Michael Chapman's Montage Influence

Michael Chapman's 
Montage Influence

During Raging Bull there is a deliberate departure from its black and white, practical lighting style for the montage scene where colour and natural lighting is used. As later events unfold it is clear that the montage was showing the peak in Jake LaMotta’s life and the insert of colours and natural lighting was used to make it all the more meaningful. Another interesting aspect to point out is Michael Chapman’s decision to lower the picture quality by clearly using an older camera. This gives the desired effect of an old home video.

With this montage as my inspiration and Michael Chapman as a major influence, the assignment brief further convinced me to replicate a similar scene; “using different technologies (VHS/Film/Super 8) to discover other cinematic visual communications”. As such the home video scenes were filmed.

I’m a firm believer of practicality and for this reason I chose to purchase an older camera as oppose to lowering the footage quality in an editing software. The camera used was a 90’s Panasonic M10 that recorded on videocassettes. The reason I chose this particular camera was because it was cost effective, £50, could be delivered immediately and most importantly for the results it would produce. Thankfully there were many test video's of the camera on youtube which displayed the low quality I was looking for.

No doubt due to its age the battery would only last a few seconds meaning it had to be on constant charge. The features were very limiting however the lens did allow for a zoom in making the footage all the more home video like. During the editing I purposely made the footage jump irregularly from shot to shot to give it the amateur feel that is present in Raging Bull.

For these shots also, only natural lighting was used and the camera was obviously hand held, giving it an unprofessional feel. For the boxing match scene I had no control over the practical lights that were being used, however to diminish their effect I had a seat further back from the ring so that the practical lights weren’t so obvious.

The biggest difference between my montage and Michael Chapman’s however is the colour change. This I found unavoidable, reason being that there are moments where both the present and home video footage are in the same shot. 

Getting around this would have meant the room being in black and white with the footage being displayed on the TV being in colour which would have completely diminished the Michael Chapman style and would have instead seemed more like Sin City. Not to mention it is Gordon Willis's dark style I'm aiming for, not black and white.

Instead the decision was made to omit the tinted yellow colour from the home video scenes. This refers back to Gordon Willis who in Godfather II uses the colour yellow to help differentiate between the two time periods. Here I have the yellow tint for the present and no tint for the home videos. I did however darken the footage to keep that Willis tone which is present throughout the short film.

Overall I was pleased with the Panasonic M10 for it’s quality contrast to the Canon 550d. Not only this but it created an interesting segment for the narrative. If I were to go back and redo this I would have perhaps tested more with practical lighting to see the results produce on M10.