Editing

Summer Task: Part 3

Early editing - cutting

Evaluation on my New Wave essay

I decided to study the French New Wave as I wanted to study how one movement within film drastically changed future film making. The French New Wave started this revolution of on scene shooting, using hand held cameras, having characters in the film talk to the audience and abstract editing techniques. 

I decided to focus of film-maker Jean-Luc Godard as after watching a couple of his films, I took a considerable amount of knowledge and inspiration from him. As previously mentioned, I noticed there were several techniques which are used in film today. One of these techniques are jump cuts, which are thought to be invented by Godard himself. I used quick cuts and fast editing in my new wave film from the inspiration I gained from Jean-Luc Godard. I also used a hand held camera all throughout my film as you may be able to tell from the shakiness of the camera, but you may not be able to tell as much with the quick editing techniques I have used. 

My French New Wave essay has gone really well although I could’ve done a bit more research and reading of books to help me write it better. I could have also watched the films I have analysed, a couple times and then wrote notes which then would’ve furthered into better detail of the films. I think if I would’ve done this I would have more of an understanding of the films I watched.

I think if I paid more attention to detail and wrote more notes about each film then I believe I could've made my work better in detail. If I used more books to further my research into Jean-Luc Godard, and the French New Wave then maybe I could've made more references which would've made my work better. 

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.

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.

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

French new wave research

What is it?

The French New Wave was a group of trailblazing directors who exploded onto the film scene in the late 1950s; revolutionising cinematic conventions by marrying the rapid cuts of Hollywood with philosophical trends. Lindsay Parnell explores how this group of young directors reshaped cinema.

With an emphasis on invigorating cinematic narrative, French New Wave Cinema rejected traditional linear tropes of storytelling and created a new language of film. Inspired by both depictions of the common, lower class workers of Italian Neorealism and Hollywood’s beloved ‘Golden Age’, the French New Wave became a vibrant influence on international cinema which is still being felt today.


What does this approach allow for?

A greater sense of flexibility

Erasing the boundaries between professional and amateur cinema/fiction and documentary

Creativity in filmmaking - creation of narrative is unrestricted

Low budgets

An exploration of the contemporary

Digression and subversion

Techniques

Alternative framing

Making mistakes - Chabrol famously looked into a bolt when asked to look through the eyepiece on his first film

Collaboration with cinematographers

Natural lighting - sharp contrast between b&w

Liberation of the camera from the tripod

Reportage - the hidden camera

Self reference - the appropriation of certain cinematic techniques and director styles


I will be focusing on creator Jean Luc-Goddard


Over a decade later, why does the new wave still matter?





It has now been more than half a century since the directors of the New Wave (in French, "Nouvelle Vague") electrified the international film scene with their revolutionary new way of telling stories on film. The New Wave itself may no longer be "new", but the directors and their films are still important. They are the progenitors of what we have come to think of as alternative cinema today, and they had, and continue to have, a profound influence on cinema and popular culture throughout the world. Without the Nouvelle Vague there may not have been any Scorsese, Soderbergh, or Tarantino (or Wenders, or Oshima, or Bertolucci), and music, fashion and advertising would be without a major point of reference.


The directors of the Nouvelle Vague, and those of their like-minded contemporaries in other countries, created a new cinematic style, using breakthrough techniques and a fresh approach to storytelling that could express complex ideas while still being both direct and emotionally engaging. Crucially, these filmmakers also proved that they didn't need the mainstream studios to produce successful films on their own terms. By emphasizing the personal and artistic vision of film over its worth as a commercial product, the Nouvelle Vague set an example that inspired others across the world. In every sense they were the true founders of modern independent film and to watch them for the first time is to rediscover cinema.


French New Wave


“Tidal wave” would have been a more appropriate name for this explosion of vibrant, innovative, and highly self-conscious films by young French directors in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The informal movement was spearheaded by a handful of critics from Cahiers du cinéma—Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Rivette—whose incisive writings were matched by their films: bold, modern takes on classical masters that reworked genres like noir and the musical, and experimented with techniques antiquated and discovered. While Godard’s Breathless and Truffaut’s The 400 Blows remain the twin groundbreaking events of the movement, films such as Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima mon amour and Agnès Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7were watersheds as well, finding excited audiences hungry for a new, energetic, political cinema opposed to the stuffy “cinema of quality,” as Truffaut put it, of the old guard. Though the movement quickly dissipated, filmmakers like Godard, Rivette, Varda, and Rohmer continue to pioneer today.

Bristol Planning

12 HNC students have been split into 4 groups of 3 to produce a promotional video for Bristol. The promotional video we will be producing will be for people ages 16 years to 30 years.

Each group have a task to produce recordings of certain landmarks and small questionnaires to ask the tourists and residents of Bristol.

Each group will have 2 cameras, SD cards and a tripod (In each group) to produce the recordings we will need to produce the end result. Each group will also record footage of when we go out at night for food. (To show the nightlife) There are also Banksy art around the city, so which ever group is around the place of the art will have the role to go and record the art for the video.

We will then come altogether, share footage and all individually create our own promotional videos.

Group 1: 

Cabot Tower
College Green
Banksy - Blackbeard to banksy


Group 2: 

Millennium Square
Arnoifini
Thekla


Group3: 

Clifton Bridge
Observatory
Banksy - The girl with the pierced ear drum / you don't need planning permission

Group 4: 

Bear pit
Christmas Steps
Park Street
Banksy - Take the money and run / The mild mild west / Rose Trap / Naked Man

New wave research

Jean-Luc Godard

Perhaps the French New Wave’s most notable international figure is Jean-Luc Godard, a visionary of film both in France and abroad. In addition to being an accomplished screenwriter and director, Godard was also a highly respected critic of film.

Admired for his inventive experimentation with both technical and thematic aspects of film (a passionate rejection of ‘traditional’ French cinema’s stories of the aristocracy), Godard’s film career started with his involvement with Cahiers du Cinéma as one of the publication’s first and most celebrated contributing writers. His full-length feature debut came with 1960’s À Bout de Soufflé (Breathless); a pop-culture inspired narrative told in a truly revolutionary style.
Breathless is a metropolitan romance (between a recent murderer on the run with a girl) set within the urban landscape of Parisian streets. The feature film introduced Godard as a truly innovative force within film. His films emphasize the presentation of story, more than the story itself, much like Bazin’s notes on audience perception of a film. 1964’s Band of Outsiders (Bande à Part), a mischievous and flirtatious turn for Godard, is the story of a trio of hopeless crooks planning a heist. Weekend, released in 1967, features the often bizarre occurrences that plague a married couple in what they thought would be a peaceful weekend to the countryside.
Godard’s most recent release, 2010’s Film Socialisme, is a cinematic orchestra of sorts, featuring various characters, narrative strands and themes beautifully interwoven in a story interrogating equality and intimacy of the human condition.

The works of all the French New Wave directors remain fresh and potent today, displaying a postmodern playfulness, and a surfeit of ideas which other filmmakers still struggle to replicate. Although there had been many classic French films made before the New Wave, it was these directors who established France as the centre for cinematic innovation and art house film, something which remains true even today.

https://theculturetrip.com/europe/france/articles/the-french-new-wave-revolutionising-cinema/   

Analysing a film clip - Easy Rider

Cemetery Acid Trip (2 minutes 07 seconds)



Within the first minute of the video there is clear use of natural lighting and a slow paced editing technique. The slow paced editing shows and connotes the starting effect of the drug and how you perceive time so slowly. Within this scene, the shot type stays the same until a shot change of a tilt of the building comes onto the screen for 3 seconds. For the following 15 seconds the editing becomes faster paced cutting between the tilt of the building and the mid shot of the two couples at the church who are taking the drug, LSD. Whilst this is happening there is a background noise of a press and it is heard until it fades out at 1 minute 44 seconds which is when the young people are of the peak of their high. The girls taking the drugs through kissing their lovers symbolises of sexual dominance as the boys become the gateway to the girls using the drugs.

Whilst the drugs begin to take effect, the camera tilts up towards the building. This is denotations that whilst the camera is being tilted, the characters are beginning to have more effects because they are on drugs and they are getting high, as high as the building. This combined with the religious ideology creates a juxtaposition of the control of religion and the freedom, and the escapism that drugs can often offer a spiritual experience. As LSD is a psychedelic, these cause the user to have hallucinations and seemingly expand consciousnesses.

At 1 minute and 15 seconds as camera tilts further up the white building, the white of the church symbolises purity which religion may offer however, the dirt and growth of wild plants symbolises the growing separation of the law and religious beliefs. This shows the audience that the teenagers who're under the influence of the drug, LSD, show a clear example of their disregard for the law and religion, the two foundations which gives society boundaries of what people can and cannot do.

As the camera moves into the sunlight which creates a lens flare, this connotes that as the teenagers are reaching the peak of their high, they are moving more towards the light.
This is used for the next transition shot.  The non diegetic sound of a woman reciting part of the bible, Matthew 13:23, which then transitions into diegetic sound. This is because, we see a low angle shot of the young woman preaching, in the church grounds. The use of the low angle shot shows that religion is more in power over society. This can also be perceived as the young woman taking power over the viewers (audience), becoming victims to the religious preachings.

The contrast between the before and after of taking drugs is that the edit of the cutting speed and the diegetic sound becomes disorientated. The disorientation of the editing and the sound becomes confusing and makes the viewer feel the intensity of the drug, which also makes the viewer feel as if they are there and as if it is real. It also helps the scene as the viewers can understand the reality and intensity of taking drugs, but they also understand how dangerous it could be to be under the influence. The quick cuts later in the scene, adds more layers of understanding to the viewers as the other layers adds an induced haze into the scene which creates visual aspects of the high. The natural lighting combined with the sights and sounds inspires an empathetic response that encourages the user to feel and experience the way the characters are feeling.