Click here to return to the main site. Battlestar Galactica: Sight and Sound![]() Just like the best of written science fiction, Galactica is open to many interpretations, its combination of the purely visual and metaphysical and its exploration of cosmology and ontology made for a rich brew which attempted to explore the religious and philosophical monoliths which at the same time unite and divide us as a race. A contextual or deterministic examination of the show would fill a book. However, over the course of three articles, Charles Packer hopes to give a glimpse of where Galactica came from, its reflection on what it is to be human and the technical tricks it used along the way...
This language grew out of the silent age, when often technical limitations precluded the use of deep focus lenses or the swooping shots with which we are now familiar. The earliest Lumiere brothers films may look quaint now, but those first shots of a train coming into a station had audiences ducking. As film makers progressed different styles both artistic and technical started to appear. Galactica is a product of those hundred odd years of visual development and in this last article I propose to take a look at some of the key concepts of film making and editing so that you can apply them the next time you watch an episode to enhance your enjoyment and impress the hell out of your friends.
The idea of dividing fiction into genres is an important one as it allows the study of a particular cultural artefact and the various influences acting upon it. There are two general approaches to studying film and television. The first approach is Functional; this sees the story of having a much wider reference to the society which created it, a form of social commentary, which highlights the concerns of the socioeconomic and political background to their creation. Although the various concerns change through the decades, as we saw in the second of these articles science fiction has dealt with, amongst others, the fear of communist infiltration (Invasion of the Body Snatchers. 1956); Ecological disaster (Soylent Green. 1973. The Day the Earth Stood Still. 2008) as well as the creation of artificial life (Frankenstein. 1931). In this sense the film becomes a shared cultural experience, reflecting back the society from which it was born. Galactica was not above using a science fiction show as a basis for social commentary; in fact, it was an important element in the overall character driven drama.
Realistically, any examination of a show or film will have to take a both approaches, allowing the show to be both a product of its genre history and as a product of the society which created it. This way of looking at the show not only extends to the themes and concepts which it wishes to include but also how it is physically created. It may be like stating the obvious, but everything you see on the screen is a fabrication, the costumes the sets, the script and the characters. When you're reading a piece like this restating this may seem a little insulting, but then how many time have you been drawn into a fictional world and never thought about how its constructed? Like any other art form film has its own language and that language of shot type and editing gives birth to the programme's structure.
When you look at the screen everything which exists in the fictional world is called the diegesis which encompasses the whole of the shows narrative structure, which can be further broken down into the mise-en-scène and the mise-en-shot, both of which exist in a box. If you study the shot from Flight of the Phoenix you can see that there exists a space between the background and the camera where the action can be made to move away or towards the audience, there also exist the possibility of characters or objects entering the scene from either left or right. You, as the viewer occupy the space where, if this were a box, the forth wall would exist. Sometimes the structure of the shot may appear random, after all there is no obvious symmetry in the shot from the Flight of the Phoenix, but at other times, such as the establishing shot for Caprica’s introduction, the whole shot including the scenery is translated into a symmetry which forces the viewer attention towards the centre of the screen. This use of the set to focus the audience onto a particular area is also used in the introductory shot of princess Leia in Star Wars, which uses symmetrical shapes on either side of the shot to frame the princess and R2D2.
Mise-en-scène covers everything which has been placed in the scene for you to look at. Remember that none of it represents random junk, but is the result of careful thought by the set designer, costumer, lighting director and the director, who chooses whom to show and how to place the actors. Not all that you see in the scene will have a special significance, but none of it is a random collection of objects which combine to represent a specific reality. Only documentaries attempt to reproduce our reality, and although the reality within the Mise-en-scène is a fiction its various elements must work together to persuade us that we are seeing something real. Sometimes shots are constructed due to budgetary limitations and in the days before CGI the angle of the shots would be dictated as much by cost, for example the production could only afford to build the set to a specific height.
So once you have your environment and the cast of characters, the director has to decide how to shoot this to get their desired effect. Mise-en-shot is the process by which these disparate elements are made to move and interact. This process is usually broken down into a number of elements such as camera angle, depth of focus, the scale of the shot (long shot, medium shot or close up), the positioning of the camera, how it moves in relation to the objects moving on the screen, how long the shot is and the pace of the editing. The choice of shot depends on what the director is trying to tell the audience, so should we be concentrating on a particular person, how do we know where this action is taking place?
The medium shot is the one that is most used, as it both places the characters in their environment whilst at the same time allowing interaction. Even though this shot is mostly used for the continuation of the narrative its structure can tell you a lot more. Consider the shot of Adama and Tigh on the bridge, just what does this composition tell us? Both men have an equal share of the frame and are shot so that their stature is generally equal. The subliminal message of this shot is that even though they may be of different ranks they consider themselves to be equals, a fact which is borne out by their conversations and treatment of each other. Now consider the shot of Starbuck talking to a fellow pilot, Kat. Both women are in shot but Starbuck is standing closer to the camera which makes her look bigger than she is. She is also looking down on Kat, which reinforces the fact that Starbuck feels superior to Kat. She is literally looking down on her both in a figurative and literal way. Once again this reinforces the two women’s feeling for each other.
So we have our basic shots, but what do we do with them. Well this is where editing rears its head. It is often true that good editing will not make a classic but bad editing can ruin even the best film. Two main types of editing exist. The first is the most understandable and is termed Continuity editing where the shots are collected together to create a seamless narrative. A good example of this is found in the miniseries where the camera zooms into the Galactica - thereby establishing that the action will take place on the ship - we then cut to Kara Thrace who is jogging thought the ship's corridors. Along the way she passes, and we are introduced to, various characters until the sequence ends with her meeting Adama, at which point the focus shifts to his character. The second type of editing is Montage where a sequence of shots are strung together to create a meaning which the audience must deduce for themselves. This type of editing is rarely used, to any great degree, outside of Auteur and art house films as it can have a tendency to make the action disjointed, which is not the natural way we experience reality. The transitional points between scenes can be spliced together with any number of fade, wipes and sudden cuts. The type of cut will influence the tempo of the filmed shots, and short scenes with sudden cut are used to enhance action and excitement.
The one thing that hasn’t really be covered is how the camera is used in Galactica, and for this the creators often used a technique from Cinema-vérité, which uses hand held cameras to impart a sense of action and urgency to a sequence. This technique was extended to the battle scenes which often looked like they had been filmed on a hand held, this included zooms and jump cuts. This often meant that you were given more of an impression of the chaos of battle and is a world away from most science fiction shows which seem to work on the principle that if you’ve spent a ton on the special effects then the audience wants to see them on the screen. When watching an episode the last thing to consider is the narrative structure, which generally falls into the categories cause and effect, character motivation, disequilibrium, turning points, exposition and narration, which itself is subdivided into restricted and omnipotent narration. But that is a discussion for another day. So next time you watch Galactica remember that a lot of thought went into what you’re looking at. Learning to read the language of what you’re watching really can help you enjoy a well constructed show and spot a real stinker. Return to... |
---|