How to understand the significance of long shots to documentary shooting

1. Vision and andre bazan's Vision Theory 1. As a film technique or technique, long shots have not been defined strictly scientifically. Generally speaking, it refers to a lens that continuously shows a complete action or event in a unified time and space. It contains at least two elements. One is time. The length of this lens is relatively long, generally the shortest is15m and the longest is 300m. The projection time is about 30 seconds to 10 minute. These times are also a vague concept. There are no specific figures, and the second is space. By using depth-of-field lens or moving shooting, a relatively complete life segment can be summarized as a movie. Long shots were not invented by directors or film theorists. This technology has existed for a long time. 1 1, the narrative technique of long lens. Long lens pays attention to scene scheduling in space creation, and uses depth-of-field lens more. In terms of lens structure, it uses a moving lens instead of a fixed lens, which leads to its long lens use time, which is what we often call a long lens narrative technique. The narrative technique of long shots can be said to be the typical style and characteristics of documentaries. A long shot refers to the uninterrupted performance of an event or even a paragraph in a shot, which naturally presents the real reality on the screen through continuous space-time movement, forming a unique documentary style. From a photographic point of view, a long shot is also called a paragraph shot, because it has changes in scenery and angles and can express a paragraph completely and clearly. From the editor's point of view, a long shot is to complete a group of shots with one shot by changing the shooting angle and adjusting the distance between scenes. The movement inside the lens plays the same role as montage, so it is also called montage inside the lens or editing inside the lens. Compared with montage splicing of slit shots, the style of long shots is unique in narrative structure and time-space structure. 1 1. 1 The characteristics of narrative structure First of all, it has the integrity of conveying information. The montage inside the lens shows a relatively complete event without interruption, so it has the integrity of conveying information. The complete information of a moving image consists of sound and image. Shooting by decomposition method and editing by shots can't guarantee the transmission of complete information in many cases, either the continuity of sound or the continuity of picture is destroyed. The long shot ensures the integrity of narrative structure, because it keeps the continuity and synchronization of sound and picture. Secondly, it has relatively credible authenticity. Because the long lens does not rely on the decomposition and combination of actions to express the movement process, but displays the continuous actions on the screen completely, the visual image is coherent and complete. From the perspective of audience acceptance, because the long lens may rule out the possibility of fraud, the facts expressed are true and credible. Long shots are a convincing way to show the reliability of facts. Third, it can show the continuity of events. A long lens may show the development of the event and the real atmosphere on the screen, so that the audience can feel the immersive atmosphere. 1. 1.2, spatio-temporal structure characteristics. First of all, it has the simultaneity of screen time and actual time. The picture time represented by montage often greatly modifies the process of events, which can greatly compress the actual time process and combine completely different events. Although it doesn't matter in many cases, it can make people doubt its credibility. The montage inside the lens keeps the uninterrupted time process, and the real time continuity and the complete reflection of the event process on the screen greatly improve the credibility. Secondly, it has the continuity of time process. One of the most remarkable characteristics of the montage inside the lens in time structure is the continuity of time. The natural process of not interrupting time, whether changing scenes or shooting angles, has maintained the normal rhythm of events. Then from the characteristics of spatial structure, the long lens shows the whole space in the process of movement, and the space is continuous and complete. The movement of the lens makes the limited field of vision gradually show the whole picture of the fact space, and the charm produced by this way of showing the whole picture of the space is absolutely incomparable to montage editing. In addition, the long lens can realize the natural transformation of space during the movement. In TV programs with strong documentary, long shots are often a very powerful expression method, especially when expressing some key contents with high authenticity requirements, sometimes it is a labor-saving and pleasing method. But it also has the characteristics of slow pace, instability, difficulty in accurately highlighting key points and difficulty in perfect shooting. Therefore, when using this method, we should carefully design the whole performance content and the rhythm of lens movement in advance, so as to make fewer mistakes. 2. andre bazan's "Long Shot Theory"-Documentary Aesthetics Theory To understand the content of long shot theory, we must first understand and study Bazin's criticism of traditional montage theory. This is because the long lens theory is formed in the criticism of montage theory. The long shot theory was formed in 1950s, which is a genre of film aesthetics opposite to the traditional montage theory and a realistic theory opposite to aestheticism and technicalism. The film theory put forward by andre bazan, a French theorist, is one of the main theories in previous film studies. Bazin put forward the viewpoint of image ontology in the article "Photographic Image Ontology", arguing that images and objective objects have the same natural attributes, which satisfy the instinctive desire of human beings to copy reality to overcome time erosion. Therefore, it is the basis of film aesthetics to reproduce the uniqueness of the original appearance of things. From this point of view, Bazin demanded that the film should completely reproduce the objective reality and keep the unity of space and the true continuation of time. He opposes the division and combination of montage, which destroys the integrity of time and space, and advocates the principle of long lens and depth of field lens to conceive movies. Bazin pointed out that the use of long lens and depth of field lens can avoid limiting the audience's perception process, keep the lens transparent and fuzzy, ensure the integrity of the event time process, and let the audience see the whole picture of real space and the actual connection of things. From the narrative point of view, continuous shooting-paragraph embodies the narrative principle of modern movies, abandons dramatic ellipsis and shows the natural flow of things on the screen. As a film style and means of expression, long shots have great advantages in showing complete realistic scenes. Bazin's real aesthetics includes three aspects: 2. 1 and the ontology of photographic images. He believes that the essence of film photography is image restoration. The camera has the function of making the film image the same as the shooting reality, which makes the film have the possibility of truly expressing reality. He said that all art is based on human participation, but in photography, we have the privilege of not letting people get involved. According to his understanding, the unique nature of film reappearing the original appearance of things is the basis of film aesthetics. 2.2, the psychology of film origin. He believes that the psychological basis of film invention is to reproduce completely true myths. Reproduce a complete vision of the external world, such as sound, color and three-dimensional sense, which is the real screen image. Only in this way can people's psychological requirements for enjoying movies be met. 2.3, the evolution of film language. Bazin believes that the evolution trend of film language is to develop towards realism, that is, towards the real direction. In his view, there are three kinds of truth associated with movies-emphasizing the authenticity, fuzziness and transparency of the original appearance of things, and the direct authenticity of the subject matter. The existence of reality is always ambiguous, vague and uncertain. Therefore, he opposes a single explanation of events, and advocates the existence of "the picture precedes the meaning", and the vague meaning in reality reappears in the film. He not only demands the authenticity of the object, but also always advocates the authenticity of the content. This led to the criticism of traditional montage. Bazin believes that the oneness of meaning is the feature of thinking rather than the essence. Montage hides the facts and replaces it with another synthetic reality, which makes people doubt the authenticity of the film. The metaphor of complacency-showing off and killing cattle-comes from the author's subjective idea, not the fact itself. Therefore, he thinks this is a literary and non-cinematic technique. The truth of time and space is the core of Bazin's aesthetics. He believes that movies should include real-time flow and real depth. The integrity of the film requires the unity of drama space and the true continuation of time, so as to ensure the truth and credibility of the facts. If we decompose space or compress time, we will destroy the real process and the meaning of the fact itself. He believes that the characteristics of film space are a limited reflection of objective existence. Quot The silver screen is not the frame of the picture, but the shading frame that reveals the real part quot; On the contrary, the scene displayed on the screen seems to extend infinitely to the outside world, which leads to the questioning of traditional montage. Bazin pointed out in the article "Forbidden Montage" that if the main plot of an era needs two or more elements to appear at the same time, montage should be banned. Just under the above circumstances, montage is just a literary means against movies. On the contrary, the film in its pure state is characterized by its strict adherence to the unity of photographic space. Quot The Truth of Narrative Structure-Bazin thinks that the narrative structure of movies as a whole should be closer to nature than it used to be. This is an ontological equality, which fundamentally breaks the category of drama. It is the structure of the story's development, the real and natural structure of life, and the structure of the integrity of the event being respected. To some extent, it replaces the traditional omitted structure with the authenticity and integrity of the action. He used an image metaphor, and the montage narrative method only showed the beautiful "door handle", while the narrative structure of his six graduation thesis of Texas Vocational College of Science and Technology showed the whole "door". From this, we can see the difference between Bazin theory and montage theory. The former emphasizes facts, the latter emphasizes thinking, the former emphasizes narration and the latter emphasizes expression. In order to realize his aesthetic ideal, Bazin found the most appropriate expression, namely, long lens and depth of field lens. He praised Flahardy's skills in Nanook in the North, Citizen Kane by orson welles, Guerrilla by Rossini and the neo-realistic directors in their films. He thinks that such a long shot has at least three advantages. This style can avoid strictly limiting the audience's perception process. It is a potential ideographic form. It pays attention to revealing motivation through the normal and complete actions of facts, keeping the real long shot transparent and fuzzy, and ensuring that the time process of events is respected. The depth of field lens allows the audience to see the whole picture of the real space and the actual connection between things. Their application can show the real continuity of space and time. Shooting embodies the narrative principle of modern movies, abandons the ellipsis that strictly conforms to causal logic, and reproduces the natural flow of real things, so it feels very real. After Bazin, German siegfried kracauer gave a more complete description of realistic film aesthetics. Kracauer's basic film view obviously inherited Bazin's photography ontology, but he went further and became narrower in a sense, which actually constrained the development of realistic films in theory. Bazin's theory has a great influence on modern film creation, which greatly changes people's understanding of the relationship between film and reality. Many of his viewpoints are valuable for the creation of documentary programs. However, Bazin's denial of montage is biased. He emphasized the documentary nature of the film and ignored its emotional power. This serious defect was later criticized by western film theorists and suffered serious setbacks in practice. In fact, no film can be made completely according to his theory. Since Griffith, film is no longer a natural reflection of reality, but a product created by artists, including their free creation and self-expression. As far as means of expression are concerned, film language, like written language, is a symbol system to express ideas. As long as it can better express the author's intention, any method can be used. As jean mitry, a French film theorist, later pointed out, the montage and non-montage techniques, which are diametrically opposed by the andre bazan School, are actually only two different forms of montage effect. Second, the relationship between true documentary style and documentary and long shot. The documentary we are talking about reflects the style of documentary, and the long shot is also an important means of documentary style. Documentary is a film or television art form that takes real life as the creative material, real people and things as the performance object, and artistically processes and displays them. The essence of documentary is to show the truth, which requires documentary to make people think. The core of documentary is truth. Truth is the artistic life of documentary, which is a common knowledge. Documentary style is the most important cornerstone of the existence of various functions and values of documentary art, and authenticity is the brewing basis of documentary appeal. Documentaries lacking realism are worthless even if they are true or false. 1958, Premier Zhou Enlai contacted the Great Leap Forward and boasted that "documentaries should truly reflect the historical characteristics of the times, and should not be divorced from history to deceive and deceive the masses with false things." In 1962, he once again clearly emphasized that "documentaries must be completely true, and some shots don't conform to the facts, making people even dare not believe other materials" and "our footprints". For example, the use of long shots in China documentaries first appeared in several documentaries in the early 1990s, such as Looking at the Great Wall and Escorting Soldiers, and later it was successfully applied in documentaries, such as Covert Action, China Gate and Mao Zedong. People began to be attracted by its continuous occurrence, true record and unbreakable documentary beauty. Therefore, for some time, the use of long shots has become a common technique in the creation of various documentaries, and it seems to be a symbol of the atmosphere of the graduation thesis of Jidezhou Vocational College of Science and Technology. The use of long lenses is to provide viewers with more direct, concrete and credible picture information. It depends on whether you can record the stories and plots that need to be shown to the audience, capture the situational information related to the story, render emotions, deepen the theme and other functions, or record the "wonderful fragments" that most interest and impress the audience in a work. "For me, it doesn't matter what means the film uses, whether it's a feature film or a documentary. A good movie should show the truth rather than the facts. " -Sergei Eisenstein-1925 The above quotation shows that there is no clear boundary between documentary and feature film. Generally speaking, the audience's expectation for a documentary is realism, but in fact, only the presence of the camera and photographer can affect the recording. The rigorous documentary also records the influence of the shooting process on the recorded situation, so as to give the audience a more objective impression. The representativeness of the recorded situation also affects whether a documentary is true or not. For example, many documentaries about animals are often more willing to choose dramatic scenes when editing, but these scenes are not necessarily typical living habits of these animals. The personal opinions and comments of documentary photographers may also affect the authenticity of a documentary. For example, in many documentaries about animals, critics like to use anthropomorphic sentences to describe an animal's behavior, but in fact, this animal's behavior may have nothing to do with anthropomorphic description. As the main means of documentary, long shots have attracted more and more attention from creators in recent years. However, while paying attention to the use of long lenses, the amount and value of information are often ignored. Some people think that as a modern media, the most basic function of audio-visual media is neither entertainment nor art, but information transmission. Today, when the audience can freely choose more channels, information is one of the important factors to capture the audience. Therefore, in the "montage in the shot" documentary, it is self-evident to deal with the relationship between the long shot and the amount of information, the information value of the process itself, and the authenticity and appeal of the long shot. The Road Down the Mountain tells the story of building a road in a small mountain village. Because there is no road, it not only brings poverty to this mountain village, but also 12 people fell to their deaths on the narrow path down the mountain during the period of 12. In order to survive, the villagers decided to build roads collectively. Long shots have been used many times in the film, in which the scene of farmer Yang Jianlin blowing suona at rest was pushed and pulled for more than a minute, from the close-up of his face and blood bubbles on his hands to the scene of villagers smoking leisurely, and then to the desolate distant mountains ... There is no language and more character movements in the picture, only the undulating suona sound and the valley echo. Here, the distance, hardship, joy and hope of the lens language are intertwined and extremely infectious, which is irreplaceable by montage editing. The rich information contained in the picture is realized by "montage inside the shot", that is, "using the changes of modeling factors such as scenery, composition, light and shadow, scene and character movements in a shot to emphasize and highlight the ideological significance specified by the director for this shot." This is what the former Soviet film theorist Roma called "scene scheduling" and "multi-composition shots". Scene scheduling in long-shot shooting can increase information content, and must not stay on a meaningless composition for too long. Of course, the amount of information contained in the long shot also depends on whether the information value of the intercepted event process itself can be captured. Dama is the protagonist in a documentary showing the life of Mosuo people in Yunnan. When she first started as a tour guide, she was at a loss. She ran around the lake shore, jumped on the boat and asked her where the tourists were, then ran to another boat and then ran to the shore to call someone. The camera position has not changed for 40 seconds. The information value obtained by the audience is the event recorded by the creator himself. It should be said that this shot is very meaningful for understanding and seeing through the aunt. In the same documentary, some shots are longer because of less internal changes and less information. For example, there are three long shots with a one-minute delay. The first one is that there is no actual sound in iron pan cooking, and the subtitle is "salt is not enough, add more salt". The second picture is a close-up of the pot. The third is drinking. The audience doesn't know much about the lifestyle of Mosuo people, including the utensils and lenses used. Since it is deliberately expressed, it must be made clear to the audience. But the opposite is true. I'm afraid the audience won't understand what's cooking in the pot. Even the context in the picture is not clear, and the audience can only guess. There is also a scene of tourists riding horses. There was no movement, and the lens length changed for nearly a minute. The longer the lens, the more likely it is to cause insufficient information and slow pace. It is difficult to attract people to see the long lens when it is used too much, and its significance is even more debatable. 2. Clever use of "montage" is the most suitable "lens language" to record the event process, but it should be pointed out that "long shots are relative, mainly determined according to the needs of the theme and the connotation and value of the long shots themselves". "No matter how long a shot is, it is impossible to record the whole process of the development of an event. It only makes sense through editing." The narrative skills of documentary emphasize the handling of time. Because the time shown in works of art and the real time are completely different concepts. Real time is the natural time flow of the story, and narrative time is the time state presented in the narrative text after processing. One of the mysteries of works of art is to rearrange the selected materials with essential meaning of life. There are two ways to rearrange the order: one is to adjust the narrative order to make the narrative curve; The other is to keep the order of the original story unchanged and shorten the time only by choosing, even if the story time and narrative time are different. The result of time rearrangement is to change the rhythm of narrative text, increase the amount of information and arouse the audience's interest in watching. It should be pointed out that at present, some documentaries ignore the aesthetic value of "time dislocation" and "time difference" in story language and narrative language, and there is a tendency to unilaterally understand the role of long shots. For example, there is a documentary about the life of a nun, which gives people the feeling that everything you hear will be recorded in a loose scene. Ten minutes have passed, and you still don't know what the creator's intention is. All the shots are long shots with a camera dangling, like describing a running account that lacks choice and tastes like chewing wax. It is inevitable that there is a naturalistic tendency, which is naturally not worth mentioning. Information value means that useful information is not completely equal to the amount of information. .