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 Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 1:06 pm
Setting up a time to meet with Shale for the promised coffee-and-movie probably-not-a-date had been a bit of an adventure at least partially because it had involved Shale's brother. Being greeted with "country morgue, you kill 'em we chill 'em how may I help you" had been...well, it had been interesting - but he couldn't help but feel a degree of kinship to any younger brother who gave his older sibling s**t. God knew he'd done plenty of that to Tobias. Continued to do so, occasionally, if given the opportunity.
But eventually the phone had gotten to Shale, and they'd made plans to met at a nice little coffee shop not too far off campus, and within reasonable distance of both an arthouse and a more traditional theater, depending on what Shale's preference of movie might be. Rhys had already claimed a table for two, and had his drink of choice - an Earl Gray tea - steeping on the table next to him.
Just because this wasn't a traditional date didn't mean he shouldn't treat it like one - arrive early, save a table, make an effort to look good.Strickenized somewhat tiny start for you
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 2:20 pm
Despite slate's interference, the phone call itself with smoothly - no excess small talk beyond what seemed a cultural necessity, and the details were discussed in haste. Shale dressed shortly thereafter - some grunge-looking tee in dirtied tan with fairly shredded jeans that Porsha found more fashionable on him. Part of his leg tattoo peeked through the holes, but he paid it little heed. Slate offered him a wink shortly before Shale departed, to which he raised an eyebrow, but no further comment.
The day proved blustery, and Shale regretted his decision to leave the jacket at home. The ponytail wasn't of much help for warmth, but in pulling out the elastic that tamed his hair, he created an entirely different problem in how it whipped about his face. Shale sighed through his nose; the day angled toward misfortunes.
By the time he reached the arranged location, a small cafe not terribly far from the university itself, Shale's hair gained free reign of his shoulders and back. Luckily the 'windswept' look hardly differed from his hair's normal monstrous inclinations. Rhys, on the other hand, looked well put together with hair braided impeccably, glasses in place, and outfit coordinated to show care and intention. The presence of beverage by his hand prompted Shale to check the time on his leather watch, finding himself a minute early.
"Decided to come sooner?" He asked, pulling out one of the wrought-iron chairs to take a seat. The lack of cushioning felt both familiar and comfortable. He reclined almost immediately, elbow propped on the armrest and hand fisted to accommodate his chin. "Or were you working on studies here and just arranged for a break?" Shale saw no books or backpack, but those might've been delivered to the home before he elected to try the on-the-spot teaching method. Shale was interested to learn of his studies regardless - the intentions behind film offered him another window into the culture of Destiny City, and more means by which he could blend into the background. Any opportunity to look less like an awkward transplant was received favorably by the hunter.
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 8:55 pm
Rhys looked up, and greeted Shale with a purposely charming smile. "Oh, no, I just prefer to be early. Sort of a habit," he said, pulling his cup over to check on the steeping status. "You didn't have any trouble getting here, did you?"
He took a moment to appreciate that "windblown" really did suit Shale; there were few people it looked good on, but he was one of them, apparently. He could have enjoyed the view all day - "unkempt punk" was a very, very good look on him - but there was a line, eventually, where it got creepy, and so instead of staring he reverted his attention to Shale's face.
"You look good," he said, a sincere complement. "Was there anything specifically you wanted to start with? Or would you prefer to get a drink before we get into the educational aspects of the afternoon?" Giving him an opportunity to get settled - which would also give Rhys an opportunity to add cream and sugar to his tea.
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 9:40 pm
"It was no more trouble than usual to get here." Half the sidewalks were closed for digging to piping and performing needful maintenance. The streets were clogged with cars as a result, and drivers impatient from waiting didn't bother to let him zigzag his way through the open sidewalks. After two different drivers nearly pancaked him in the street he resorted to a detour, which involved cutting through a particularly posh and reserved business center whose employees eyed him like a felon at large until he exited the building, and security nearly flagged him down for questioning once he left.
Really I just need to stop trying to get to this part of town. Or power up just to avoid all the fiascos.
Shale found himself grasping for a socially acceptable response to the compliment before settling on the cop-out "you as well". It wasn't untrue - Rhys' dressing habits commanded genuine attention from passersby as well as himself - but Shale still struggled with some basic cultural commonalities and relied on equally common crutches to carry him through awkward conversation. Afterward he started picking at his shredded jeans, each finger prodding absently into the holes to trace ink or scarification. Sometimes his leather bracelets threatened to slip off in the process. He found no reason to mind; silence wasn't always uncomfortable, and Rhys might recognize his lack of experience with the culture. He hoped so, at least.
Shale intended to reply that a drink would suffice, but a dirty blonde waiter with hair spiked and smile studded with a single monroe swung by for orders. Already on the spot, Shale opted for water as his drink of choice while the waiter slunk away, somehow disappointed that he didn't order a mocha latte frappuccino with soy milk, half a twist of lemon and a cherry on the side.
Luckily for him, water meant no excuse to keep the customer's thirst quenched for as long as he was on duty. The waiter issued the glass, an acrylic plastic worn somewhat dingy with dishwasher scrapes, and in it he poured fresh ice water from a matching pitcher. He thanked the man before he left.
"I suppose it's easier to talk about some of the basics while we're here. Some of the basic terminology I just don't have - like what a 'cut' is, or why stages are somehow tied into theater. And I'd like to know how frames are important in a film." Shale's gaze settled on Rhys while he spoke. "Ultimately it's your decision of what you want to teach."Noir Songbird sorry if this is derpy i am tired
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Posted: Tue May 05, 2015 12:32 am
Watching Shale struggle to find a response to his complement was actually sort of cute. Rhys had picked up on the man's social awkwardness - it was hard to miss - and so he was happy to give allowances for companionable silence over trying to force him to chat when he was uncomfortable. Instead, he carefully spooned the tea bag out of his cup, and added milk and sugar, stirring idly. Once it was mixed to his satisfaction, he took a sip, and he made a brief pleased little hum.
It was probably silly, but a cup of the right kind of tea reminded him of home. It was mostly food and drink that could do that; everything else felt like a pale imitation, but there weren't too many ways to ******** up Twining's Earl Grey.
Once drinks were out of the way - though he did feel a bit bad for Shale, because being asked to order seemed to have put him a bit on the spot - Rhys found himself almost unconsciously scooting forward and leaning in excitedly. He was, in essence, being asked to talk about one of the things he loved most - there was no way not to be a little excited.
"Start from the very basics, then," he said. That was easy enough. "A frame is, in essence, like a photograph - a single instant on film. But when we speak of framing, that refers to how the shot is set up - what elements are included and what aren't, how close or far away the camera is, what angle things are being filmed from. It's the presentation of all the visual bits in the image. A 'cut' is what happens when shots get edited together - you don't film a while movie all in one go. If you're interested in seeing what can be done with clever editing, I'd recommend watching anything directed by Alfred Hitchcock; he was a master of technique and a genius for suspense, and if he weren't so talented an editor his movies wouldn't be half as worthwhile. As for how it all applies to theater..." Rhys sat back, as if he suddenly realized what he was doing.
"One can almost think of theater as a movie performed in a single take, with no opportunity for any sort of editing. There aren't a lot of options for do-overs in front of a live audience." He laughed, a little. "There's plenty of crossover in stories, too - Shakespeare's plays have been adapted a thousand times in a thousand ways, and conversely I can think of at least one movie that was later made into a stage musical."Strickenized /rambles on forever about movie s**t oops
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Posted: Tue May 05, 2015 8:42 am
Shale settled into plucking each ice cube from his drink and setting them atop the wrought-iron table while Rhys delineated some of the basics to film and framing. He arranged them in a circle, initially, but rearranged the pieces into a loose square that fit more fully with Rhys' topics. Afterward he set his glass in the center of the ice-square and settled into watching the man speak, observing his mannerisms and the way he spoke with his hands when animated about the discussion. Shale himself settled into pulling his legs up to crossed on the chair while he listened. His fingers continued to serpentine through the fabric strips, then curled to test the tension that the jeans would tolerate.
"I see. And all these intentional framings are supposed to augment the viewer's perception of the scene, right?" He remember Rhys saying at least that much about studying film. "And these cuts are only supposed to keep the film proceeding at pace, or are they a part of manipulating a viewer's perception too?" If cuts were required regardless, it made little sense to Shale to avoid using them in this intention of filmmaking business. It wouldn't be that different from hunting. Cuts are as integral as moving through the woods - and I've always chosen where to step depending on my intentions. Opting for silence, or choosing to break twigs underfoot to disturb the creatures I don't need. And if I could manipulate necessities like that, then why should a cut be left as solely for function? I'm sure there are points that are more poignant when cut a particular way.
His sudden shift from animated to relaxed left Shale watching him with a lidded, inquisitive gaze. And what was that all about? He offered no comment on it while Rhys launched into equating theater and film, which offered its own questions that didn't involve interrogating the man over his body language. "And there's framing involved in theater too? Even if cuts aren't?" Theater sounded immediately more difficult than film, given the lack of room for error.
Shale took a sip of his water, still too cold for his taste, and returned it to the table with his fingers still poised over the rim of the glass. "Do you think that, watching any given film, you could accurately predict the director's intentions in making the film as it is? I did some research before I came, and there's a theater down on Couch and Third that plays some older movies in small-scale rooms. It sounded less busy than the ones playing new releases, so I figured we could talk through a movie without disturbing anyone. The Joy Theater, I think it's called? You could explain some of the decisions if you were interested."
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Posted: Tue May 05, 2015 11:04 pm
Having Shale as an interested student was encouraging – he genuinely seemed engaged in the material, and that was more than Rhys could ask for from anyone. It was also nice to imagine that he was actually an engaging teacher, but it was probably more likely the material itself. Turning a critical eye to media most just consumed was a worthwhile and fascinating exercise.
“Yes, exactly,” he said. “The way a shot is framed is designed to make you pay attention to certain things – or not pay attention to other things, sometimes. Cuts are the same way – they advance a story, but you tell a different story with a sharp cut from one scene to the next than you do with one that flows together.” He had caught himself gesticulating, and ordinarily he might have started trying to rein it in – but Shale didn’t seem to be bothered, and it wasn’t as if he was making the big sweeping hand motions he had to onstage. So rather than focus on constraining his own body language, he paid attention instead to Shale’s; he didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone carefully remove the ice from a glass before, and he filed it with the number of fascinating oddities he’d observed about the other man. He wondered, not for the first time since meeting him, where exactly Shale had come from. What kind of life had he led before coming to Destiny City?
Probably something a thousand times more interesting than “aristocratic London trust fund baby.”
“What we put on stage and what we don’t, where the actors stand in relation to each other and to the audience, yes, all of that is framing in theater the way one would frame a shot in film.” Rhys acknowledged. “If I’m on stage with another actor and we’re facing each other, we’re probably going to be interacting – but if instead we’re at opposite corners of the stage and facing out, convention is that what we’re saying is most likely for the audience’s ears and our characters can’t hear each other despite being in the same physical space.” He clicked his tongue briefly. “You see a lot less of that in films, where you can use a voice-over for a character’s thoughts, or simply cut between the two scenes one way or another. A lot of the conventions of live theater stop being necessary when you can make use of the editing room.”
The presented opportunity to go to a quieter, smaller theater, and see a classic instead of whatever happened to be playing in the more modern theaters, was legitimately exciting. “I’m not sure I could predict with perfect accuracy, and it’d be a bit like cheating if it was something I’d seen before, but yes – I would love to do that. It sounds perfect for what we’re looking for. I’d love to go.”
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Posted: Wed May 06, 2015 5:54 am
"I think I'd need to see an example to understand it fully." Shale processed the purposefulness behind framing well enough, but it only ever amounted to abstract information unless he could apply it in real time. Even if Rhys wanted to inundate him with examples, though, Shale figured he would listen nonetheless - the peculiar accent he held rendered words unique and interesting again. The difference between Shale's pronunciation of after and Rhys' after felt worlds apart. And perhaps they were. "I've watched a handful of films over my lifetime - most in the past few months. I hadn't thought about framing enough to even internalize a memory of it." And if Rhys was right, he was probably one of many in that instance.
Shale's hands cupped around the glass, the perspiration coating his skin. Why must everything arrive iced? "I went to a play with someone once, and saw exactly what you mentioned. I wondered what the purpose was." Now he knew - the awkward declarations spoken with backs turned to one another were supposed to be inner monologue. Shale figured he wouldn't have deduced that unless someone spelled it out for him on the spot. How many others sitting in that audience didn't recognize it? Perhaps none at all; it's very possible that plays are much ingrained in this culture, and that most recognize the cues and conventions. Even movies held a great deal of questions for him, somewhat answered by Rhys' own explanations. Had anyone else in the theater encountered a great deal of confusion with cuts? In one moment, he watched a girl interact with her mother, and a split second later, her face takes up the entire screen. Shale found it incredibly bizarre.
"Neither convention seem like a natural understanding." He removed one hand from the glass and sampled his water, finding its temperature more to taste. After a long swig, he retired the glass to its ice housing and continued. "For example, you see a... Piece of ice, let's say." He took one of the cubes and placed it between the two men, on the center of the table. "You know you can interact with it. Reach out and touch it. Experience tells you it'll be wet, and it might melt in your hand. You know it's light. You know you can throw it if you wanted to. No one needs to explain these to you because you inferred them on your own, based on experiments done as a child, right? But film and theater aren't the same way.
"With both, I need the basics explained to me because they're not entirely natural. Sort of like how each language has colloquialisms that don't always make sense - you're not going to figure it out on your own unless someone can give you the answers. Once you're exposed to it, then you can probably make inferences about similar instances, but you need that cipher to continue." Having that cipher - Rhys, in this case - left him eager to finally puzzle out the foreign language of films that felt so utterly lost on him.
"We should go when you're done, then. You haven't touched your tea much." His gaze darted to the cup to make a point of it.
Another sip, and he continued. "Is there anything else you can think of that I should know?"
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Posted: Wed May 06, 2015 5:00 pm
Rhys nodded. "I can talk at you all afternoon, but until you're actually watching something with a mind towards noticing these things, it's all talk. It's why half or more of any film studies class is...well, watching films. We can talk about genre and conventions and tropes but theory is theory, and it requires practice." He agreed. "And if you don't know to look, or aren't aware of its importance, why would you notice?" There was absolutely no judgement in his voice. He paid attention because he'd been trained to - likely there were things Shale was familiar with that he was as utterly lost on as Shale had been about the nuances of stage and screen.
To someone unexposed to film or to theater, as Shale apparently was, the conventions that Rhys had taken for granted for his entire "career" as an actor must have seemed unaccountably strange. It was fascinating to hear it explained from an outside perspective - most of the people he spent time with, discussed with, were as familiar as he was, or moreso. It was rare that he considered how unusual and unnatural some of the things done on stage were, because to him, they weren't strange at all.
"Comparing it to a foreign language isn't all that off," he said, "or to a foreign country with its own odd culture. And different types of theater have different conventions and expectations; no one goes to a musical and asks why everyone in the world of the play knows all the songs unless it's totally new to you. Which, I imagine, it would be." A slightly playful smile lit across Rhys's face. "I'm happy to play translator for you. I don't think I've ever really gotten to watch someone figure all this out for the first time."
With attention called to his rather forgotten drink, he looked faintly embarrassed for a moment, before reaching over to pick up the cup and take a sip.
"The conversation was so interesting, I forgot about it," he said. "But I think we've covered most of the basics - anything else would be getting into genre and conventions, and a lot of those are best seen in action."
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Posted: Thu May 07, 2015 8:10 am
At least Rhys was willing and able to put himself in Shale's shoes absent judgment. Film proved a popular medium with the number of theaters dotting the area, and with Shale's recent dive into a shell of a theater, he found fresh interest in visiting that portion of the culture. And hopefully youma found no reason to prowl the halls of working theaters - though it would not surprise him if he and Rhys encountered such a setback. Youma, he found, were entirely pervasive creatures that often complicated his life outside of the Negaverse.
"This place is a foreign country," he muttered just loud enough for Rhys to pick up on. Afterward he took a sip of his slightly warmed water, finding it more palatable. "It sounds like there's a lot more to it than just play and film. Am I to assume there's different conventions for each genre of film, too?" If that were the case, then just one movie couldn't lend him the needed experience to understand cultural connections to film. Understanding it was an undertaking - he needed to spend several hours digesting material before he might begin to catch the movie phrases woven into daily life in the city, or cultural references made through films. Considering that Rhys made a career of it, Shale expected that he already devoted countless hours to perusing film and play, or he planned to do so for the rest of his life.
Watching his companion's mannerisms left him curious - the man seemed reserved, mostly, but perked when the topic of film and theater entered the equation. While his animated gestures didn't seem entirely intentional, he seemed almost taken aback by them - like they offended him somehow. Shale reminded himself that he might be reading too far into body language, or jumping inferences that might not mean the same in a culture like this. But embarrassment and a self-critical eye both seemed so universal.
Shale straightened up and drained the last of the water. Picking up the remaining ice cubes came afterward, while he loaded them back into the cup. The droplets that stained the concrete below formed a darkened ring on the ground with a swell on one portion of the circle, and it faintly reminded him of ouroboros. "You're probably right." His gaze lit on Rhys once more, studying him. "Whenever you're ready. I still have the directions."
To see a movie... He hadn't ever watched one for its entire length before. He wondered if sitting still for that long was even possible, when not naked and sprawled across a stage.
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