Analysis of Cinematography in The Diving Bell and The Butturfly

                               

The Diving Bell and The Butterfly
dir. Julian Schnabel (2007)

OVERALL LOOK

Director Julian Schnabel is well known as a painter and a filmmaker.  As a filmmaker, Schnabel receives the Academy Award-nominated role. This film called The Diving Bell and The Butterfly gives him notice and high praise as a director.  This movie portrays the true story about Jean-Dominique Bauby, who was an actor, author, and an editor of the French fashion magazine Elle depicting what a stroke victim with only one eye working might look like through the eye.   In addition, director of photography of The Diving Bell and The Butterfly is Janusz Kamiński, who was awarded the Independent Spirit Award for Best Cinematography for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly in 2008.  This movie uses a tremendous amount of point of view shots to simulate the life of Bauby who suffered a massive stroke at the age of 43, and died two years later.  Most of the point of views shots are not normal due to the fact that the composition continually cuts people’s heads off and other normal objects simulating a stroke victim point of view. This was a very rare stroke leaving the person in a rare condition called “locked-in syndrome.” In the The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, Schnabel and Kaminski like to use a lot of dolly shots that simulate the point of views of the stroke victim.  The cinematographer uses extreme shalow depth of field in many of the open shots of the movie creating a dream like reality.

Shallow depth of field in The Diving Bell and The Butter Fly 
dir. Julian Schnabel (2007)

The constant dutch angles can leave a person a little dizzy.  The angle of the camera enhances the drama by watching to be able to fix the dutch angle and create normalcy.  The film stock uses color and high exposer to deal with some of these low lights condition created to mimic a person looking with one eyeball.  

Dutch angle in
The Diving Bell and The Butter Fly 
dir. Julian Schnabel (2007)

Extreme Close-Up (ECU) shot in The Diving 
Bell and The Butter Fly 
dir. Julian Schnabel (2007)

The lighting technique creating harsh shadow in the movie to show the sadness and hopelessness of Bauby existents.  The silhouette lighting in Church also creates a similar hopelessness for Bauby situation.  The non wide-angle lenses simulate Bauby only being able to see a narrow area to mimic the loss of the other eye.  The framing of the camera creates intrigue and interest into what Bauby cannot see. 

Hash shadow lighting in The Diving Bell and The Butter 

Fly dir. Julian Schnabel (2007)

        The camera movement gives a real sense of the strock victim struggle with the situation that he has to endure.  This camera movement is sometimes a steadicam, jib movement, or handheld to create this nightmare situation that Bauby finds him in.  The long shots are creating a sense of overwhelming dream like unobtainable healing that Bauby longs for.  In the movie, we easily see the different camera angles that Kaminski  performs to create the intersting condition that related to Bauby's stroke.  The camera angles looking out of the diving bell give a sense of hopelessness.  The diving bell adds a sense of claustrophobic and the water gives the feeling of hope less.

Camera movement make the scene look blurry
in The Diving Bell and Butter Fly dir. Julian Schnabel (2007)

The long shot (LS) shot in The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, 
dr. Julian Schnabel (2007)

The editing technique use with the fade to black to simulate the closing of the eyelid to communicate was quite creative.  These all techniques create a truly sad, lonely, hopelessness, and depressing type of movie.  The work of this director of photography Janusz Kamiński truly deserves the award bestowed upon him.  The director Julian Schnabel is also a true craftsman of the cinematography field base on all of these techniques he is using. 

IMAGES

          In this film, we see the images of Bauby as a kid juxtapose with his life to create a sense of a life that was full of happiness from the time he was a baby to the time he was adult.

Still image: Bauby as a baby
in The Diving
Bell and The Butterfly, dr. Julian Schnabel (2007)

Still image: Mathieu Amalric (Bauby about 8
years old) in The Diving Bell and The
Butterfly, dr. Julian Schnabel (2007)

Still image: Mathieu Amalric (Bauby as a teennager)
                   in The Diving Bell and The Butterfly (2007) 

Mathieu Amalric (Bauby as
a teennager has relationship)
 on the right in The Diving Bell
and The Butterfly (2007)

Film still: Bauby as an adult play
                snow skiing in The Diving Bell and The
      Butterfly (2007)

Film still: Butterfly indicated feeling of loving
and freedom in The Diving Bell and The Butterfly (2007) 

All of the images are crucial to the development of his life in a short amount of time.  By seeing these images in the movie, the images are crucial to the character to indicate that his mind is still in good working order.  All of the images are present in his life from the time of a baby to his time of the stroke.  By seeing the butterfly images in the movie, the audiences have a sense that the butterfly indicated the feeling of loving and freedom. 

            SHOT LENGTHS

Length of shots in this film is longer than normal film due to the fact that the majority of shots are from the point of view of the stroke victim.  The pattern is always to stay longer because the shot fades to black for a second to indicate that Bauby eye is blinking his eye to say yes or no to the question being asked of him.   The pattern of these long shots allows you to become one with Bauby.

                                        Shot length in The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, dr. Julian Schnabel (2007)

The pattern of cutting to the diving bell in the water and the ice falling into water seems to indicate the feeling of the inability of being able to control the past or present.  Every time the scene cuts back to the kids is another type of inability to control the past mistakes of not spending enough time with his kids.  

                                                     Shot length in The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, 
                                                              dr. Julian Schnabel (2007)

           SHOT TYPES

 In The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, Kamiński uses extreme close-up (ECUs) to indicate the point of view of Mr. Bauby after his stroke.  By transforming the shot as extreme close-up (ECUs) due to the fact that the director wants the audience pay more attention to the feeling, struggling, hopelessness, and out of control despair of Bauby. 

Extreme close-up shot (ECUs) in The Diving Bell and 
The Butterfly, dr. Julian Schnabel (2007)

Extreme close-up shot (ECUs) in The Diving Bell and

The Butterfly, dr. Julian Schnabel (2007)

 Also, Kamiński uses some of the extreme long shot (ELSs) in the long shots seem to be used to create a dream like scenario.  The roles of the shots are used to indicate the frame of mind the stroke victim is in.  The constant shakiness of the camera work combined with dutch angels play a role to give the audience a real dose of reality of what a stroke victim with “locked-in syndrome” is going through. 

Extreme long shot (ELSs) in The Diving Bell and
The Butterfly, dr. Julian Schnabel (2007)

Extreme long shot (ELSs) of dutch angle in The Diving Bell and
The Butterfly, dr. Julian Schnabel (2007)

Extreme long shot in The Diving Bell and
The Butterfly, dr. Julian Schnabel (2007)

CAMERA ANGLE

The camera angles shot from afar also have composition errors designed to give a sense of non normalcy of the overall general view of the movie.  Many of the low angle point of view shots are used to give a feeling of despair and sadness.  Low angle shots looking down create empathy for the Mr. Bauby in this movie.  In the same location while Bauby was driving from the low angle shot Mr. Bauby looks happy and seem to have power to control his life.

Low camera angle shot in The Diving Bell and
The Butterfly, dr. Julian Schnabel (2007)

The situation switch right away when the audience se from the high angle shots looking up make Mr. Bauby become tiny and out of control when he first got stroke while he giving a ride to his son.

High camera angle shot in The Diving Bell and
The Butterfly, dr. Julian Schnabel (2007)

By looking the two different camera angles above from this particular scene, we can tell how powerful of camera angle can convey and transform the telling of this story without any words. 

COMPOSITION

Most of composition in several scenes are not balanced in this movie.  The composition seems to break the rules of thirds which is also creating a feeling of something is wrong.  If the composition was balanced and it followed the rule of thirds, to me it would not make the point of view stand out as much as it does for this particular story.  Therefore, the composition in this movie was created to show the life of a stroke person.   The life of no hope and waiting to die is so depressing and this cinematographer captures this feeling exactly.  However, some of the composition of the action that Kamiński shows in this movie are that he frames the characters one eye, or half face in some the extreme close up (ECUs).  Kamiński is also framing the extreme long shot using dutch angle to chop of the top of the church and cut the side of the church.  In addition, Kamiński decides to leave a lot of head room from the subject.  All of these unorthodox compositions go far off the norm of traditional composition in cinematography.  In contrast, the unorthodox compositions in this case are the best ways to tell the point of view of Mr. Bauby in this movie because of the fact the main character has only one eye to communicate to people.  

Unbalanced composition - Extreme close up shot (ECUs) in in The Diving Bell
and The Butterfly, dr. Julian  Schnabel (2007)

Unbalanced composition - Extreme long shot (ELSs) in in The Diving Bell and
The Butterfly, dr. Julian Schnabel (2007)

CAMERA MOVEMENT

Camera movement plays a big part in The Diving Bell and The Butterfly due to the fact that it produces a sensation of being paralyzed.  From the opening, the audience is already feeling how the camera moves to give a sense of being awake after three weeks of being in a coma by Mr. Bauby, who had stroke and only one eye working to communicate.  The camera moves left, right, naturally shaking sometimes it shakes up and down make the viewer truly feel how the stroke person is feeling and going through.  To create this movement, Kamiński used a lot of first rate cinematography skills with the handheld camera.  Some other techniques of camera movement are dollying, tracking, zooming in and using dutch angle movements.  The audience can easily recognize a dolly shot used to help the audience react to the first meeting of the girl who would translate and communicate with Mr. Bauby to write the book as Mr. Bauby wanted.  The movement of the camera when a nurse moves his heads as if the character was truly moving his head is visual functional and helps in this instance.  On the other hand, the shakiness created by the camera movement adds authenticity to characters plight.  The fly on the end of his nose make the audience want to move and the camera work at this point helps the audience feel the true anguish of Mr. Bauby.  The cameras movement when Mr. Bauby sees his reflection for the first time is demonstrated with a point of view of what the character can see of himself and creates shock to the character and the audience watching.  I love to watching when Kamiński uses the dolly technique combined with pan, tilt and sometimes with zoom in because this gives me a sense of a 3D look.  All these techniques give the movie a deep motionless despair transforming Bauby's feeling.  These techniques also make the audience understand Bauby reality and that how this condition has made him sad, frustrated, and lonely from being an active person to becoming a person just sitting in the wheelchair with only one eye working to communicate.     

                                                 Simultaneous camera movement in The Diving Bell and
                                                                               The Butterfly, dr. Julian (2007)

CINEMATOGRAPHY STYLE 

     Cinematography style of this movie calls attention to itself due to the tremendous amount of point of view shots with the shakiness of the camera to indicate the extreme dread the character.  The filmmaker opens a window into the life of Mr. Bauby by taking the audience right into his head by using the camera to see what is it like in this life or more like a life of torture through creativeness of this cinematographers incredible camera moves and lighting techniques.