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Hello, stranger...

This is a private (from time to time) blog for my cinematic obsessions and scintillating (one-sided) reflections about movies. Feel yourself at home!

24 aprilie 2016

"Four is what...?" (80) [Taxi Driver/1976]

Taxi Driver: 40. Anul ăsta. O parte din distribuţie tocmai s-a reunit la New York într-un soi de celebrare a ceea se se poate numi capodoperă (acum nu mă feresc de acest cuvânt). Încerc să omagiez şi eu cumva momentul, autorii (y compris, geniul lor), filmul...

Apropo de ce vedeţi mai jos: nu-mi plac storyboard-urile. Adică dacă vreodată aş face un film, n-aş folosi sub nici o formă tehnica în speţă. Mi se pare migăloasă şi inutilă. Altora nu. Şi exact de-asta (sau şi de-asta) eu nu voi ajunge un Scorsese. Sau regizor, în general. Şi în particular. Nu că mi-aş fi propus, dar orişicât. Să-l lăsăm, deci, pe om să vorbească.

Storyboard to film comparison: Taxi Driver (dir. Martin Scorsese/1976)
Martin Scorsese: „I storyboarded the picture because I really liked. When I was a kid, having the asthma at that time was a very serious thing, and I was always kept off from playing any physical games or really being with many other kids. So I would sort of draw pictures and started to make up stories... That sort of thing.

The process of visualizing a scene alone in a room, a small room, drawing little pictures, is important to me. In some cases the pictures were very elaborate, in other cases they were little stick figures, maybe with just an eye and an arrow. That is, like, the most essential process in making a film even if I don't ultimately use/utilize those shots. Because it's a process that I've interpreted the picture, in a way, in my head and I kind of know how to see it. 

Part of that is security. Then when you go on a set fairly secure I feel I can tell people what I want. Then it's a matter of letting go of that security which means that I think I know what I want. but I'd like to see what else could I get with the actors, with the cameraman, with everybody else. And how far you can go that way too but you have your basis. And a lot of it has to do with that, particularly in a low-budget filmmaking. A lot of people don't use storyboards or drawing or notes. They have the gift of working it out there, on the spot.

For me, I don't want the plug to be pulled in any way so I least I knew I had to get certain shots in order to tell the story. If I was telling that story. And in most cases I am. That's not easy to do. (...) I always found it difficult, but that's part of the process. The thing is: sometimes you come up with ways of visualizing something that just is joyful and it's a really wonderful feeling and I kind of smile. And if you have a DP like Chapman, say, a man that I've worked with over the years, you say «Well, let's see how we're gonna do that shot that starts here and that goes there and then comes back here and then he turns this way and it's fantastic...» (...)

But with other work, meaning a script by, like, Paul Schrader, for example, the way he literally put the words on the page created in me a certain reaction, a visual sense that made me see things in a certain way and it clarified a lot for me and it just cut away excess. I thought that was pretty interesting.”


Note: the text & images are excerpted from Taxi Driver: 2-Disc Special Edition, edited by Sony Pictures UK (2004)