Friday, April 23, 2010

The Concept Underlying White Void Hollywood Studios

By Phillip Guye

To understand why white void Hollywood studios are so appealing to contemporary movie makers, let us first see how it's used by them in their productions. The white void Hollywood cyc wall is simply a featureless expanse of white. The studios simply erect a sweeping wall that's totally featureless. The room is then painted in a pure white color. Once this is done, it gives the illusion the subjects ( actors ) are seen as standing in an empty white space.

The room is so featureless that it would be very unlikely to inform from any footage or pictures taken with the cyc in the background that there are any walls in any way. You cannot see the walls, the floors, the ceiling, or any other indication of space and dimension. The actors appear to be hanging in nothingness. A great white void Hollywood studio mixes all the walls, the floor and the ceiling into one seamless space in such a fashion the dimensions of space are lost when filmed or photographed.

This is the reason the white void Hollywood studio room is known as a white cyc, as it is a void. It lacks any idea of dimension and placement when shot in a film. Why would a director prefer to shoot a scene in a white void Hollywood studio? What's the intention of loosing the dimensions of setting? The white cyc studio comes in hardy when the director wants to achieve the film effects debated in the following paragraphs. There are times when the director will want to express a transition from one realm to another such as when going from a dream to fact. The dream is digitally put in place of the white screen, and when that dream is over, the stage can then shift back from the white wall. This is one of the greatest techniques of expressing dreams rather than shooting in a monochrome mode.

In a similar fashion, a director may need to push the plot with a flashback scene. That suggests he has to craft a way of removing the viewer from their time and space to a past event as imagined by the actor. The only way to shift the viewer is by removing the standard misce-en-scene and carrying the spectator through the white cyc where the flashback is acted out ( past ) and back again to the normal misce-en-scene ( present ). It works superbly and no viewer will be baffled about the plot's back and forth movement.

Another great example we can highlight in the use of white void Hollywood studios is the so called 'imprisonment settings' in film making circles. Imprisonment settings are the settings in which a director may want to shoot an interrogation, or a subject in any kind of imprisoned environment ( prison, psychological establishment, etc ). This is easily achieved with the white cyc studios since the white void has no exits, no windows and no definition of dimensions so freedom is seen as absent. - 2361

About the Author:

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home