Shooting `SRUCTURE

Whether it’s more of a learning style or closer to imitation, I’ve always been influenced by the writer or director whose work I last ingested. This has been going on for years now. It’s nothing new and I know to look out for it so as to keep it in check if need be.

This has now been spreading to the INFRASTRUCTURE videos and films that I shoot and edit. Case in point: The Rox Box show last night and Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon.

Watching the Criterion Collection's commentary by critic/historian Donald Richie, what stood out most was Richie’s notes of Kurosawa and Kazuo Miyagawa's use of shapes and composition to tell the story: how when the characters on screen form squares or circles, the viewer intuitively knows that everything is good, but triangles, especially broken triangles, imply that something is askew in the relationships between those on stage.

Back to the Rox Box, with the band near the end of their set. The sound is great and everyone is clicking. I’m positioned in front of the stage, low to the ground to force more of a “hero angle” in the four-shot I’m shooting. I normally move around a lot to change up the shots, but I was holding this position, because what I saw was a diamond (or inverted square if you would): Rob at the North point, Micah South, Chris West and Erich East. For much of Tear Down Kings and Old World, that was the primary shot that I used, and it looks damn good. Without even listening, you see the presence and performance of the band simply by the shape they are framed in.

So when we release video from the show, keep all this mind… it’ll make watching it all the more interesting.