.

As for the musical sequence, a typical buildup would be shots of a player's hands as they thrum the ukulele strings or press the keys of an accordion.

For the card parties or games you lay stress via closeups or angles on the tiny scenes or bits of action that give point and punch to the sequence: the winning card hand, a chess piece being moved on the board, the reactions of the players-one nervously puffing a cigarette, another wiping his glasses.

In your departure sequence, you pay attention to a lady carefully pinning her hat into her hair; Uncle Hal's spats, shoes, and the tip of his cane moving down the walk; the gate opening and closing as one by one the guests leave; wheels of different cars turning as they move away. Returning to the garden, you get buildup in the litter and disorder that charac­terize the end of the party: quick shots of the empty chairs, the drained punchbowl, the soiled plates, the1 dog getting an accumulation of scraps, Junior collecting debris, Mother in a house apron that contrasts sharply with her elegant part\ dress, concluding with shots of the flowers, now dull and in­distinct in the fading light, and the streamers whose limpness and quiet suggest that they too are exhausted by the activities of the day.

This description of garden party buildup shots, long as it is, touches only the highlights, the more obvious examples of the

buildup material contained in a familiar story. Most of your movies will he equally familiar ones: activities of family and friends in their homes, in the garden, on the tennis court, on picnics, at the beach.
All such subjects are commonplace, but the cameraman who learns to use buildup artfully can make them stimulating and engrossing. Familiar as they are. they can usually supply enough colorful detail and action to give you buildup material.

The poorest motion-picture story will always be improved by buildup. It is up to the cameraman to cultivate it carefully.

When Buildup Is Essential

The need for buildup is most acute when shooting a static-subject where there is no movement of the main action in or out of the frame, or when shooting a story whose main action has already taken place.

Take, for an example, Baby's bath—an inevitable subject for a home movie. It has surefire material, but it is also a relative­ly static subject.

To keep it lively and varied, you should use a wide variety of buildup angles and cuts: a full-frame CU of the soap as Mother's hand reaches into the frame and picks it up; another full-screen closeup of Mother's hand as it adjusts the water temperature or scrubs Baby with a washcloth: Baby's feel kicking up a foamy sea in the tub; Baby's hands playing with rubber toys; Baby s grins and hand-clappings of pleasure.

If you combine this sequence with one on drying and dress­ing the baby, you reestablish first with an MS showing the transfer of the child from her bath to the top of the bathinette. and then give punch to the action with buildup shots of Baby being scrubbed dry, oil being poured and rubbed in. powder being sprinkled, diapering, pinning, and dressing. Attention is focused, by means of CU's and angles, on graphic detail-like the oil, powder, safety pins, along with the smiling reac­tions of Baby and Mother.

These brief scenes are not shot in any particular succession-there is no order of LS, MS. and CU to them—and they arc used anywhere within your sequence. Also they are very short scenes. Two or three used here and there in rapid succession will give the simple picture a snap and lift that are sure to bring "Oh!s" and   Mils" from your audience.

Buildup will do the same sort of job in filling out a story whose main action has already taken place. Suppose you hurry to a neighborhood fire, only to find that the firemen have it under control. Its most spectacular phase is over, but you can still make interesting sequences through the use of buildup.

This you find in shots of the occupants driven into the street clutching a few belongings (a chance for inserts); in details of charred debris from the burning building; in the police hold­ing back the crowds; in ambulance attendants, the faces of the spectators, the activity of welfare organizations like the Salva­tion Army handing out coffee and doughnuts, the action of the engine pump, in angle shots of firemen on ladders or spraying water, of firemen's hands coupling hose or turning a water hydrant valve, of the hose swelling as water surges through it.

It should be reiterated emphatically, that such shots can be taken any time the opportunity arises, before, after, or in be-tween the- main action. As editor you can later place them in whatever part of the completed film you wish.

The main action must be caught on film the moment it takes place, for it is hardly likely, in such a wildly uncontrolled sub­ject as a fire, to repeat itself. But there is much more flexibility in the matter of buildup shots; there are usually several op­portunities to take the same buildup scene, and action is often controlled. And remember, no single one of your buildup shots is—unlike the main action—really indispensable. If you miss a good buildup scene and can't get another crack at it later on, you can usually find a different one just as interesting.

No camera subject, however seemingly poor. dull, or life­less, is completely devoid of buildup material. It can be found even in an empty room. Returning to an earlier example, be­fore Mr. Prospect enters his office, the camera can take the empty room and tell a full story about him by searching out the objects and knick-knacks on his desk alone.

In any scene, patience and inquiring eye are bound to turn up promising shots. The important thing is to be on the look­out for them. They are what give originality to your picture and stamp it with your individuality as a cameraman.

Build Up Action Sequences Too!

We have said a good deal about building up ordinary, static —even dull subjects. Do not infer from this that lively sub­jects do not need buildup.

In the normal run of a photographer's luck, you arc bound to run across subjects crammed with buildup material, running over with action, colorful detail, human interest. Yet even with rich subjects, the tendency is to err far more often in the direc­tion of too little buildup than too much.
Even if you are lucky enough to catch that four-alarm fire just as the first wisps of smoke come drifting out of the build­ing, you should not concentrate exclusively on the spectacular scenes of the fire at its height, with flames and smoke every­where and firemen rescuing trapped occupants in breathtak­ing style. These are wonderful shots, of course, undeniably the high points of your picture, but in concentrating wholly on them you are likely to ignore those less breathtaking buildup shots—the belongings of the inhabitants, firemen handling the hose, the faces of spectators.

These spectacular shots are peak shots of the action, all right, but they are peak shots by virture of contrast with the less spectacular buildup ones, and you will be sadly disap­pointed with audience reaction if you show it only the former without the latter.

Your audience will gasp, no doubt, but it will also feel a de­finite letdown. People don't live with their emotions perpetu­ally keyed to the high pitch your exciting shots demand. Your audience has to be aroused, informed, led up to a climax of feeling to match the climax of interest provided by your spec­tacular shots.

Avoid jumping straight into the heart of a film story; develop interest and comprehension; let your audience warm up first by seeing buildup shots.
Cut-ins And Cut-Aways In Full Glory

The heart of buildup, the main sources of those incidental shots which are "subordinate to the main action but round out a story," are cut-ins and cut-aways.

We have defined and described them; we have seen them applied in directional continuity to mask direction changes: but it is now. in their buildup role, that cut-ins and cut-aways come into their real glory, and their endless varied uses are fully exploited.

A simple example shows how they contribute to buildup Look at your own back yard, where Johnny is mowing the lawn and his chum Freddy is raking the grass and carrying it away.

You shoot a regular sequence to depict the main action then shoot inserts of the lawnmower in operation, filling your frame with the moving wheels, the blades, the cut grass as it comes spurting from the machine. These inserts are the build­up, explaining the nature of the action more fully, invigorat­ing it with intimate, graphic details. There is Johnny himself There are opportunities for cut-ins, of his hands guiding the mower, of his moccasin-shod feet as they follow the machine, of the Army emblem on the T-shirt he has preempted from his older brother, of his cheerful expression as he pauses a mo­ment from work.

And take a look at Freddy. Both he. as a live actor, and the inanimate tools of his work—the rake and basket—offer excel­lent possibilities for buildup cut-ins. Get full-frame closeups of Freddy as he bends to his task, or make a shot of his shirt bunching around his waist. Shoot another sequence on Johnny as he begins to tin-, with CU's of his dragging feet and wean expression; then return to Freddy for a sequence on the new action of filling the basket, giving it color with inserts of the rake in action collecting a mound of grass, his hands dumping the grass into the basket, and the filled basket itself.

All these are buildup shots, lending color, humor, interest­ing detail to the bare bones of the main action.

Head-on and tail-away shots can add a sparkling note to buildlup. They would be interesting novelty shots in the Johnny-Freddy sequence, whether or not they were used to mask changes in screen direction.

Cut-ins and cut-aways, head-ons and tail-aways, are a bless­ing to the newsreel editor. Through them he can build up even the briefest sequence into an acceptable picture story. You have undoubtedly seen numerous parades or dedication cere­monies in the newsreels, where stereotyped action was enliv­ened by cut-ins of the participants and cut-aways of the spectators.

Establishing Shot	Closeup
Medium Shot	Reestablishing Shot
Cut-in	Cut-in
Cut-in	Cut-away

In these pages, we have fitted cut-ins and cut-aways into their proper place in the subject of buildup. We will return early and repeatedly to them, for without them buildup is impossible.

Angles In Buildup

Angles have been recommended for their value in avoiding the continuity fault of jumpy action between shots as well as for the variety they bring to pictures. We now pay tribute to their  services in  buildup.

Shoot Johnny from a high angle looking down on him: his squat, foreshortened figure seems sunk into the ground, per­forming a piddling, dull, undramatic job. Or shoot him ap­proaching from a distance at a flat, head-on angle; his prog­ress seems slow, leisurely.

But shoot the boy from a low angle which frames him against the sky. Then he'll appear to be performing an exciting. herculean task. Or take a close shot from a right angle—he'll seem to zip through his job.

There is nothing quite like a change of angle in motion pic­tures to stimulate and sustain interest, to make something "new" out of a well-known, familiar subject—whether it is Dad smoking. Mother hanging out the wash, or Johnny waxing the ear.

In pictorial continuity there can be too much of a good thing. The human eye tires very easily of sameness. A change of angle gives it the stimulus it must repeatedly get to main­tain attention.

This need is most compelling in a short series of cut-ins or cut-aways of the same action: they pall if seen more than once or twice from the same angle. If your first cut-in of Johnny's lawnmower throwing out grass is taken from the side, next try a tail-away rear view from the ground level, or shoot from above the mower looking down and hack as the grass blades zip from the revolving shears.

These different angles, by constantly presenting new as­pects of the same subject, keep building it up to ever higher levels of audience enjoyment.

Cut-ins, cut-aways, and angles: these are the guides to buildup.

Juggling Time And Space

One of the greatest enrichments cut-ins and cut-aways bring to buildup is the ability to juggle time and space. It is in this particular talent that the motion picture most brilliantly de­monstrates its magical powers of illusion. No span of time or space is too great for it to bridge smoothly and convincingly, rapidly or slowly—as you wish!

How often have you seen cut-aways of falling calendar leaves or successive shots of the same clock to indicate the rapid passage of time? Or a clock used to make the passage of five minutes seem like hours, by means of constant, repeated cut-aways to the minute hand as it slowly crawls from point to point? Hundreds of thousands of miles are bridged by succes­sive shots of a speedometer showing different readings, by cut-ins of auto wheels spinning rapidly, by the sight of differ­ent signposts, by passing from a shot of snowy mountains to a scene of sun-kissed shores!

Let's analyze this magical power in terms of the sequence on lawnmowing. Suppose you want a "before and after" pic­ture of the lawn. Your opening shot shows it wild and weedy: your closing shot pictures it neat and even, after Johnny has finished his manicuring job.

Reestablishing   Shot	Cut-in
Cut-in	Cut-in
Closeup	Reestablishing   Shot
Reestablishing   Shot	Cut-away

But a lot of lawn-mowing lies between those two shots— quite a bit of time and space has been covered. You haven't enough film to shoot all that grass-cutting, and what's more important, the action would eventually get repetitious and boring no matter what means you employed to distract the audience.

The solution lies in cut-ins of Johnny mowing and cut­aways of Freddy raking. You simply take these cuts and judi­ciously spread them among your shots of the main action, which consist of regular LS's and MS's of the boys busy at work. Then the whole cutting and raking operation, which actually takes an hour to perform, can be condensed to a min­ute of film, and your audience will have the impression of watching a full, complete lawn-mowing job. Cut-ins and cut­aways will have concealed the time lapses.

The psychological secret that explains the audience's ac­ceptance of this quick passage of time is the (by now!) old continuity truism that an audience rarely thinks back beyond the scene prior to the one at which it is looking. Cut-ins and cut-aways provide interesting distraction from the main action. When you do return to the main action, your audience readily accepts the idea that a good many things have happened, that considerable time has passed and considerable ground has been covered in the interval.

If your opening shots showing Johnny starting the mowing are Followed by full-frame cut-ins of his moving feet, each taken from a different angle, even though these scenes are short and few in number, the audience will accept a succeeding long or medium shot which shows Johnny far away from his starting point and with a great deal of the lawn already trimmed. Passage of time and space has been convincingly implied. By using cut-ins and cut-aways of this nature through­out the sequence, you carry your audience unjarred over big jumps in time and space up to the final scene, which shows the lawn completely cut and raked, and the boys walking off with their tools.

Cut-aways are even more effective than cut-ins for putting over such an illusion. The reason is that they depict a subject completely separate physically from the main action. Audience distraction, consequently, is more complete. The perfect cut­aways for your lawn mowing movie would be shots of Mother smiling at the two landscape artists, and a cut of the dog frisking about.

The illusion is always greater if you use several short shots of a subject taken from different angles instead of one longer shot. Reflect that every time you change to a new shot—no matter how brief—you introduce a new idea into the mind of your audience. Each successive idea multiplies the sense of time and space passing by.

Time-Space Transitions By Mechanical Effects

Transitions in space and time can be accomplished on film by the fade-out and fade-in, the dissolve, the wipe, and the blur pan. These edicts were previously discussed in relation to clean exits and entrances, but their primary and most im­portant use is to make time-space transitions.

A fade-out "closes up' and "locks" a scene with unarguable finality, and a fade-in does the opposite. A considerable span of space and time can be covered between the two shots with­out disturbing the audience in the least, as long as there is a logical connection between them.

An example would be to fade out on the lawn-mowing story with a shot of Mother giving Johnny and Freddy a bonus of fifty cents for their labors, then fade in to show the two capitalists relaxing in an ice-cream parlor, enjoying sodas with their well-earned spending money. Not only would the audience accept this swift passage of time and space, it would find the quick contrast between the bows' working and relax­ing to be amusing.

The same psychology applies to the dissolve. It could be used very nicely to bridge the shots between the final lawn scene and the ice-cream parlor. A dissolve is especially effec­tive when used to show different time readings. Dissolving closeups of Mother's wrist-watch during the lawn-mowing movie could suggest the passage of considerable time.

The blur pan and wipe profit similarly by audience psych­ology. Either device could be used for that time and space transition of Johnny and Freddy from lawn to ice-cream parlor.

But be warned. Never overdo the use of these mechanical transition effects. They should be employed sparingly and judiciously. Like narration, like titles, they should be used to point up, to enhance the action, rather than to serve as "crutches" or tricks to conceal faulty and uninteresting con­tinuity.

Curbing  Uncontrolled Action

The cut-in and cut-away will come to your rescue on many an awkward, film-consuming occasion when the action is al­together uncontrolled or unpredictable.

Suppose you want to shoot Baby's first walk across the liv­ing-room floor, starting from Junior in one corner and ending (you hope | with Mother across the room. Past experience has shown you that Baby's walking attempts are full of hesita­tions and distractions. You can therefore save yourself a lot of film if. after shooting her as she starts out, you make full-frame cut-ins of her face or, still better, of her moving feet, plus cut-aways of Mothers hands held out beckoning the child; then stop and wait until she gets within arm's length of Mother before you start the camera again.

In this particular case as in most sequences where buildup is used, such cut-ins or cut-aways can be shot either before, after, or during Baby's attempt to cross the room, and put in their proper order later on when you edit the film. Flexibility-is one of the great advantages of the cut-in and cut-away.

Beware one thing: When using cuts of this type watch your screen direction—in those closeups of Baby's feet, for instance. Make sure it is the same as the screen direction in the estab­lishing shot.

Suspense And Excitement

Buildup can do remarkable things to audience emotions. One of its most valued abilities is to create curiosity', suspense, and excitement, to send a tingle up the spine, to cause the audience to watch the screen in fascination and wonder anxi­ously what will follow.

Contrasting screen direction is one way of building an atmo­sphere of anticipation, but any action not immediately explain­able to the audience will create suspense.

Your audience will not mind—it will enjoy the puzzle—if you keep the question-mark element interesting, and explain it eventually in a satisfying manner.

Introducing a subject or part of a subject in a big closeup will always create suspense. (When using a CU deliberately for this purpose, let the scene run longer than usual—don't make a quick cut of it.) With this in mind, let us try reshoot-ing that simple sequence of Mr. Prospect.

Instead of having an LS first, you shoot a big, frame-filling CU of Mr. Prospect's hands engaged in writing, or perhaps of his eyes staring into or beyond the camera. (Staring into the camera, even in a big, dominating closeup, is all right as long as the eyes do not betray awareness of the camera. In other words, the subject should 'look right through it.") Your audience, seeing those tremendous CU's of hands or eyes would immediately ask: Whose1 are they? Just what are the eyes looking at? What are the hands writing?

In the LS and MS scenes that follow you provide the ex­planation. As your camera falls back in order to show the re­lationship of those eyes or hands to the general scene, the audience sees that Mr. Prospect is reading a letter or writing a check.

Now the familiar routine of LS, MS, and CUis completely mixed up. But that order of shots has never been termed un­changeable. It is the best method of telling a simple story clearly. But when you want to introduce suspense and excite­ment, it is perfectly allowable to juggle the order  around

Only don't sell suspense cheaply! In the case of Mr. Pro­spect, it's something of a letdown to find that those big, star­ing eyes in your closeup have been looking at nothing more exciting than a form letter. Suppose you follow that CU with an MS of him at his desk, still staring beyond the camera.

If you then take a reverse-angle LS that reveals a salesman not pulling out his samples but standing in the doorway pointing a gun at Mr. Prospect, you have justifiably varied routine to create suspense!

Suspense can also be produced by the extreme opposite of violent action, by a scene without any action at all. Open your picture with a sleeping figure; you immediately create curi­osity about who the person is, just where he is, and what he is doing there. Put a troubled or joyous expression on that sleeping person's face, and audience suspense soars as it looks forward to learning the reason for the expression.

You can have suspense without any actor in the scene at all. Open up with Mr. Prospect's office before anyone walks in; your audience looks forward to seeing what manner of person will enter. Move in on some specific object in that empty room, such as a pile of banknotes or a telegram on Mr. Prospect's desk. Audience suspense grows sharp in anticipation of the drama that will untold when the objects are ex­plained.

Suspense does not need the extreme of high drama to justify it. It is also well employed for humorous effect. Suppose you opened the lawn-mowing sequence with a cut-in of a pair of feet. They move slowly, wearily. They suggest the extreme exhaustion of a man who has been on his feet traveling for many hours and many miles—a hiker or a woodsman, perhaps a refugee or a criminal. Then you pull back the camera to an LS and those tired feet are disclosed as belonging to Johnny pushing the lawnmower. You've got a sure-fire laugh.

Obviously, when you're building up suspense by camera movement, a continuous moving shot like a dolly-in—or per­haps better yet, a zoom-in—may be more effective than a succession of shots. Since the shot is continuous, audience attention remains uninterrupted.

Suppose, in your MS, Mr. Prospect picked up that now no­torious gun and pointed it at you. To keep the audience eye fixed on the lethal object and deliberately not give it a chance to relax, you dolly or zoom in instead of cutting to a CU, until the weapon fills the entire screen.

Conversely, a dolly or zoom-back can do an equally effec­tive job in keeping your audience in the grip of suspense. Open your sequence with a CU or an ECU of the screen-fill­ing gun pointed right at the audience. Then move back to reveal it is Mr. Prospect who holds the gun; continue to move back and we see that the object of Mr. Prospect's wrath is a salesman who just can't take "no" for an answer.

Trucking shots to follow action often create memorable visual excitement. They are virtually bread-and-butter shots in war films or westerns when the attack or the chase is on!

Try an example hack home—a bicycle race between Junior and his friend. A close follow shot of Junior as he pedals for dear life will delight you and your audience with the feeling of suspense it creates.

Contrast

Contrast—for drama or comedy—is heightened by those in­defatigable cut-ins and cut-aways.

Are you planning to shoot a story about Junior donning his first pair of long pants? Since that particular action is the peak shot of your movie, you want to build it up, so you pre­cede it with a sequence that graphically tells the story of Junior's growth, showing a series of short, contrasting shots of his infant diapers laid out on a cradle, his baby rompers hung on a crib, his shorts and knickers spread on his bed. right on up to that glorious first pair of long trousers.

Do you want to do a sequence emphasizing the delicacy, the tiny size of Baby? Let Uncle Hal take her by the hand for a walk. Shoot cut-ins of her little fingers clasped in his huge fist. or her diminutive white shoe outlined against his massive brogans.

Is that lawnmower sequence short on humor? You can gel a laugh by following a cut-in of the mower shearing the grass with a cut-away of Grandpa's razor as he draws it through the lather on his face.

Are you focusing on one of Cousin Robert's big, fat, odori­ferous cigars?
Follow it with a cut-away of a smoking factor) chimney.

Contrast material is present in Dearly every subject or ac­tion, a powerful challenge to the imaginative powers of the cameraman. It is a most rewarding challenge, though, not only for the personal satisfaction which effective use of con­trast will give, but also for the pleasure it will bring an audi­ence.

A movie audience is acutely susceptible to the power of suggestion. Contrast has a great deal of that power.

Don't be discouraged when you gamble on an effect of con­trast that doesn't quite come off. That will happen occasionally: it's part of the price you must pay to gain experience. You'll learn by observing audience reaction. Once you have learned not to overreach yourself, and your contrast does come off successfully, the warm response it receives will more than compensate for any previous failures.

Lighting In Buildup And Continuity

Neither this book on continuity nor this chapter on buildup would be quite complete without a word about lighting.

Lighting has strong dramatic value. Even such simple shifts in light source as back-lighting or side-lighting give a more interesting picture than lighting from a flat angle.

The professional cinematographer, skilled in the intricacies of the craft, can manipulate the entire lighting scheme of a scene to express varying emotions that exert a powerful influ­ence on a movie audience. Low-key lighting, with its pro­nounced contrast in light and shadow, creates a somber, in­tensely dramatic mood. High-key lighting, with its abun­dance of illumination, is conducive to a cheerful state of mind.

The non-professional should be extremely cautious about attempting to use lighting for buildup, especially in interior scenes. It is a true art, complicated and subtle, calling for Study and experience. But fortunately for the non-professional. too short of time to delve into lighting profundities, most home subjects are of an outdoor nature. Fortunately too, the indoor movie themes are usually cheerful and pleasant, call­ing merely for adequate illumination to get a good exposure.

The   great    concern   of    the   non-professional, therefore should be continuity of lighting—making sure that the lighting of successive scenes is reasonably consistent.

If you shoot Baby toddling across the room, stop for cut-in shots of her moving feet, then take a final shot as she reaches the safe harbor of Mother's arms, make sure that the exposure in all scenes is identical.

Suppose, in that lawn-mowing epic, you wish to make a complete sequence of Freddy tarrying a basket filled with cut grass over to a large disposal can and dumping it. If the sun is dodging in and out of clouds, wait to make your different shots in the sequence for those moments when the sun's brightness is about the same.

Be particularly careful, when your story supposedly covers a long period of time, that the lighting jibes with the facts. If you're making a comic movie of Johnny painting the doghouse and want to emphasize his extremely slow progress by fre­quent inserts of a wristwatch to show the lapse of many hours, don't let lighting betray you! The sun is always moving, and a sharp-eyed spectator in your audience would get mighty suspi­cious if he didn't see the shadow cast by the doghouse in a different place with each return to the main action. (One could get around the problem, of course, by shooting this particular story with fast film on a dull day when no shadows at all are cast.)

The question of the movement of the sun brings us to another important aspect of lighting continuity: consistency of the main source of light You are shooting Johnny as he lies on the lawn, relaxing from his arduous painting labors. Side light is striking his face so that your LS and MS in this sequence show half his face in shadow. You move in for a CU from the same angle. This shot should show the same distribution of light and shadow. Don't have him turn between shots to get the light fully on both sides of his face unless you show the action. Unless your movie aud­ience sees him make the move, the lighting inconsistency will be obvious. If you think the CU shows his face too dark on one side, go back and reshoot your MS with his face more fully illuminated, either by having him shift his position or by using a reflector.

OF course, when Johnny has resumed his work and is mov­ing around once more, he will constantly keep shifting his position in regard to the light source; his movement will ac­count for variations in the play of light on his person.

The temptation to overlook consistency of light source is especially tempting when shooting indoors with photofloods, where the photographer has complete control of his light sources and can shift them at will You are shooting a sequence of Mother rocking Baby to sleep in her cradle. The main source of light is a photoflood placed to favor Baby, with the result that Mothers face is partly in shadow during the LS and MS. Don't—if you take a big CU of her—shift your light so that her face is fully illumined unless the MS shows her moving into a more favorable position.

Consistency of the lighting source, in sum, calls for careful attention to the logical requirements of your story.

The Ultimate Compliment

The ultimate compliment to be paid buildup is the fact that it gives the camera one of its rare opportunities to triumph over the human eye.
Buildup develops, controls, and speeds up interest in what the audience eye sees in a way that the human eye in real life simply cannot do as efficiently.

The eye in real life easily gets bored. It will look with inter­est at what it sees for the first time, but will soon wander off in search of something else when the object of its attention turns dull and repetitious. The human eye is constantly engaged— outside the theatre—in the task of selecting what is interesting from the many commonplace scenes it encounters every mo­ment of the day.

Had your audience seen Johnny and Freddy at work in real life, it would have watched with interest those actions which were novel and seen for the first time: the mower in motion, the cut grass raked together. But the moment those actions

were repeated more than once or twice—as they must he—its eye would instinctively wander off in search of something new to look at.

Shrewdly built-up continuity spares the audience this mon­otony of excessive repetition and avoids the real-life strain of searching for "something different" to see.

It does so by pre-selecting footage that is consistently new and interesting, by concentrating attention through vivid full-frame cut-ins and cut-aways on the important phases of an action, and, with a change of angle, by creating a fresh point of view and stimulating interest anew.

Here we see the triumph of illusion. Surely real life is never as consistently absorbing and free of ennui as motion-picture buildup can make it!

Summary

Buildup "makes   a picture by injecting variety and color into the trite and ordinary.

Buildup is the use of incidental shots or sequences which are subordinate to the main action but which round out a story by giving it meaning, clarity, suspense, and excitement.

The need for buildup is  most acute when shooting  a static subject where there is no movement in or out of the frame; or when shooting a story whose main action has al­ready taken place.

Action sequences, as well as static or dull subjects, should be built up. The full effect of exciting shots is lost unless audi­ence anticipation is led up to them by means of buildup.

Cut-ins and cut-aways are the core of buildup. They an its most important, most flexible, richest source of material.

Angles play an important part in buildup shots.

The juggling of time and space is one of the great illusions buildup makes possible in motion pictures. Transitions in time and space can be accomplished mechanically through the fade-out and fade-in, dissolve, wipe, and blur pan.

Buildup shots can create curiosity, suspense, and excitement. They can also tell a story through the power of suggestion implicit in contrast.

Lighting has   great  buildup value,  but the  non-professional's main concern should be continuity of lighting.

Buildup shots arc highly flexible in their use. They can be shot out of logical order and cut into the proper sequence later on when editing. NO one buildup shot is indispensable

No camera subject is devoid of buildup material: no matter how poor it seems to be patience and an inquiring eye will turn up likely shots.

The ultimate compliment paid buildup is the fact that it can triumph over the human eye. It manages to do so by winnowing only what is interesting from the dull scenes the human eye sees every day, and by presenting only the most important phases of action on the screen.

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