A God From A Machine

/

Foreshadowing is essential to any complex narrative, giving a unique insight to each character’s role in the story. In film, the static frame creates the boundaries of each shot while the position of the camera in space creates unique lines of sight. This generates a composition while allowing people to place themselves into that context. Therefore, the ways in which the camera presents each situation can be tailored to give a unique insight to the viewer that is not recognized by any of the actors. In Ex Machina, Alex Garland uses the camera to frame the architecture around each character in a way that adds new meaning to their actions. In such a complex plot, the architecture sets the tone and adds visual clues embedded in the composition of each shot so that the viewer may sense the real emotions and intent of each character.

Camera position is crucial in how people read the overall composition. It gives a sense of scale, letting the viewer become transported to that particular place. Perspective lines, materiality, transparency and lighting all play a role in how an overall composition is read. One of the unique things about Ex Machina is that the three main characters all have their own objectives. The idealistic youth, Caleb, the zealous scientist, Nathan, who won’t let anything stand in the way of his vision, and the artificial intelligence he created, Ava.

A contest winner, Caleb, is transported deep into the wilderness by helicopter to a cabin submerged into the hill, spilling down its side. The entrance is clad in wood and blends in with the dense forest that surrounds it. Upon entering, Caleb finds himself in an intimate residential setting with relaxing music playing in the background. Nathan, the scientist, is introduced on the balcony that is perched on the side of the mountain. Exercising equipment litters the ground when Nathan is found punching a bag with impressive skill.

A sense of aggression defines Nathan’s character as an intimidating and powerful individual. Most scenes show Nathan sitting down low, drinking a beer with a hard dark surface behind him pointing out how obtuse Nathan’s character is. The scientist continues to avoid any real questions Caleb asks and this lack of transparency creates more tension between them. Eventually he is found sinking into a dark couch in front of a dark concrete wall obscured by beer bottles to hammer the message to the viewer that Nathan is hiding something.

On the other hand, Caleb is initially framed behind a clear glass wall with all of his enthusiasm and naivete exposed to the viewer. When framed together, Nathan and Caleb are constantly placed behind these materials, whose properties become windows into each character as the complex narrative unfolds. The visual line that separates the two creates a tension that only the viewer can understand. As the story plays out, these visual cues act as a litmus test that only the viewer can read. 

In every session, Caleb and Ava are separated by a glass wall that extends into Ava’s cell. This line of separation is essential to their relationship. On Caleb’s first visit, he is shocked to find a large crack in the security glass separating Ava’s cell from the interviewing chamber. This mark frightens Caleb but as Ava approaches he is caught up in the awe of her beauty and delicacy. At first, the viewpoint is Ava mainly from inside the interviewing chambers looking out. This perspective shows Ava as a prisoner, and her cries for help soon reveal her situation.

Later that night, Caleb finds a video feed into Ava’s chambers and becomes mesmerized by her grace. A sexual tension begins to grow as Caleb continues to watch the AI and as they become closer, Ava reveals her romantic feelings for him. Soon the viewer is presented with an alternate perspective within Ava’s chambers looking onto Caleb in his glass interview cube. Ironically, the way the director frames these scenes poses a question to the viewer: Who is actually in the drivers seat, Caleb or Ava? This question gets posed again when Ava reveals her role in the power outages that have been occurring.

A laboratory in the wilderness is prone to power outages. Being so remote promotes security but requires a power station and generators. One primary aspect of a laboratory building typology is to have little to no fenestration so artificial lighting is critical. Nathan actually points this out to Caleb as they arrive at the guest room. The artificial light is very soft and subtle, diffused through the hallway by a line of columns separated from the wall only by a thin strip of light. Hallways are another defining feature of a laboratory. Sterility is important in any lab to prevent unwanted data from interfering with an experiment. A hallway acts like a spine that is lined with labs that each have their own conditioned space. By dividing the spaces up into their own environments, conditions can be maintained more accurately than if all the labs were conditioned by the same HVAC system. However, once those systems lose power, all experiments in that laboratory are suddenly forgotten.

An eerie red glow illuminates the lab when the back up generator kicks on, turning off all the video monitors. Illuminated in a deep red, Ava and Caleb use this privacy to talk about Nathan. This lack of any oversight lets the two speak freely as the red lights overtake their senses. For a few minutes each day they can reveal their true selves to each other. However, this bond is put into question when the climax twists the narrative, answering a part of what makes us human by examining the separation between what is simulation and what is real.

As technology increases at record pace the desire to break out of the frame is taken to new heights. Ex Machina presents an eerie take on what it means to make a true AI, one capable of independent thought and learning. Through all of the deception and manipulation the camera frames the truth by composing the actors around architectural elements that shed light onto the underlying narrative. Perspective lines, transparency, materiality and lighting all inform the viewer to create a holistic film experience. Ex Machina is a prime example of how architecture can become incorporated into a visual narrative, giving the viewer a more intimate and poetic experience.

Screenshot: Heat (1995)

/

The closing moments of Michael Mann’s crime opus are full of emotion, aided by Moby’s swelling score and the hand-holding denouement as Robert De Niro’s Neil McCauley shuffles off this mortal coil beneath the twinkling LA night sky.

Following nearly three hours of high octane cinematic cat and mouse antics as master thief McCauley and his gang plan and execute a series of audacious heists -- all the while evading capture by Al Pacino’s tenacious cop Vincent Hanna -- the film reaches its "bromantic" climax by one of LAX’s many runways, lit in part by flashing signal lights, airplane traffic and the distinctive blue mist of a smoggy Los Angeles skyline.

Having observed his primary tenet of "never have anything in your life that you can’t walk out on in thirty seconds flat, if you spot the heat coming 'round the corner," McCauley is forced on the run by Hanna after an ill-judged vengeful hit of a traitorous gang member delays his flight to freedom with new found love Edie.  

As with most crime films, things come unstuck when the hero (or villain in this case) deviates from a set of highly prescriptive and ordered routines, and it’s this detour from "reason" that prompts McCauley’s demise. His hardened and clinical approach fostered through years of dedication results in a character more akin to a sharpened tool than a human being; an efficient composite of set methodical responses to measured external forces. McCauley’s awkwardly affectionate relationship with Evie -- which reveals a more vulnerable side at first, but which later becomes sinister and finally destructive -- demonstrates his inability to manage life when control is lost. Love is as alien a concept to McCauley as a life of "ballgames and barbecues," and its this emotion with all of its uncertainties that knocks him off balance.

As gang leader, McCauley is also father figure to Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer), Michael Churino (Tom Sizemore) and Trejo (Danny Trejo) all of whom are family men. Both McCaluey and Hanna however see that dedication to their work and commitment to a family are far from mutually compatible, but its McCauley that has chosen a life of prolonged solitude for reasons of self preservation and to steady his hand of judgement when dealing with his underlings’ family affairs.

The relationship that develops between McCauley and Hanna is one of mutual respect but also co-dependence as is made evident when the two meet in the fabled coffee shop scene midway through the film. The scene is tinged with both machismo and melancholy as the two men openly confess to having no other option than to pursue their chosen professions; a criminal mastermind afraid of drowning and an ace detective with recurring nightmares of dead-eyed victims he’d failed to save.

Michael Mann has been accused of laziness when portraying female characters, choosing instead to focus heavily on the trials and tribulations that beset his leading men, from Thief (1981) and Manhunter (1986) to Collateral (2004) and Public Enemies (2009). Taken at face value -- and in his defense, it seems Mann is simply more interested in examining the complexities of masculinity and the unique male bonds which develop between (mainly) criminals, cops and rebels. None of his male characters seem at all enamored by the quiet life, and all seem to harbor self destructive tendencies. Even his heroes – such as Russell Crowe’s Jeffrey Wigand (The Insider, 1999) or Will Smith’s Cassius Clay (Ali, 2001) seem to be damaged goods, and I’d guess that it’s these men’s darker sides which appealed to the director more than their courageous achievements.

Returning to the coffee shop scene in Heat, Neil McCauley speaks at one point about a ‘flip side to a coin’ when countering Hanna’s threat that, although reluctantly, he wouldn’t hesitate in taking down McCauley if it came down to a choice between him and ‘a poor bastard who’s wife would be made a widow’.

This flip-side remark by McCauley is at the heart of Heat and many other of Mann’s films that have dual protagonists often battling it out across a moral divide. The point so often made in these films however is that there is far more that unites his leading men than separates them, and that the line separating those who choose a life of crime from those intent on preventing it is a very thin line indeed.

Perhaps this is why, at the end of Heat, it’s the hand of Vincent Hanna and not that of Edie that holds Neil McCauley’s while both the music and the light fade into blackness.

Screenshot is an ongoing column from Gabriel Solomons, Senior Lecturer at the University of the West of England, Editor-in-Chief of The Big Picture magazine and Series Editor of The World Film Locations and Fan Phenomena book series. Screenshot examines a single shot from a film and presents an in-depth analysis.

Screenshot: Mon Oncle (1958)

/

"Our world becomes every day more anonymous… and is in the process of becoming an enormous clinic." - Jacques Tati

Jacques Tati is a filmmaker that was greatly inspired by architecture and the role it has to play in our lives. Playtime is his most acerbic attack on modernity, the one most noted for its use of set design and focus on the ill effects of modernist architecture. Mon Oncle, however, the film he made nine years prior in 1958, about the relationship between a bored boy and his quirky uncle, has more to say about personal relationships to homes, the ways in which they reinforce our sense of self and how we wish to be perceived by the outside world.

The second Monsieur Hulot film and Jacques Tati’s first color film, Mon Oncle tells a simple story about the challenges of living in an increasingly mechanized and consumerist society, and the effects this has on family relationships -- in this case the relationship between Monsieur Hulot and his sister’s family the Arpels.

Monsieur and Madame Arpel (Jean-Pierre Zola and Adrienne Servantie) keep a tidy house. Villa Arpel is a temple of modern rationalist ideals that substitutes order and efficiency for humanity and warmth.

It’s also a funny looking place with big round eye-shaped windows and an imposing (but plainly ridiculous) water spurting fish fountain in the front garden. Lawns are meticulously manicured, paths to and from the front door are rigidly plotted and the landscaping is a mathematically composed grid. Furniture is for statement rather than for comfort and kitchen appliances are components of a functional assembly line for nourishment.

The Arpel’s son Gerard (Alain Becourt) is a bored prisoner in this sterile suburban enclave, whose only solace comes in the form of his uncle's weekly visits. Seen by his sister and brother-in-law as a wastrel and bad influence on their son, Monsieur Hulot shares Gerard’s mischievous nature and so the two of them spend much of the film escaping from the confines of Villa Arpel in the posh suburbs to Hulot’s more ramshackle neighborhood on the other side of town. 

The dichotomy between the two parts of Paris as shown in the lives of both Monsieur Hulot and his sister’s family are an obvious nod to the old and the new, tradition and progress. Progress in this context is the Arpel’s suburban utopia where neighbors all look to out-modernize each other with increasingly loopy gadgets and gizmos that plainly alienate themselves from ‘real’ human interaction. People are as much part of their home’s mechanics as their gadgets, and are the living embodiment of Le Corbusier’s adage that "a house is a machine for living in."

The Arpels are subject to their own inhuman living environment, trapped by an endless quest to be "ahead of the times," trying desperately to protect themselves from the instability, uncertainty and messiness of everyday life. This is the perfect set-up for a Monsieur Hulot film as he represents exactly what the Arpel’s fear most -- impulsiveness, clumsiness, accident and incident. Monsieur Hulot is not built for the modern world but his intervention is wholly necessary to ensure that the modern "machine" has some semblance of a soul. Like Charles Chaplin before him in the 1936 film Modern Times, Jacques Tati’s Monsieur Hulot is the loose screw in the machinery of progress, causing havoc with each of his bumbling actions.

Monsieur Hulot’s home on the other hand is a mish-mash of styles -- looking like two houses squashed together, neither quite matching as the journey up to his modest loft apartment is viewed through different sized windows and gaps at varying heights. Perfectly summing up his quirky character and meandering path through life (which is anything other than straightforward), the house -- although ramshackle and unconventional -- is full of character. The cobbled together style of the building is like the rest of this small rural enclave of Paris; a noisy bustle of colorful activity conducted by a menagerie of shopkeepers, housewives, flirtatious girls, drunkards and a street sweeper who never quite manages to clean up.

Unlike the Arpel’s modern suburban idyll on the other side of town inhabited by rigid automatons, his neighborhood is full of life’s rich pageantry as people argue, flirt, haggle, drink, lounge around, fight and love. The Arpel’s strive to control their environment while Monsieur Hulot’s neighbors live in harmony with it.

I know where I’d rather live.

Screenshot is an ongoing column from Gabriel Solomons, Senior Lecturer at the University of the West of England, Editor-in-Chief of The Big Picture magazine and Series Editor of The World Film Locations and Fan Phenomena book series. Screenshot examines a single shot from a film and presents an in-depth analysis.

Werckmeister Harmonies and an Orchestra of Pure Form

/

In general, cinematography, like music, is purely formal. In through tones of instrumentation, both arts create a boundless yet communicative language that does not represent the world but brings the world to life. In essence, all is built on form. In fact, consider form the expression of energy throughout the world; its dimensions are space and time. In other words, form exists as movement within these dimensions; a tone of Eb carries with it not only the space of its consequential frequency but the duration at which it might be heard. The same is true of the camera's eye, which occupies space and duration; a slow pan to the left carries with it the form of its movement as well as its duration. In addition, while music and film are considered separate arts, form does not preclude one over the other; form may be transferred from music to film to the mind, from the mind to film to music. This is transformation.

In fact, cinema tends to elude transformation, but pure cinematography is a cinema of transformation, hiding form beneath its barriers of content. The jokes and stories take precedence over the moving camera, the lighting, framing, shapes within, and designs of the image. In this sense, cinema becomes somewhat indistinguishable from other forms of communication such as literature, since it takes on the conceptual apparatus of alternate languages. In fact, storytelling is not unique to cinema, what is unique is the cinematography used to put the story together. The communication of something exclusive to the language of cinematography is to write with the camera from an autonomous point of view, one that appreciates form in itself; as a result, what occurs when cinematic form transfers into music or mental phenomena is that it communicates something untold by any other language. This is the goal of cinematography.

This phenomenon becomes almost tangible, when watching a film like Béla Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies (2000). Béla Tarr's slow camera movements are often accompanied by a musical score. The scenes carry great depth and weight and offers duration and space through long takes and deep focus cinematography with a constantly moving camera. In fact, take the first scene of the film, for instance. János Valuska (Lars Rudolph) explains the effects of a solar eclipse and he speaks of darkness and the unknown, the camera very slowly moves back, opens up a great deal of space, and raises to just underneath a light fixture which overexposes the image. János Valuska states that all is still well, as the camera leaves the eternal spirit of light to reverse the interval of space to return to its original point. This sequence is accompanied by music, which too carries an interval structure and a reprisal. The movement of the camera here is not unlike the music that plays before it. In putting them together, the two arts form an orchestra of instrumentation that extends beyond music and into the cinema. In this way, cinema truly encapsulates not only the language of cinematography but the language of music as well. In this sense, what is reducible is a cinema whose cinematographic form shares an unseen musical nature, and whose musical form shares an unseen cinematographic nature.

The light and overexposure used in the first scene returns twice more in the film: it fills the room of the vulnerable old man whose spirit shares the grace of God, and it reveals the whale for it is a testament to God's omnipotence. In each of these scenes, Béla Tarr again uses both cinematography and music to create an orchestration that encapsulates both arts. The camera slowly winds down the corridor then slowly follows the men as they leave the building, paying penance in solemnity and prayer, as the tragic music again may be heard. The cumulative effect is a richness of form. The camera's inching forwards and backwards are yet another instrument to be added to the orchestral music that is heard. The shapes of figures and shadows, the movement of time, and the framing of the image also join in this orchestral landscape, a display of form that truly does not preclude one medium from the other. In this moment, there is neither cinematography nor music; all is part of an orchestra of pure form. This is cinema: image and sound become art.

Project: Run Lola Run (1998)

/

How can the city play a role as a protagonist in a film? In Run Lola Run (1998), every second counts as director Tom Tykwer explores topics of fate, free will, chance and determinism, where the city of Berlin is given a central role in orienting viewers to shifts of time and movement within the film.

The plot of Run Lola Run is simple but its themes are complex: the main protagonist, Lola, attempts to save the life of her boyfriend, Manni, who will be killed if he does not collect 100,000 marks in twenty minutes to pay his boss. Her attempt to save Manni is played out in three different scenarios, each of which begins with Lola taking a phone call from Manni in her apartment. However, in each scenario, slight variations in Lola’s actions, the actions of others, and the conditions of her environment, either delay or propel her progress by mere seconds — seconds in which major, and in some instances fatal, consequences are determined for Lola, Manni, and other characters within the film.

Thus, the film’s primary thematic inquiries arise in the difference a single moment makes from one scenario to the next. And this difference in time is made explicit through the position of the camera relative to Lola, the position of the camera relative to the city, and Lola’s position relative to the city when she moves through the same space in each scenario. This study uses traditional methods of architectural representation (plan and section) to investigate the positioning of these three elements — Lola, the camera, and the city — as she moves through four key spaces in Berlin in each scenario, to better understand the role of the city as a protagonist in the film.

Location 1

Location 2

Location 1
At this location, the position of the elevated train is a signifier for Lola’s pace in each of the three runs. In both Run 1 and Run 2, Lola is positioned below the train. However, because she is delayed at the beginning of Run 2, the train is located a few seconds (three seconds, to be exact) ahead of the position it had held at the beginning of Run 1 when Lola finally arrives on scene. This delay between Run 1 and Run 2 is emphasized by the starting location of the camera: a bird’s eye view in Run 1 introduces the setting, while a close-up view of Lola to begin Run 2 demonstrates an urgency of lost time. In Run 3, Lola is elevated to the same level as the train. This difference in Lola’s positioning suggests that, in Run 3, Lola will have a heightened understanding of her actions, and thus greater control in the outcome of the scenario. Meanwhile, other factors in each scene remain constant to underscore the positioning of Lola relative to the camera and the train. For example, all three scenes are exactly eleven seconds long, and each concludes with both Lola and the camera in the same location.

Location 2
As she crosses this street in Berlin three times, Lola’s movement is consistent in all three sequences to emphasize the position of the camera relative to the position of the city. The pace of each run is indicated by the starting position of the camera in each scenario. Analyzing the scene in elevation, we see that in her delayed run, Run 2, the camera begins in the bottom left, behind Lola, and pans to the middle right. In Run 1, which is the “control” run of the experiment, the camera begins slightly above center and pans to the bottom right. Finally, in Run 3, the quickest run,  the camera begins at its highest elevation in the top right, and ends in the same position as the camera of Run 1. So if we read the position of the camera from left to right and top to bottom, we can understand that both “left” and “bottom” are signifiers of slowness and delay. The speed of each run is demonstrated in the actual time of each scene, where Run 3 is the shortest scene at fifteen seconds, compared to sixteen seconds for Run 2 and seventeen seconds for Run 1.

Location 3

Location 4

Location 3
The gridded pavers of Gendarmenmarkt is key to understanding the concept behind three scenes filmed at this location. Both Run 1 and Run 2 are filmed from a static, orthogonal plan view. In Run 1, the camera is orthogonal to the grid of Gendarmenmarkt, and Lola runs at a forty-five degree angle across the frame. In Run 2, the camera is set at a forty-five degree angle to the plaza, and Lola moves parallel to the paving grid. Here, the positioning of Lola, the grid, and the camera re-states the delay of Run 2, where Lola must cross seven visible squares of the paving grid compared to only four squares in Run 1. And since the delay between Run 2 and Run 1 is three seconds, the three additional visible squares in Run 2 represent each second by which Lola has been delayed. Similar to Run 2 of Location 1, Run 3 across Gendarmenmarkt is filmed at ground level from a perspective that moves parallel to Lola, who is moving diagonally across the paving grid. Here, the actual time is inverted, with Run 3 taking eleven seconds, Run 1 taking five seconds, and Run 2 being the shortest scene at three seconds.

Location 4
The fourth and final location — the intersection of Lola, the ambulance and the sheet of glass — is the most complex sequence of the film. This scene is entirely about disruption: the disruption of the city by the ambulance, the disruption of the ambulance by Lola and the glass, and the disruption of the glass by the ambulance, and ultimately, the disruption of the film’s overarching plotline when Manni is hit by the ambulance at the conclusion of Run 2. Thus, although the camera is positioned at the same location to begin all three scenarios, Run 1, Run 2, and Run 3 are shot from eight, ten, and three camera angles respectively. That is to say, unlike the scenes for each of the three previous locations, which were each filmed in a continuous shot, the sequences of Location 4 are disrupted with multiple camera cuts. This is particularly true for Run 1 and Run 2, as both sequences are constructed around the anticipation of the ambulance colliding with the glass. Then, because the glass shatters in Run 2, suspense is not present in Run 3, the least disrupted sequence. Rather than a cllimactic disruption, Run 3 offers a new disruption — complexity interrupted by quietude — when Lola and the patient in the ambulance bring a calmness to the scene in the back of the ambulance. which foreshadows a positive outcome for Lola and Manni in the third and final scenario.

Adam Longenbach is an architectural designer and educator practicing in New York City. If you would like to submit an architectural project that looks at film, please email us at contact@INTJournal.com.