21st-Century Bard
The Making of Twelfth Night
Part 4: The Language of Film

Aims

To understand what the Director aims to achieve during the post-production phases of a film
To look at each of the individual post-production elements of film-making - editing, sound, music, colour mixing and blue-screen design
To explore the range of technical options available to the Editor and Director and understand how choices are made
To look at the power of music, sound and visual imagery to create additional layers of emotion and energy within the film
To ask how Shakespeare might respond to the infinite possibilities of film if he were alive today.

These four 25-minute documentaries explore the production of 4Learning’s ‘Twelfth Night’, from initial idea to finished film. Packed with insights into the way that films are made, the series also challenges the common perception of Shakespeare as dull, dated or elitist by showing how ’Twelfth Night’ inspires a young, talented and multi-cultural team of film-makers and actors.

In the style of a fly-on-the-wall documentary, we follow the team through each stage of the planning, filming and editing of the film. As people describe their jobs, wrestle with the creative challenges and confide their concerns, we build up an immensely rich and detailed picture of lives dedicated to film and the skills and temperament necessary to succeed.

But we also gain in knowledge and understanding of Shakespeare’s achievement as we become absorbed in the process of transforming an Elizabethan stage play into a twenty-first century film. From his own deep and intimate knowledge of ‘Twelfth Night’, we see the Director going back to the play again and again as the source for the themes, the verbal and visual images, the dramatic tensions and the emotions around which the film is constructed.

Watching these documentaries not only sends us back to the film with new eyes and new awareness, but also back to Shakespeare’s work with a renewed respect for his craft and achievement.

Programme 4: Outline

Introduction

Tim Supple, the Director of 'Twelfth Night', tells us that editing and post-production is where the film is really made to work.

A Jigsaw Puzzle

The filming process has resulted in 500 separate shots that now have to be assembled, like pieces in a giant jigsaw, into a coherent whole. Powerful digital technology enables the film to be cut and re-ordered at will, but that makes it all the more important that the Editor has a strong feel for the pacing and rhythm of the film, over an interval of a few seconds and over the whole 120-minute duration.

Designing the Sound

No actual shipwreck occurs at the beginning of the film, but the sound engineer uses his skill to make us believe we are witnessing a major catastrophe, proving that sound in film plants ideas in the viewer's mind helping to tell the story.

Recording the Music

Musicians from African, Indian and Western traditions are used to build on the multi-cultural ethos of the film, and are seen at work in the sound studio, improvising to the events that they can see on screen, much as piano players used to improvise to silent movies.

Software and Skyscrapers

Much of the film was shot against the background of a blue screen, which we now see digitally removed and replaced by images of the sea, clouds and the sun – slightly unreal images that help to symbolise the intense emotions of the leading characters.

Playing with Colour

Light intensity, colour and contrast can all be adjusted to intensify the Director's deserved effects. As the Producer comments, you can do anything with digital technology, so making films is all about making choices and seeing them through.

All's Well That Ends Well

And what would Shakespeare make of it all if he were alive today? Would he have made popular films or would he have been an avant-garde Director, ten years or more ahead of his time? No one on the production team doubts that he would have been intrigued and fascinated by the possibilities inherent in film.

Curriculum Relevance

This series of programmes gives students a firm grounding in the basics of film grammar and film analysis as well as consolidating their knowledge of ‘Twelfth Night’ as a text and as a staged drama. It has a major English, Drama and Media Studies focus, pitched for GCSE, AS and A level as well as SG and NQs usage. The series is also useful in guiding students towards the different options available to people seeking a career in theatre or film-making, whether as an actor, director, photographer, costume or set designer.

England and Wales

This series can be used to support English at Key Stage 4. In particular the following can be developed:

Speaking and listening
Drama: Students will appreciate how the structure and organisation of scenes can contribute to dramatic effect. They will evaluate critically the performance of ‘Twelfth Night’ featured in the programmes.

Reading
Students will be encouraged to understand the author’s craft. They will experience an aspect of English literary heritage. The programmes offer many opportunities to reflect on how meaning is conveyed in texts containing moving images and sound.

At GCSE, the series supports the course work requirement of the major examination boards to study pre-1914 drama.

Media Studies
The programmes provide an ideal means of developing students’ understanding of film. There are opportunities to examine aspects of:

image analysis
film grammar
camera movement
editing
lighting
sound
deconstructing scenes.

The programmes support the WJEC syllabus requirement to compare media texts, including historical texts.

Scotland

English

The programmes will support English at Standard Grade and NQ levels and should prove an ideal tool for meeting the coursework needs for an extended piece of written work on a media text or contributing to a coursework assignment on a literary text.

Media Studies

The programmes will support the study of the following:

Institutions - how production of media output is organised
How technologies shape the production process
Representations of people, places, events and ideas.

Intermediate 1 and 2 - Media Analysis

develop critical understanding of texts
foster enjoyment and aesthetic appreciation of media texts
enable students to communicate knowledge and understanding of media texts
encourage use of production knowledge and understanding of analytical activities
encourage use of analytical knowledge and understanding in production activities.
develop a structured and evaluative approach to production work
enable students to communicate about planning, production and evaluation stages of media production
appreciate freedom and constraints surrounding production
encourage the integration of production knowledge and understanding in analytical activities, and analytical activities, and analytical knowledge and understanding in production activities.

Higher

provide students with knowledge of the practices which lead to the production of media texts; of the institutions which produce them; the audiences who interpret them; and of the relationship of these three factors to each other.
provide a knowledge of the detailed technical terms related to the chosen medium.
develop technological and non-technological skills appropriate to a chosen medium.
provide intellectual stimulus and challenge, develop academic rigour and foster enjoyment of the subject.

Northern Ireland

Information to follow.

Background

This final programme in the series completes the film-making process by showing what happens during the editing and post production phases. Where once the editor had to literally cut and splice pieces of celluloid together to create 'the final cut', digital technology now makes editing as simple as using a word-processor to cut, paste, reorder and style different segments of film.

The Director's Cut

Liberating as this can be, it also demands discipline and creativity on the part of the Director and his post-production team. They need to drive the project to completion on time and in budget, but also to stay true to the original conception of the film that we saw being worked out in the storyboards being sketched at the very start of the process. The Producer, ever aware of the potential for the boys to get carried away with the endless possibilities of digital toys, warns of the temptation to play around with every scene and to lose sight of the essence of the film.

But these are far more than just toys, as becomes clear when Tim Supple, the Director, explains his decisions. At a very basic level they allow for mistakes made during filming to be cut out or corrected. At another level the editing and intercutting and the piecing together of the jigsaw dictates the way the story is told and the pace and rhythm of the film. And at a higher level still, music, sounds, colour, contrast, and the choice of images to replace the blue screen in the film are an important part of the film's metaphorical and emotional structure.

This is what Tim Supple implies when he says that the music and sounds in the film interlace with what the characters do and say, to provide the emotional inner story. They are tactile elements that appeal to our senses and emotions, rather than what might be described as the more cerebral content of Shakespeare's play - language, plot and character. And these effects are not accidental - as the sound engineer says, music has an overwhelmingly powerful effect, and humans respond quite predictably to certain types of musical interval.

What Would Shakespeare Do?

Blue screen technology, sampled sound and world music might seem a long way from Shakespeare, but all the post-production crew feel instinctively that Shakespeare would have used all of these tools to the maximum. As it happens, there is historical evidence to support this point of view. Shakespeare was a great technical innovator - sometimes to his cost, for the live cannon that was fired as a special effect during the performance of 'Henry VIII' at the Globe theatre on 29 June 1613 set light to the theatre's thatched roof. An hour later, the wooden theatre was burnt to the ground. (By good fortune nobody was killed.)

Technological innovations abounded in Shakespeare's day - not least developments in theatre design. In 1608, Shakespeare was one of several wealthy shareholders who invested in the lease of the Blackfriars, London's first public indoor theatre, and this had a profound effect on his art. Out of doors, actors had to compete with wind, poor acoustics and the noise of London and had to use whatever natural light was available.

Indoors, sound and light could be controlled and used to create more intimate and more magical theatrical effects. New illusions were now possible using torches and candlelight. Ghosts really could be ghostly, statues brought to life, spirits like Ariel could fly around the stage, appearing one moment and then melting 'into air, into thin air', banquets could be made to appear and disappear. Instead of the loud trumpets of the outdoor theatre, Shakespeare created 'solemn and strange music' using the softer sound of recorders and woodwind - hints in the text of 'The Tempest' suggest that the whole play was performed with a musical soundtrack of 'sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not'.

So Shakespeare probably would have embraced all the technologies of modern-day film, and a twenty-first-century Shakespeare would be famous not as a playwright, but as a brilliant and richly rewarding maker of films noted for being both accessible and profound.

Activities

1 Tim Supple gives a list of standard shot types that are used in making a film. They are: establishing shots, three shots, two shots, mid shots, close up shots, extreme close up shots, point-of-view shots and shots with movement. Movement shots themselves come in various standard types: there are crane shots taken from high above the actors' heads, tilt shots (up and down movement), panning shots (side to side), tracking shots, zoom shots, and the jerky movements typical of handheld camera shots. Finally the editor has a repertoire of digital techniques that he can use to pace the film, from fast, edgy and urgent intercutting to more drawn out and relaxed.

Using this vocabulary of shot types and editing techniques, analyse a segment of film from 'Twelfth Night' and discuss how the choice of shot type and the selection of shots impact on the tempo of the film and the viewers' response.

2 Now watch the same segment of film again and this time pay attention to the soundtrack. Do you notice sounds that you hadn't realised were there? List the different sounds and discuss the emotions that they evoke. What do they tell us about the character and what they might be feeling and experiencing?

3 Try reversing the process for a different segment of film: listen to the soundtrack with your eyes closed and imagine what visual images might go with those sounds. Then watch the film with your eyes open and see how close you were.

4 Watch another segment of the film and analyse the use of blue screen images. Discuss why you think those particular images have been chosen by the Director: what do they tell us about the characters, their feelings, and the themes of the play?

5 Finally, watch this documentary again (or any of the others in the series) and this time analyse the structure and content of the documentary itself. Discuss how the director gains and holds our attention, and conveys a huge amount of information without explicitly 'teaching' us. Note the division of the film into segments, with an introductory and a closing statement from a figure of authority, such as the Director. Discuss what these statements achieve, and what bearing they have on the material that comes in-between as we see people doing their work?

Discuss the use of special effects in the documentaries, the use of music, sound and graphics and analyse the camera shots and movements for a segment of film. Think also about the way that people are presented in the film, the way that hierarchy, authority and personality is established. Discuss the way that the film might have been made and the interviews conducted (there are clues in the clothes that the actors and crew are wearing, and the backgrounds against which they are shot - and in the contrast between the way that comments from the Director, Producer and Director of Photography are filmed).

Links

This web page contains links to other websites that are neither controlled nor maintained by Channel 4 Television. Channel 4 Television is not responsible for the content of these sites and does not necessarily endorse the material on them.

website-archive.nt-online.org/extras/timsupple.html

National Theatre website profile of Director Tim Supple, which suggests other sides to his character and directorial technique to those we see in ‘The Making of Twelfth Night’.

www.filmmakers.com/

This website, designed for people who work in films or who wish to do so, has fascinating and opinionated articles on a range of subjects including the role of the Producer, Director, Photographer and Lighting Engineer, Screenplay and Actors.

www.shakespearemag.com/spring97/12night.asp

‘Shakespeare Magazine’, aimed at teachers and Shakespeare enthusiasts, contains a review of another film version of ‘Twelfth Night’, made by the renowned theatre director, Trevor Nunn. It shows how a different Director has chosen to transfer the play to the screen and reveal the contemporary relevance of Shakespeare’s work.

www.guthrietheater.org/pdf/twelfth.pdf

This 68-page study guide from the Guthrie Theater in Minnesota is full of comments and insights from critics, film and theatre directors responding to Shakespeare’s play. It has an especially good set of discussion questions, as well as a timeline of Shakespeare’s life, a synopsis of the play, and extensive glossary. Adobe Acrobat Reader is needed for access.

21st-Century Bard The Making of Twelfth Night Part 4: The Language of Film