Amber_Films

The Amber Film workshop combined drama and documentary forms and conventions of representation to tell the story of a real group of people. Using one film example from one of the filmmakers whose work has been screened in this unit, undertake a close textual analysis of the film to demonstrate how the filmmaker’s choice of subject matter has influenced the formal qualities of their work. Drama is defined within the dictionary as “A prose or verse composition, especially one telling a serious story, that is intended for representation by actors impersonating the characters and performing the dialogue and action.” (Drama, 2003) Documentary, within the same dictionary, is described as: “A work, such as a film or television program, presenting political, social, or historical subject matter in a factual and informative manner and often consisting of actual news films or interviews accompanied by narration.” (Documentaries, 2003) When these two genres are combined, it creates a new type of film, known commonly as a Drama Documentary. It combines the codes and conventions of both usually by portraying a real life event in realistic ways, though everything is scripted. It is this genre for which Amber Films is most famous. “Sometimes, the ways in which the images and sounds were produced will not distinguish sharply between a fictional film and a documentary. Documentaries may include shots of prearranged or staged events, while fiction can incorporate unstaged material.” (Bordwell and Thompson, 2006) Amber Films was formed in 1968 from a meeting of film students who wanted to create films with a deep sense of social realism. On the Amber Online site, they have an excerpt from the Daily Telegraph describing the Amber Collective as “a co-operative too devoted to equality to acknowledge the existence of a director or cameraman.” (Amber Films, 2006) The above quote highlights what is most interesting about the Amber Collective. They believe that all the roles should be merged and every crew member should take on multiple roles. Equality is the key to Amber filmmaking, with the director having no more authority than the cameraman. This unique way of working produced many great pieces of work which will be remembered for years to come. The Amber Collective started by making short films such as All You Need is Dynamite (1968) and Byker (1983) along with many others. It was in 1985 however that Amber Films finally made its first feature length film, Seacoal (1985). It is based around, like many Amber films, a true story about a group of people. In this case it follows “seacoalers” who dig up coal from the seashore as it is washed in. They live in caravans in an almost gypsy-like community. The film portrays this in a typical Amber way. What is interesting to analyse is the way that Seacoal (1985) uses documentary codes and conventions within a drama film. Every formal technique is made to be very realistic from the cinematography to the editing. There are no complex methods used, everything is kept simple therefore drawing the audience in to “experience” what life might have been as a seacoaler. It was directed by Murray Martin, though he was uncredited due to the equality present within the Amber Collective. The amazing story behind the filmmaking of Seacoal (1985) was the circumstances in which the Amber Company chose to make it. Instead of using a set and all actors, they chose very much a unique way of experiencing their subject matter. They found a real seacoaling community and decided to live there for 11 months along with the real people and film amongst them. This benefits the film greatly as it means everything has a realistic and documentary-like feel, helping the genre they are portraying of “drama documentary”. Apart from the main family, nearly everyone else in the community was a true life seacoaler. They had no scripts; they just interacted with the actors like they would which each other, leading to scenes with very naturalistic emotions and dialogue. It also makes the film feel very spontaneous, which is a complicated thing to achieve, though extremely rewarding. Because of the Amber Collective’s way of working, one of the mains codes of any film, the mise-en-scene is affected too. The art department for the Amber Collective would not have had to dress the sets at all because it was all there for real. This means the mise-en-scene works perfectly with the genre to portray the life as a seacoaler in a dark, gritty light. There are no nice locations; their living conditions are dank and nasty. Even the props in the caravan look old and used. The mise-en-scene within Seacoal (1985) helps the audience to gain more emotions into everything they see. If it looked false and new, the cinematic experience of portraying a seacoaler would be lost. But with this film, the formal technique employed by Amber once again helps to make the film stronger and more realistic. The cinematography within Seacoal (1985) also feels naturalistic and real. The camera man most likely set up shots quickly rather than spending time sorting out the exposure and focus and more. What this brings to the film is that documentary feeling of “pick up and shoot” as you would when trying to document any community like this one. On the crew listings for the film, it only credits a single camera man, Peter Woodhouse. It is surprising for a feature film not to have a full camera team, but this is probably due to Amber Collective’s method of working. Instead of a camera team, everybody most likely will have helped in any way that the main camera man wanted to. It also means that everyone would get to choose how the film looks, rather than a single person. All of these techniques have been tried and tested in the past, but it was Amber Collective that used them to shape the film into a unique, realistic and sometimes hard to watch experience. The narrative is an interesting thing to analyse too. It does not offer any form of major plot development. It is a basic formed narrative with a beginning where they become seacoalers, a middle in which they practice seacoaling and an end where they give up seacoaling. There is little room for plot development, and surprisingly not a lot of character development either. The film simply explores life as a seacoaler in its most basic form. The audience follows a single family and how they cope within their new environment. Actors are occasionally used for minor characters, such as the DHSS Investigator, but they never affect the main story. “The craft of editing consists of choosing between two or more takes of the same shot, deciding how long each shot should last and how it should be punctuated, and matching the soundtrack carefully with the edited images.” (James Monaco, 2000) The editing within Seacoal (1985) doesn’t employ any special formal techniques to emphasise the subject matter that it is portraying. The editor, Ellin Hare could have chosen to portray the life as a seacoaler as a frantic job, using fast shots and jump cuts to make the audience feel the difficulty of the job. She doesn’t however do this. Many of the shots are very long. The editing is rarely noticeable. Simple cuts are used to get from one scene to the next. There is only ever a singular narrative, not multiple ones for various people all occurring at the same time. Many critics may look upon this as a waste, and that the editing could have been used to a far greater effect. There are alternatives though into what Hare wanted to portray. The cinematography as mentioned earlier gives off the feeling that you are actually there. The style is fly on the wall, and the film is stronger because of this. Ellin Hare has chosen to slow the pace of the film, and therefore each shot can be more admired. If the film was cut quickly, the audience would lose a sense of the location. By doing a simple and streamlined edit, every single shot of the film can be viewed in the same way that someone may view a photograph. It gives the audience time to sit back, relax and watch the situation unfold. Scenes such as the one where Ray confronts his wife within their caravan due to her not being happy are done in a single take. By Hare not cutting away, the audience get to watch the dialogue between the couple in a very natural way. If reaction shots had been cut in, the scene would have felt more forced. It is this depth within everything the Amber Collective does that makes their films so unique and sets them apart from a normal drama film. Every scene within each of their films feels realistic and not done through a forced storyline. The other main convention within all films is the use of sound. The Amber Collective doesn’t stray far from documentary again. There is a serious lack of music. Music adds emotion to any scene, but removing it can help in ways too. It can become a distraction, which is exactly what Seacoal (1985) doesn’t need. With the non-use of music, it once again gives the impression that you are watching a fly on the wall documentary about seacoaling, rather than a heavily manipulated feature film forcing you to feel certain emotions at certain times. The sound actually isn’t very good in Seacoal (1985), and is one of the few things that it truly faults it. Dialogue isn’t recorded clearly enough, often leaving the audience confused at what they are talking about, or what is going on. It may however have been an actual decision to show how badly they speak, but may not have been as successful as the Amber Collective would have hoped. In a review of Seacoal (1985), the journalist perfectly describes the Amber Collective’s methods and how they make you feel: “There’s something about Amber’s films which is somehow more authentic. The combination of 16mm film stock, the mixture of professional and non-professional actors, the unashamed use of documentary devices, the reliance of improvisatory methods and the collective’s own embedding within the communities they are recording all add up to cinema you can practically taste such is the realism.” (Nield, 2008) In conclusion, the Amber Collective is a fascinating company to look at and analyse. They have perfectly blended the genres of drama and documentary to give audiences an extremely realistic depiction of certain people’s lives. It is due mainly to the manipulation of codes and conventions from both documentary and drama films that have been mixed perfectly to give the audience a viewpoint in which to look at life in a different way. The Amber Collective is still going to this day, and still offers this unique experience and probably still will for years to come. WORDS : 2043 BIBLIOGRAPHY AND FILMOGRAPHY All You Need is Dynamite. Directed by Murray Martin. 1968. Great Britain. Bordwell, David and Thompson, Kristin. (2006). Film Art: An Introduction. 8th ed. London: McGraw-Hill. Byker. Directed by Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen. 1983. Great Britain. Documentaries. Definition 1. (2003) The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. 4th ed. Houghton Mifflin Company. Monaco, James. (2000). How to Read a Film: Movies, Media, Multimedia. 3rded. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seacoal. Directed by Murray Martin. 1985. Great Britain.