Camera Techniques; Aperture

Aperture refers to the size of the hole that lets in light through the lens when taking a picture or filming. The smaller the hole, the less light is let in. Each aperture setting has an 'F number' which refers to the amount of light being let in. Aperture also controls the depth of field which is the amount of sharpness behind and in front of the subject focus. The smaller the aperture the less sharpness in front and behind the subject focus. A larger aperture gives a greater amount of sharpness. Aperture is important for producing clarity and sharpness in film, it helps to enhance the focal point and emphasise certain aspects of a shot.

Camera Techniques; ISO

ISO is the level of sensitivity of your camera to available light. The lower the ISO number, the less sensitive it is to the light, while a higher ISO number increases the sensitivity of your camera. The component within your camera that can change sensitivity is called “image sensor” or simply “sensor”. It is the most important (and most expensive) part of a camera and it is responsible for gathering light and transforming it into an image. With increased sensitivity, your camera sensor can capture images in low-light environments without having to use a flash. But higher sensitivity comes at an expense – it adds grain or “noise” to the pictures.

Camera techniques; Shutter Speed

Shutter speed is the measurement of time that light is allowed into the camera's shutter. This means that it effects the length of time that the camera is seeing the image it is picturing. Shutter speed, also known as “exposure time”, stands for the length of time a camera shutter is open to expose light into the camera sensor. If the shutter speed is fast, it can help to freeze action completely, as seen in the above photo of the dolphin. If the shutter speed is slow, it can create an effect called “motion blur”, where moving objects appear blurred along the direction of the motion. This effect is used quite a bit in advertisements of cars and motorbikes, where a sense of speed and motion is communicated to the viewer by intentionally blurring the moving wheels.








My own example;



Shutter speed - 1/30


 Shutter speed - 1/250


Usually when filming the shutter speed it is better to shoot on 1/50 as 50 is two times the frames per second. Which means you should be shooting on 24 or 25 frames per second.

Although this is not the case depending on what you are shooting.

For example - shooting an athlete training or during a competition it is also better shooting on a fasted shutter speed. This will prevent the motion blur in which you can clearly see in my 1/30 shutter speed example.

Although if you wanted motion blur of a light source, such as; sparklers or cars the motion blur can make a really nice effect and look on your photograph or in your video.

Camera Techniques; Pull focus

Pull focus is when you see the foreground in focus then after a couple of seconds the foreground blurs and the background focuses. This can also work when the background is in focus first then the foreground comes into focus.

Film Example of pull focus - 10 Years a slave


My own examples;

1.

foreground focus    background focus


This was an experimentation of pull focus and my first go but instead of it changing focal points, the whole shot goes out of focus instead.
As you can also see near the top middle of the shot there is some lens flare. Lens flare can be quite usual is some shots although not quite so much in my example.


2.










background focus    foreground focus


This example of pull focus is a lot better than the first as you see the clear transition of the pull.

New wave film

Draft one

This is a very rough cut of my new wave film which was filmed down in Bristol. There is no non diegetic sound as of yet but it is soon to be added however, there are small bits of diegetic sound which consists of Joe talking to the camera. In typical French new wave fashion.
There is also clear use of on location recording with a hand held camera, also a typical new wave feature.

Health & Safety

It's a three step process

• Identify all the hazards
• Evaluate the risks
• Identify measures to control the risks

Weather

If you are filming outside all day, it is essential to make sure the crew are dressed appropriately. A lot of the time you may be standing around and people will get cold very quickly even in what seems quite mild weather. Layers of clothes are best, and get everyone to bring a waterproof and a woolly hat - they keep out wind as well as rain and are invaluable.

Sunburn and heatstroke are other outdoor hazards. Always have high protection sunscreen on hand. Try to get the crew to wear some kind of sun hat or stay in the shade when possible and make sure lots of water is available to drink. The other reason for sunscreen is to stop the actors' appearance changing drastically and messing up the continuity of the film. 

Time pressure

Rushing to finish in time is when hazards get missed, or people start taking risks. If this starts to happen, take a moment to calm everyone down and remind them: this is only a film. If you feel really pressured try to think of how to lighten the work-load: can you cut out some shots or set ups to give you the time to get the most essential stuff for the film without a panic? Or can you come back tomorrow to finish?

Tripping hazards

Move or gaffa tape down cables and objects that could be tripped over.

Lifting hazards

Go carefully when moving or lifting heavy or dangerous things, ask someone to help you.

Camera risks

When a camera operator or cast member is walking during a shot, make sure they are comfortable with their route and there is nothing that could cause problems (a camera operator who needs to walk backwards for a shot should have an assistant to guide them and/or check their route).

Water

Shots that involve water.

Precarious

Shots from high up or near the edge of something.

Shots that look illegal

Shots might look illegal if you didn't know a camera was there. This could cause distress to members of the public and/or cause a police call out.

Release forms

Before commencing film making with young people you should obtain signed release forms from parents/guardians for everyone involved; this should also release them for photographs (and get it for animation films too, in case you use faces in the credits or the like). And remember you might want clearance to go on a school website (or vimeo - think festivals) so these should be covered too.

A letter with the release form, detailing the benefits of the project will encourage parents to say yes to their child being involved

Disclosure forms

Disclosure Scotland should be contacted if you are enlisting the help and practical support of others on the film project to work alongside young people. Enhanced Disclosure forms will certainly be held by most professional filmmakers and project facilitators. 

Food

Feeding your crew, and keeping everyone hydrated makes everyone work better. If you organise food at a set time (aka catering), it is a good break for everyone. Food doesn't have to be fancy, a simple pizza delivery can boost flagging energy levels and raise morale.

New Wave Bristol brief

I plan to use short and long clips in my new wave film.
I'm also going to film Joe Casey recording stuff for the Bristol promotional video and whilst he's doing this, I am going to get him to talk to the camera. (Like in typical French New Wave).

I will also edit the film with reference to how Jean-Luc Godard would jump between different narrative times, as he does in his films. Although in my film it will show Joe and Caitlin walking to Cabot Tower then being at Cabot Tower.

You will be able to see clear use of a hand held camera and on location shooting.

Scenarios and Setups

Summer Task: Part B

A. A small documentary where portability is paramount; 

Equipment -

1. Middle ranged SLR + Lense (18-55mm) 
2. Tripod
3. (Microphone)
4. Subject Matter
5. Spare Battery 
6. Slider
7. Barn door portable light
8. GoPro
9. Reflector

The setup for this documentary would be to follow a chosen student throughout their day to capture how much time they must spend doing work, revising and/or just messing with their friends. The day would start "early" morning where natural lighting will be used to capture the morning in all its glory. The only time a barn light may need to be used is towards the evening if the student is still with their friends or studying at home indoors.

Advantages of this set up would be that very little equipment is needed and natural lighting would be a great as my theme is very much the 'real life' of an athlete. Disadvantages would be that the film might look a little armature as I would not be able to carry around a lot of equipment as I follow a person through their day. 

B. 'Talking Head' style interview 

The setup for this should be be fairly straight forward with the camera set up eye level to the subject who would be sat in front of a blank background with a two lights pointed towards them. Advantages of this setup is the clarity and stability, there is nothing complex going on and so less room for error meaning filming should go smoothly.

Equipment - 

1. SLR camera + lense (18-55mm)
2. Tripod kit 
3. Plain backdrop 
4. 3 point lighting soft box
5. Spare battery 
6. Mircophone

Setup - 

1. Eye level camera 
2. 3 point lighting 
3. Subject in front of plain backdrop 
4. Subject central to camera and backdrop 

Pros;

• Clear speech/video
• Focused only on one 
• Operated by one person (plain backdrop ensures that the focus point will not change) 
• Eye level - more interactive 

C. Night time Shoot

Equipment - 

1. DSLR
2. Spare battery and memory card
3. Tripod
4. 18-55mm lens
5. Portable barn light 
6. Microphone

A disadvantage to shooting in the dark is the risk of grainy footage which may not be fixable in editing, this is why you need to ensure that the set up is done correctly. The video above highlights tips that can be used to enhance the clarity of your image even in very dark settings.

A formula to success:

Your project and images need to be -

• Ambitious 
• Meaningful 
• Technically appropriate 
• Contextually aware
• Creative and imaginative 
• Refined 

Your work needs to demonstrate - 

• Breadth and depth
• Honest and meaningful reflection 
• Your thought processes and decisions 
• Inspiration yet creativity 
• High quality presentation 

Some visual characteristics - 

• Lighting 
• Camera Techniques
• Mise - en - scene 
• Body image / facial expression 
• Textures 
• Colour palette 

Butterfly lighting

Butterfly lighting thought to project more glamorous and complimentary connotations than other techniques. As you can see it was often used when capturing portraits of 1950's female stars.

Set up:

• Key light is positioned directly in front of the subject. (not in the way of the camera).
• They key light is about 2/3 foot higher than the subjects head and angled at a 70/80 degree angle so that the beams of the light go down onto the subject. 
• The subject look and the body is positioned straight into the lens. 

 

Edge Lighting

Edge or split lighting is slightly more dramatic then Rembrandt. It defines and separates one side of the face to the other. Edge light can add intense emotions to your portraits and is often linked to the 1950'sfilm genre, "Film Noir". It is a perfect example of high contrast lighting.
Set up:

• Direct the subject body to 25 degree point 
• The key light is positioned parallel to the subject, 90 degree, at the same height as the subjects eye level. 
• The light is pointed at a 90 degree angle. 

 This is a screenshot produced from Jean-Luc Godard's new wave film 'Breathless' to hide the characters facial expression in the shadows.


(Examples to come)

Rembrant Lighting

It is a common technique that is used in studio portrait photography. It can be achieved using one light or one light and a reflector.

Reflector = Fill light












Rembrant is a popular technique because it can create images with considered lighting by using a minimum of equipment. Rembrandt lighting is characterised by an illuminated triangle the eye of the subject, on the less illuminated side of the face. It is named after the Dutch painter Rembrant, who often used this type of lighting.
Set up:

 As you can see from this portrait of Cara Delevingne on the right side of her face there is the Rembrant triangle underneath her eye. This is a clear example of the popular technique.

Lighting

Lighting techniques can hugely influence the connotations of an image. Lighting effects are dependent on the:
1. angle the light is pointing at
2. height of the lighting in regards to the subject
3. the position of the light in regards to the subject.

Key words;

• Back light
• Key light
• Contrast
• Highlights & Low lights
• High key
• Low key
• Fill light
• Degree angle of position of light
• Hard & Soft light
• Height of the light

French New Wave Essay

New wave is a movement that has been best described as breaking traditional ideas. Most New Wave films take place at a time of huge change in a community and in this essay I will be studying the French New Wave also known as Nouvelle Vague. The French New Wave started in the late 50’s and early 60’s. It was born out of the dissatisfaction of many new, young filmmakers felt towards traditional French cinema. This to which they believed was more about literature than it was the approach in regards to storytelling. The pioneers of the French New Wave aimed to rebel against the classic and traditional French cinema. Critics such as those who worked on Cahiers Du Cinema believed that it would be beneficial to develop an auter cinema in which filmmakers could express their own personal visions and create their own personal styles. Their aim was to create films which reflected real life, this meaning that raw and exploring the challenging which were looked over in traditional cinema. The critics wanted to transform and break the constraints of conventional cinema and were inspired by other critics named Alexandre Astruc whose ‘camera-stylo theory’ argued that ‘filmmakers should make use of their equipment spontaneously, flexibly and personally, as a writer uses a pen’ (Sterrit 1999). Through experimentation of different cinematic techniques, they began to apply their own personal values in their films, as auteurs. Throughout my investigation of the French New wave, I will be analysing the work of Jean-Luc Godard. The three films I will be looking at are: Breathless, and Vivre Sa Vie (my life to live).

The 1950/60s in France were a defining period for French Cinema, with the people of France having to overcome the suffering of the World War II which lasted for six slow years. However, the Cold War that was taking place and there was a considerable amount of tension between the East and West. Despite this, a reconstruction process had begun; the people of France had started to restore/ rebuild their economies and political/social subcultures in society. A revolution had begun; after years and years of rationing, shortages, tension and political outrage, France was finally back and standing on its own feet. Technological innovation brought around enormous change in society, making consumer goods such as; cars, televisions and the like more affordable for the general public. Black and White films were a thing of the past, and wide screen formatting was in use - it was a new Golden age for France and for French Cinema. (internationalschoolhistory.net 2015)

Jean-Luc Godard, was born in the 1930s and began his film-making career when he co-founded Gazette du Cinema in the year 1950, which was a short-lived film journal. He later joined Cahiers Du Cinema, where he would find himself writing film critiques with other film critics, producers and directors; Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol; all of which would become vital figures in the beginning of the French New Wave movement (Lanzoni 2002). Godard was one of the first of the young critics to published in Cahiers Du Cinema, with the January 1952 issue featuring his review of an American film by Rudolph Mate named 'No Sad Songs for Me'. He began his filmmaking career shortly after joining Cahiers, whilst also assisting other filmmakers like Rohmer. Godard's films were often seen as being about the presentation of a narrative, rather than the narrative itself due to his emphasis on technique. Many of films digressed from the main storyline or followed a completely non-linear structure. His first feature film 'Breathless' was possibly considered his most ground-breaking film and incorporated many distinct features from the 'New Wave style'. He employed techniques such as jump cuts, breaking eye-line match rules and 180 degree rules, as well as taking several elements from popular culture, particularly film noir. Godard is considered to be what is called an 'auteur', which generally speaking means that he was a director that influences his films so much that he is considered to be their author and the creative force behind them.

Godard first saw actress Anna Karina in an advert for ‘Palmolive’. He contacted her almost straight away about a small part in his famous 'Breathless', however, she turned the role down as soon as she found out it would involve nudity. She agreed to take the lead role in his next film and they soon started a relationship with each other which would later be used as inspiration in some of his future films. However, the first year of their relationship was the happiest and their relationship became more and more strained as time went on. Karina's co-star in ‘A Woman

is a Woman’ spoke about their relationship on-set, saying "They tore each other apart, argued, loved each other, hated each other, screamed at each other". Things became worse when Karina became pregnant. The couple got married, however, Karina unfortunately experienced a miscarriage which damaged her mental/physical health considerably and Godard found it difficult to cope, which ended up with him leaving her for several weeks. She then had an affair with a co-star from another film she was working on, and decided that she wanted to marry him and divorce Godard, which subsequently resulted in her attempting suicide. Despite this, Godard and Karina reconciled and continued working on films together until even after their divorce in December 1964. Their last film together was 'Made in the USA 'which was produced in 1966 and it is reported that the atmosphere on set when the couple were together was very unpleasant, with Godard often seen shouting at Karina. He once again used the narrative of the film to explore the relationship he once had with her. Although this would be the last time they worked together, Karina said in an interview many years later 'He was and will remain the greatest love of my life'.

The French New Wave was an exclusive movement that sought to revolutionize narrative structures, genres, characters, plots and film techniques. François Truffaut, who is one of the founding members of the New Wave, foreshadowed the arrival of this movement in 1954 when he wrote “A Certain Tendency in French Cinema,” a manifesto published in the film journal Cahiers du Cinéma. Truffaut argued that French films lacked individuality and self-expression. Citing such directors as Jean Renoir, Alfred Hitchcock and Roberto Rossellini, Truffaut called for a new group of directors to take the reins and follow in these men’s footsteps by creating films that unmistakably belonged to their respective director. Five years after the publication of Truffaut’s article, the Cannes Film Festival awarded Truffaut Best Director for his feature film debut, The 400 Blows(1959), which told the story of a hopeless boy named Antoine Doinel (Truffaut’s doppelgänger). The premiere of this work was an important event that introduced the first ripples of the New Wave.

A year later, Jean-Luc Godard, a fellow critic at Cahiers du Cinéma, premiered his own debut feature, Breathless (1960), that recounted the adventures of a Bogart-loving criminal and his American girlfriend. Cinema would never be the same. Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol and Jacques Rivette joined Truffaut and Godard in creating a slew of iconic films. The New Wave directors, like Charles Baudelaire, who a century before them invented the “poem in prose,” created works that crossed artistic boundaries by incorporating philosophy, theater, linguistics, journalism and painting into films. This band of cinephiles opened the door for the potential of cinema.

The first film I looked at was the 1962 ‘Vivre Sa Vie’ (My Life to Live), which follows the life of a young woman called Nana, who dreams of becoming an actress but instead is stuck working as a shop assistant with a husband and child that she is unhappy with. She leaves this life behind to follow her dream career and independence, however, ends up becoming a prostitute and in fact, becomes more and more dependent on others (predominantly men), being sold by one pimp to another until eventually, she is involved in a tragic murder. Throughout ‘Vivre Sa Vie’, Godard employs various unconventional techniques and methods to excite the audience. Godard liked the make the audience constantly aware of the fact that they are watching a film, and so ‘Vivre Sa Vie’ was shot on the streets of Paris and the set locations used by him were not closed off from the general public. As a result of this, the general public can often be seen looking at the camera, the actors and the crew with intrigue. Looking back on his film 'Breathless', he felt as though he had moved the camera far too much when filming. He decided that for this film, he would use heavier equipment which was not as easy to move around, he would light scenes correctly and capture audio at the time of filming rather than dubbing over in post-production. (newwavefilm.com 2015) The narrative of the film is split into twelve chapters (tableaux), each listing what and who we are about to see in the following scenes. The story is non-linear; elements are missing and mixed up and it is almost impossible to fill the gaps in with the information provided within the film. Here, Godard’s intention was for the story to be as if Nana were recalling each scene like a memory. It has a primary plot, however it lacks cohesion. As well as presenting the narrative in an unfamiliar way, Godard experiments with various techniques throughout the film. There are numerous long takes, many of which last three minutes and over which would not be so long if the film came from a more traditional cinematographer, as they are often uncomfortable or make the audience lose interest. The first chapter's title screen reads ' Tableau one: A bistro - Nana wants to leave Paul - pinball'. The first descriptor tells us the number of the chapter, then the second tells us the location in which the scene is set. The third descriptor tells us about how Nana is feeling, and finally it tells us about an object of importance. Interestingly, the way that the last three descriptors are arranged vary throughout the film depending on what Godard wants the audience to view as important. For example, in chapter nine, the title reads simply 'Tableau nine: A young man - Nana wonders if she is happy'. He wants the focus to be completely on the young man and on Nana's feelings; everything else is insignificant in comparison.

The second film I have looked at is ‘Breathless’ 1960, which is directed by Jean-Luc Godard, follows Michel, who after stealing a car in Marseille and shooting a police officer, meets Patricia. (An American student in Paris). She agrees to help keep him hidden whilst he tries to gather money for an escape to Italy, but eventually she betrays him as the police close in. Godard approached the film's narrative in a radical fashion that subverted from the conventional crime archetypes. "His years as a critic, his immersion in both high and low culture, his philosophical explorations, all impacted on his debut feature film" (Breathless) At this point Godard was an unknown in the world of cinema, and as a result he was relatively inexperienced and had thin knowledge of practical film techniques; though this didn't matter, as he once said in an interview, the film was a "result of a decade's worth of making movies in my head" (Breathless) A large factor of the French New Wave was to capture naturalness and genuine reactions, this was a philosophy of Godard's, who made up a lot of the dialogue for the film as he shot the film. All of the dialogue was dubbed in the final cut, as Godard would give actors lines from behind the camera as they were filming. ‘Breathless’ was a defining film which helped to stimulate documentary-style filmmaking. It was shot with most shots being shot with handheld cameras, using only natural and available light. Nearly 50 years on, this technique is used by contemporary cinema as a technique to immerse the audience in a work of fiction, by making them feel like they're in the film and share the emotions the characters are feeling. However, Godard aimed to achieve the exact opposite. He was heavily influenced by director Bertolt Brecht, who constantly reminded the audience they were watching a film. Godard followed this philosophy by capturing the audience's attention to things that are meant to be discreet in mainstream cinema. Godard is renowned for his use of jump-cuts in ‘Breathless’, but these were not intentional. Primarily the run-time of the film was too long, but rather than cut out entire scenes, Godard decided to cut pieces out of the middle of single shots. This therefore gave the film an unpolished and unnatural effect. This was because seemed as if that the film was skipping through time. This is distinct in one particular scene, our protagonist Michel is in a car with Patricia, and where Godard implements of six jump-cuts in under ten seconds. This represents an unnatural style of editing because the two characters are simply talking, but the jump-cuts disrupt the flow of conversation and strip the film of continuity, almost making the clip into a montage of dialogue rather than a single conversation. Another famous scene in which this technique is utilised in is when Michel shoots the policeman, Godard uses a jump-cut just a Michel fires the gun the shot cuts to the policeman lying on the ground - we don't actually see him get shot. This is also a prime example of Godard cutting out pieces of clips that might not need to be seen as he believed the audience would be able to figure out what happened without the extra footage.

In conclusion, Godard's films, much like many other new wave filmmakers', reflected his own personal experiences in life and focused specifically on his relationship with his wife and muse, Anna Karina. It is also obvious that Godard preferred for his audience to be aware of the fact that his films were not reality, despite the fact that his storylines often echoed and explored and even mirrored his own reality. It is clear that his films, as well as the films of many other New Wave filmmakers had a massive impact on society and the audiences who watched them. The French New Wave was very much inspired by producers such as Renoir and critics such as Alexandre Astruc who emphasised the importance of making films personal. They also emphasised using small film crews and filming on scene, and then the New Wave filmmakers went on to influence more modern filmmakers and directors such as Quentin Tarantino, who made use of their new techniques such as jump-cuts, long takes, using colour filters and wandering from non-diegetic to diegetic sound. Therefore, it is obvious that the French New Wave movement influenced and even changed cinematography and film making forever by introducing a new way of communicating a story and allowing filmmakers the freedom to experiment.



- Sterrit, David. The Films of Jean Luc Godard. Cambridge, UK. Cambridge University Press, 1999.

- http://www.internationalschoolhistory.net/western_europe/europe/rebuilding_europe.htm

- Lanzoni, Remi Fournier. French Cinema: From Its Beginnings to the Present. New York: Continuum, 2002.

- http://www.newwavefilm.com/french-new-wave-encyclopedia/breathless.shtml

- My Life To Live (Vivre Sa Vie). 1962. Jean-Luc Godard. France. Les Filmes de la Pleiade, Pathe Consortium Cinema.



- Newwavefilm.com,. 'VIVRE SA VIE (My Life To Live) - Jean-Luc Godard'. N.p., 2015. Web. 16 Nov. 2015.

Jean Luc-Godard

Jean-Luc Godard was born in Paris on December 3, 1930, the second of four children in a bourgeois Franco-Swiss family. His father was a doctor who owned a private clinic, and his mother came from a preeminent family of Swiss bankers. During World War II Godard became a naturalized citizen of Switzerland and attended school in Nyons (Switzerland). His parents divorced in 1948, at which time he returned to Paris to attend the Lycée Rohmer. In 1949 he studied at the Sorbonne to prepare for a degree in ethnology. However, it was during this time that he began attending with François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, and Éric Rohmer.




In 1950 Godard, with Rivette and Rohmer, founded "Gazette du cinéma", which published five issues between May and November. He wrote a number of articles for the journal, often using the pseudonym "Hans Lucas". After Godard worked on and financed two films by Rivette and Rohmer, Godard's family cut off their financial support in 1951, and he resorted to a Bohemian lifestyle that included stealing food and money when necessary. In January 1952 he began writing film criticism for "Les cahiers du cinéma". Later that year he traveled to North and South America with his father and attempted to make his first film (of which only a tracking shot from a car was ever accomplished).




In 1953 he returned to Paris briefly before securing a job as a construction worker on a dam project in Switzerland. With the money from the job, he made a short film in 1954 about the building of the dam called Operation Concrete (1958) ("Operation Concrete"). Later that year his mother was killed in a motor scooter accident in Switzerland. In 1956 Godard began writing again for "Les cahiers du cinéma" as well as for the journal "Arts". In 1957 Godard worked as the press attache for "Artistes Associés", and made his first French film, All the Boys Are Called Patrick (1959) (aka "Charlotte et Véronique").




In 1958 he shot Charlotte and Her Boyfriend (1960) ("Charlotte and Her Boyfriend"), his homage to Jean Cocteau. Later that year he took unused footage of a flood in Paris shot by Truffaut and edited it into a film called A Story of Water (1961) ("A Story of Water"), which was an homage to Mack Sennett. In 1959 he worked with Truffaut on the weekly publication "Temps de Paris". Godard wrote a gossip column for the journal, but also spent much time writing scenarios for films and a body of critical writings which placed him firmly in the forefront of the "nouvelle vague" aesthetic, precursing the French New Wave.




It was also in that year Godard began work on Breathless (1960) ("Breathless"). In 1960 he married Anna Karina in Switzerland. In April and May he shot Le Petit Soldat (1963) in Geneva and was preparing the film for a fall release in Paris. However, French censors banned it due to its references to the Algerian war, and it was not shown until 1963. In March 1960 Breathless (1960) premiered in Paris. It was hugely successful both with the film critics and at the box office, and became a landmark film in the French New Wave with its references to American cinema, its jagged editing and overall romantic/cinephilia approach to filmmaking. The film propelled the popularity of male lead Jean-Paul Belmondo with European audiences.




In 1961 Godard shot A Woman Is a Woman (1961), his first film using color widescreen stock. Later that year he participated in the collective effort to remake the film The Seven Deadly Sins (1962), which was heralded as an important project in artistic collaboration. In 1962 Godard shot My Life to Live (1962) in Paris, his first commercial success since "À bout de souffle". Later that year he shot a segment entitled "Le Nouveau Monde" for the collective film Ro.Go.Pa.G. (1963), another important work in the history of collaborative multiple-authored art.




In 1963 Godard completed a film in homage to Jean Vigo entitled Les Carabiniers (1963), which was a resounding failure with the public and stirred furious controversy with film critics. Also that year he worked on a couple of collective films: The World's Most Beautiful Swindlers (1964) (from which Godard's sequence was later cut) and Six in Paris (1965). In 1964 Godard and his wife Anna Karina formed their own production company, Anouchka Films. They shot a film called Une Femme Mariée (1964), which censors forced them to re-edit due to a topless sunbathing scene shot by Jacques Rozier. The censors also made Godard change the title to "Une femme marié" so as to not give the impression that this "scandalous" woman was the typical French wife. Later in the year, two French television programs were produced in devotion to Godard's work.




In the spring of 1965 Godard shot Alphaville (1965) in Paris; in the summer he shot Pierrot le Fou (1965) in Paris and the south of France. Shortly thereafter he and Anna Karina separated. Following their divorce, Godard shot Made in U.S.A (1966), "Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle (1966)", "L'amour en l'an 2000" (1966) (a sequel to "Alphaville" shot as a sketch for the collective film "L'amour travers les ages" (1966)).




In 1967 Godard shot La chinoise (1967) in Paris with Anne Wiazemsky, who was the granddaughter of French novelist François Mauriac. During the making of the film Godard and Wiazemsky were married in Paris. Later in the year he was prevented from traveling to North Vietnam for the shooting of a sequence for the collective film Far from Vietnam(1967). He instead shot the sequence in Paris, entitled "Camera-Oeil". Also during 1967 Godard participated (as the only Frenchman) on an Italian collective film called Love and Anger (1969).




In 1968 Godard was commissioned by French television to make Joy of Learning (1969). However, television producers were so outraged by the product Godard produced that they refused to show it. In May of that year Henri Langlois was fired by the head of the French Jean-Pierre Gorin to form the Dziga-Vertov group, infuriating Godard. He became increasingly concerned with socialist solutions to an idealist cinema, especially in providing the proletariat with the means of production and distribution. Along with other militantly political filmmakers in the Dziga-Vertov group, Godard published a series of 'Ciné-Tracts' outlining these viewpoints. In the summer of 1968 Godard traveled to New York City and Berkeley, California, to shoot the film "One American Movie", which was never completed. In September he made a trip to Canada to start another film called "Communication(s)", which also went unfinished, and then made a visit to Cuba before returning to France.




In 1969 Godard traveled to England, where he made the film See You at Mao (1970) for BBC Weekend Television, but the network later refused to show it. In the late spring he traveled with the Dziga-Vertov group to Prague to secretly shoot the film "Pravda". Later that year he shot Struggle in Italy (1971) ("Struggle for Italy") for Italian television. It was never shown, either.




In 1970 Godard traveled to Lebanon to shoot a film for the Palestinian Liberation Organization entitled "Jusque à la victoire" (1970) ("Until Victory"). Later that year he traveled to dozens of American universities trying to raise money for the film. In spite of his efforts, it was never released.


IMDB; http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000419/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm