Director Research: Lars Von Trier

Director Research: Lars Von Trier

Lars Von Trier is the second direcotr I chose to look at as part of my Directions unit research. Von Trier has his own unique and individual style that is fasinating to look at and I beleive may proove to be a successful influence to my project.

Although he has had quite a reasonable sized film career, I will be looking at two of his films in particuler. Those being "Dancer In The Dark" (2000) and "Melancholia" (2011). 

Lars Von Trier has had a long running career and has produced a number of films to fair success yet devided opinion. Von Trier was quoted as being "one of the most ambitious and visually distinctive filmmakers to emerge from Denmar". Howver some people love his films (because of their dark twists and meaningful undertones), where as some people don't like them either becasue they got lost in the plot or don't enjoy the dark tists, or simply because they find his unique approach to film making hard to watch. 

Von Trier has been developing his style and approach to film making for a long time, he went to a dansih film school, and worked hard to get his shot at film making. Although he worked on a number of films as well as the odd TV show but his first successful work is often consodered to be "Breaking The Waves" (1996) closely followed by "Dancer In The Dark" (2000).

While the cinimatography and overall theme's of his film can be quite extravigent, he can also easilly pull off down to earth plausable stories that people can relate to and tug at the heart strings. This is mostly becasue Von Trier often writes/directs a film from personal experiences he has had. "Dancer In The Dark" Is a great example of how he can create a very down to earth, raw gritty film that emukates real life, while at the same time has fantasy elemnts and will get you reaching for the tissues. "Dancer in The Dark" Follows one womans saddening decent in to blindness as she desperatly tries to work and save for the money to save her son from the dame fate. As a result we get a large amount of close up's in thisfilm so that we as an audience feel as close to the characters as possible. We only really break in to wide shots when the character breaks in to song. In my project I intend to keep my film heavilly character focussed once the setting has been established, which is something hitchcock liked to do as well. 

The camera in Dancer In The Dark was mainly handheld as it tracked the main character alsomst on a constant basis. In terms of blocking a scene Von Trier liked to keep things as naturalistic as possible, like real life the character would tend to stay on one level most of the time until th eneed arose for them to move. The soundtarck was also very minimalistoc and instead of using external music to play in the background; Von Trier would keep the scene very dialouge focussed and the main non diegetic sound would simply be enhancements of what you could naturally hear (e.g. birds if outside, footsteps if walking, machineary if in the factory etc). And when the character broke in to song Von Trier chose to continue to use theese elements as part of the soundtrack, simply forming them in to rhythmic patterns that the character could sing to. The shots changed with the beat of the song and we would move in to rhythmic editing which is a trait often seen in Von Trier films. I hope to be able to emulate some of theese techniques such as the enhanced natural sound instead of soundtrack in scenes of mass dialouge. As well as using rythmic or other editing techniques to cut the shot when it feels most natural.

In "Melancholia" we have great characterisation, something Von Trier is known for bringing out in hos cast. Mostly because he directs from personal experience. In the film the main character slowly sinks in to a state of depression which in an interveiw Von Trier stated is something he has suffered with himself. This is why he could make it so beleivable, and uses slow zooms fades and gental cuts to metap simulate the characters lack of high spirits and slow gental slip/decent in to depression.

I hope to be able to use techniques such as zooms and fades to fit the mood and pace of my scene. Wehn directing I will also give my cast a detailed explanation of how theor character is feeling at all times, so that they can give the most effectove performance possible.

Finally in terms of technocalities and mise en scene, Von Trier is known for hos effective use of lighting. No more is this present than in "Melancholia". As the characters mental state changes and she becomes depressed yet bissarly obsessed with this strange planet that approaches closer and closer to the earth each day. We see the lighting of the film go from bright yellow and white (just after the characters marrige when she is at the peak of her happiness), to a more deep and gental blue (demonstrating how she becomes much more docile and depressed, caught up in her own thoughts and obsessions about the approaching planet).

I hope to be able to use coloured lighting filters similar to Von Trier in order to help my audince understand the current mental state of my characters. As well as the techniques I picked up on earlier.