Jonathan Melville: Indie films could mean it's curtains for Movie Speak

Published on Friday 15 May 2009 09:02

A LOOK at what's on at Edinburgh cinemas over the coming week.

"Give me two Ts or a cowboy with the Jack Lord and make sure the BG is visible as you pan. Maybe we'll make that a one-er, so just banana left."

Confused? Unless you've spent time on a film set, you probably should be.

We all know a smattering of film-making terminology – outtakes, steadicams and trailers aren't too mysterious. But get a bit deeper into the "secret code" of the filmmaker, as described by director Tony Bill in new book Movie Speak, and things start to get more bizarre.

With low-budget filmmaking on the rise and the internet providing a cheap platform for distributing video clips via sites such as YouTube, Bill argues that there's a danger the code will be less understood by those wanting to step, fully formed, onto a Hollywood set.

Even if you're not planning to become the next Spielberg, there are some fascinating snippets of information in the book.

Take that opening sentence. Two Ts refers to a shot framed from the chest up; a Jack Lord is a 50mm lens (named after the star of cult 1960s TV show Hawaii Five-O); BG is the background and a pan refers to a slow camera move. Finally, a one-er means one continuous shot and a banana is when an actor walks either towards or away from the camera in a curved path.

And those are some of the more sensible terms used.

Ever seen Gaffers or Best Boys mentioned in the credits of a film? The former is the head electrician while the latter is the second-in-command of an electrical department.

They might at some point have a chat to the film's Rembrandt (on-set painter) and will inevitably have to visit the Honeywagon (the crew's portable toilet truck) a few times.

Away from the printed page, while the technical aspects of film-making might not be the most exciting topic for a film, behind-the-scenes Hollywood has been captured on-screen in all its backstabbing glory in a handful of must-see films, all available on DVD.

Robert Altman's The Player (1992) starred Tim Robbins as Griffin Mill, a studio executive being blackmailed by a writer whose script he rejected. Film politics and sleaze form the backdrop for the picture, a number of famous faces showing up to parody their industry's image.

Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950) and David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001) also show a tarnished Hollywood where death and loss of personality are commonplace, neither of them particularly encouraging to the aspiring filmmaker.

One other fact I've taken away from Bill's book concerns the origin of the infamous phrase "Lights, Camera, Action . . ."

It turns out the expression is never actually spoken on film sets, and probably never has been. It's a throwback to a time when it took time for arc lights to warm up – there would have been at least a few minutes between the first two requests.

All that's left to say this week is . . . that's a wrap.

Movie Speak is released on Monday, priced 6.99

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