Dear directors, what's stopping you from directing like this?
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- Опубліковано 10 лют 2025
- Swedish master director and screenwriter Ingmar Bergman is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. In 1953 he directed "Summer with Monika" (Sommaren med Monika) and gave a lesson (as he often did) on how to shoot a scene.
In this video essay we'll analyze a short scene from the film to understand what's so special about it. Basically, it's a perfect example of three principles of composition in film: blocking, camera movement and camera angle.
Blocking: actors move constantly in the scene, to the left, to the right, forward and backward. Protagonist Harry has a vague task to perform and it involves moving up and down repeatedly. Everything the actors do helps to keep the scene dynamic and visually interesting.
Camera movement: the steady camera only moves to follow characters. If we need to look at an actor who is offsceen, Bergman makes the camera follow a character who is moving to that part of the set. This is unobtrusive camerawork at its best.
Camera angle: there are two or three distinct angles (a couple very similar) and all of them show a great deal of the set and give the actors room to move around and position themselves in perfectly visible ways that make use of the screen's height, width and depth. Also, every element shown onscreen (a door, a window, glasses) is used at one point or another, revealing that all visual elements were planned from the start.
Every single detail about how this scene is shot is right. And this is just one shot out of many in this movie, which is just one movie out of many in Bergman’s career.
This is how classical directors were masters of staging and framing. Something you seldom see today.
#videoessay #ingmarbergman #directing #framing #blocking #filmmaking
Terrific analysis as usual! Bergman is famous for his closeups but now we know he was also skilled in ensemble staging. Like you said, as the great classical directors were.
This made me think of "The Maltese Falcon", which didn't waste a second of screen time, was always beautifully staged, and had a terrific cast. The younger directors could learn a lot by looking at the classics. Then again, anything pre-Tarantino is considered "old".
“The Maltese Falcon” is a masterpiece! It’s John Huston’s first film and my favorite of his. Just a bunch of people in small rooms and it’s always in motion through terrific staging and dialogue (might be worth a video some day).
Too bad directors today worship too much the 70s without learning from what came before.
Agreed. Young directors can learn from the classical directors.
It's like with all arts. Learn to know the roots and evolve from them.
@@Moviewise And John got to kill his father Walter, who made a cameo to wish his son good luck. If I remember correctly, John made Walter do about 10 takes for his death scene where he gets shot and brings the Falcon to Spade's office.
When you went from composition to camera movement, I was almost reminded of the great book The Five C's of Cinematography. You, sir, see movies the way I do. I notice such great directing, and it is so satisfying when you see it in today's films. But, sadly, it is rare. I think of the movies past year, All Quiet On The Western Front came close and wasn't even nominated for Best director. Sad state of affairs.
This 7th analysis I have watched of yours, on the same top quality level, but on another topic yet again, leaves me no other choice than to subscribe to your channel. Congratulations, and please keep up the good work!
🧠📝🎬🎥🎞️👀✂️🎞️📽️👀🔎🧠💡
Thanks for teaching me how to hide camera movement ( by moving it only when the characters are moving)!
Man i've just discovered your cahnnel and I can't stop watching, it is really amazing thank you!
This scene is a great example. It was also easy to follow moving parts. WELL DONE!
Dude, you are awesome!! This is a fantastic scene analysis. I’ve seen some of your other videos and I just wanna take keep up the good work!
My favourite moment is the cheek-to-cheek shot. I saw that and thought, I want to do that with a girl someday. And I did. But I was thinking of Ingmar.
And, of course, for such great scenes to be made the actors need to know their lines.😉
Recently discovered this channel - excellent content.
New subscriber whose enjoying a binge viewing of your videos!🌟
Nice work. Bergman was brilliantly simple and direct and dramatised characters like a playwright. Those characteristics are not known in the way that great directors are perceived now where tricks and verbose dialogue, like the mimetic garbage Tarantino produces, are understood as core to the film making craft.
I guess Tarantino's movies before "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" were just genre studies, sketches, etudes, preludes, which prepared him and led up to that one: Still a collage, consisting of vignettes, a tribute movie, and at the same time a bit of a nerdy and geeky spoof - but at least he has honed his craft by studying a few masters. Also, it is more rounded than his others, and more free-form in spite of building on genre clichés. I consider it to be his most self-aware piece of direction and screen writing. And his finest film overall.
@@elevenseven-yq4vu He's a mannerist, adept with other's style, but nothing else.
@@CMI2017 Which, sadly, is more than what most "star" directors nowadays bring to the table.
@@elevenseven-yq4vu True. The great names of the past couldn't get a job now.
@@CMI2017 Or, did they have a "second coming", they would be deemed quirky, fresh, odd, interesting, niche by critics not familiar with their style. 😅
Have you seen Fourty Guns and Contempt? They are really great epic hollywood kind of melodramas. It's got great directing in both of them.
I have seen those films. Samuel Fuller was indeed a terrific director and one of the first to make great use of CinemaScope, which is also well exploited in Contempt. Godard made many great films before he decided to abandon narrative and do those experimental things he did for the remainder of his career.
Great directing in invisible.
Fascinating! Thanks so much💚
Great video
Excellent stuff
Great work
Another winner!!!
The plates and glasses also represent the fragility of the relationship between the young man and his bosses, or just being a young man at that age.
god you are good for a German... another great video, thank you
Bergman's psychological intensity v plot causalities in busy Hollywood style over cutting on action.
For Ingmar Bergman, actors were cheaper and worked to less strict union rules back then, so he could afford to get all Glengarry Glen Ross with the rehearsals to get the scene to work :-)
Where did you get that information? And how does professional actors doing their job rely on poor work conditions? In One, Two, Three, James Cagney struggled with a long monologue. Billy Wilder finally takes him aside and says, if you can't do it, it's time to retire. Cagney then went up and did it.
I have eight different bosses right now...
So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled; that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.
Why use many shot when one shot do trick?
we're lucky we can see all these movies nowadays
fack the modern shits
It may be dynamic but is there anything in the background and foreground that helps audiences feel like the characters?? Is there anything in the foreground and the background that reflect the characters and their stories??
Thats why you film snobs need to start analyzing James Cameron films. He is the greatest magician in film history with blocking and composition. Thats how he gets that 3D effect.
There is a scene in Spielberg‘s War Horse that is staged as a oner just like that.
That is why this scene and Spielberg thanking Bergman for being an inspiration to him are quoted in this video here.
A snippet of that scene is IN the vid!
But you can't even get anyone to watch anything b4 the 1980s and if it's black and white, there is no chance.....