28/02/2025
My inspiration...
Michelangelo Antonioni explains why he doesn't plan a shot in advance:
"I believe that in every form of artistic endeavor, there is first of all a process of selection. This selection, as Camus once said, represents the artist's revolt against the forces of reality. So whenever I'm ready to start shooting a scene, I arrive on location in a fixed state of 'virginity' I do this because I believe the best results are obtained by the "collision" that takes place between the environment in which the scene is to be shot and my own particular state of mind at that specific moment. I don't like to study or even think about a scene the night before, or even a few days before I actually start shooting it. And when I arrive there, I like to be completely alone, by myself, so that I can get to feel the environment without having anybody around me.
The most direct way to recreate a scene is to enter into a rapport with the environment itself; it's the simplest way to let the environment suggest something to us. Naturally, we are well acquainted with that area in advance, from the moment we have selected it, and therefore know that it offers the proper setting for the particular scene that's being shot. So it's only a matter of organizing and arranging the sequence, adapting it to the characteristic details of the surrounding environment. For this reason, I always remain alone in the area for about half an hour before I start shooting a scene, whether it's an indoor scene or an outdoor scene. Then I call in the actors and begin testing out the scene, because this too is a way of judging whether the scene works well or not.
In fact, it's possible that a well-planned scene that was written while sitting behind the desk, just won't work anymore once it's laid out in a particular locale, so it has to be changed or modified right there and then. Certain lines in the script might take on a different meaning once they're spoken against a wall or against a street background. And a line spoken by an actor in profile doesn't have the same meaning as one given full-face. Likewise, a phrase addressed to the camera placed above the actor doesn't have the same meaning it would if the camera were placed below him.
But the director (and, I repeat, this is my own personal way of working) becomes aware of all these things only when he's on the scene and starts moving his actors around according to the first impressions that come to him from being there. So, it is extremely rare that I have the shots already fixed in my mind. Obviously, in the various stages of preparing a film, a director creates images in his mind, but it is always dangerous to fall in love with these formulated images, because you eventually end up by running after images abstracted from the reality of the environment in which the scene is being shot and which are no longer the same as they first appeared while sitting behind the desk.
It is really much better to adapt yourself to a new situation, and this is especially so since the nature of film scripts today, as you know, are becoming less and less detailed and less and less technical. They are the director's notes, and serve as a model on which one works during the course of the shooting. So, as I was saying a short while ago, improvisation comes directly from the rapport that is established between the environment and ourselves, from the rapport between the director and the people around him, both the usual professional collaborators and the people who just happen to be gathered in that particular area when the scene is being shot. In other words, it is possible that the rapport itself could suggest the outcome of a scene; it could suggest the modification of a line; it could suggest so many things inasmuch as it too is a method of improvisation. So, I repeat, for this reason I very seldom give much advance thought to the shot but prefer to think about it when I'm there on the scene and when I put my eye behind the camera."
Excerpt from 'A talk with Michelangelo Antonioni on his work', Film Culture, 1962
