TRANSFER OF ENERGY BETWEEN EACH PHASE OF THE FILMMAKING PROCESS
By John Humphreys
Freshman year of college, I was a dolly grip on a thesis film and I had the opportunity to sit next to an amazing actress as she unleashed a wonderful scene where the character had a panic attack. I was very new to actors who had these kinds of chops and I was convinced that this was going to be the performance of the decade on screen. The AD made everybody leave except for the director, DP, and me on the dolly. She sat quietly for five minutes as she focused in on her performance and we waited in bated breath, ready to hit record.
The actress shook her head to indicate she was ready to go. The AD nodded to the DP, the DP hit record, and looked up at the director, “Action!”. Her performance was captivating with no words and it felt like there was a shift in the viscosity of the air. I was absolutely captivated by the meditational properties of this process and the expression of an emotionally truthful moment.
I waited for months to see the final product on screen and to my dismay, it didn’t deliver the same feeling as it did when we were waiting silently in that room with the actress. Her performance was predicated by some less than ideal editing and the way the other actors interpreted their scenes didn’t work as an overall picture. I knew what it felt like in that moment of “Action” and it’s curious that only a sliver of her emotions broke through the screen. Therefore, I devised a theory about the filmmaking process and before I get into it, I want to preface with a few points.
Truth and emotion can’t actually be calculated at all, the numbers I’m using are just subjective interpretations to prove a point. These are just observations that I’ve made from being on set not a magic bullet to tap into God’s truth for humanity, my brain is too wrinkly to write that essay.
I call it the Tertiary Energy Consumption Law and it helps me grasp the flow of truth as it cascades through each phase of the filmmaking process. More than anything, it’s an appraisal process on how well a scene is going to connect to people and the frame of reference is always the end product. Anyhow, here’s how the explanation starts:
PART I. SIMPLE BIOLOGY
The Transfer of Energy Between Trophic Levels
To introduce the theory, we have to go back to a biological concept I learned in high school. It’s about the transfer of energy between the trophic levels, a.k.a. how efficiently energy travels through the food chain.
Film is a visual medium, and apparently so is biology because here’s a picture to aid in our understanding:
The food chain begins with a “ Primary Producer”. Primary producers are organisms at the bottom of the food chain and they hold the most potential energy. As you can see in this image, the rose has 10,000 J.
The “Primary Consumer”, this cricket, can only maintain 10% of the rose’s energy and the remaining 90% is lost in heat energy due to the cricket’s metabolism and body heat. So now the cricket only possesses 1000 J in energy.
Furthermore, the “Secondary Consumer”, this mouse, eats the cricket and can only store 10% of the cricket’s energy leaving us with 100 J. Rinse and repeat, the “Tertiary Consumer”, this falcon, only gets 10 J of energy from the mouse.
In biology, the energy transfer between organisms is incredibly inefficient. They lose 90% of the potential energy from their metabolism and body heat. I could make this an essay on why you should be eating your veggies instead of meat, but this is a filmmaking essay so let’s bring it back.
PART II. Tertiary Energy Consumption in Film
The transfer of energy between consumers in a food chain is the exact same construct we go through as filmmakers to conserve our truth from the conception of an idea to the audience consuming the art that we poured our hearts into. It’s impossible to truly quantify this but to illustrate the point I have a unit of T or “Truth” as a stand in.
Have another image:
THEORY:
Similar to the “transfer of energy between trophic levels” only 10% of the emotion can be encapsulated through each phase of production. Instead of a “transfer of energy” the transition is considered an “interpretation of truth” that affects the emotional degree of the end product. As the truth flows through the filmmaking process, it’s interpreted by dozens of people. Actors, productions designers, cinematographers, etc. and the end product is an amalgamation of these factors.
I. EXPERIENCE
In film, the main source of truth is “experience”. Every human has a collection of unique experiences that develops their souls and adds that spice of humanity that filmmaking taps into. People also use their experiences to connect to one another, hence the aforementioned truth that film and art attempts to capture and express.
II. SCREENPLAY
The primary consumer of truth in film is the “screenplay”. It’s one of the first instances of expression of the story and the experience presented. There is interpretation of the experience and here’s where the theory begins. Realistically, how much truth and emotion can a writer grasp? Of course it depends on the writer. Shakespeare, Nora Ephron, François Truffaut, are some writers that wrote stories that have an unbelievable amount of truth and even then, their work is opened up to interpretation.
III. PRODUCTION
When production of a film takes off, the interpretation is split into many collaborative departments and dozens of other people have a chance to interpret the screenplay and impress themselves to it. For example, imagine an actor interpreting a scene for what speaks to them. Oftentimes, actors use their own experiences to connect to a scene and the original truth from the experience intermingles with their truths and minds. We multiply this by every department on set and we’re left with 10% of the original emotion that was in the screenplay.
This doesn’t mean that the movie is “less emotional” or somehow hindered by the collaboration of these departments. Instead the original understanding of the screenplay as the writer envisioned it is almost always different in surprising little ways.
For example, I wrote a scene in a laboratory for my thesis film and I understood that the lighting was going to be low key and there would be some rain on the window outside but the way the actress interpreted the scene was more mysterious than I envisioned. She interpreted the character as a more brooding, more intense person and it added something unexpectedly wonderful to the movie that I hadn’t thought of before.
There’s a famous saying that says, “You write a film three times; the screenplay, the production, and the editing.” And I’m adding to that. Through that process of interpretation, only 10% of the original emotion is retained.
IV. EDITING
Post-production can be the trickiest aspect of this theory because the lack of physical proximity to the actors isn’t as potent as when you’re in the same room with them. An actress will do an incredible scene where she breaks down and cries, like I experienced as a freshman on set. The air in the room iss electric when she explores the depth of her emotions. All of this information was recorded by a camera that interpreted it in 2D space on a card that interpreted it in 01010101010100.
The same set of images is rolling at 24 frames per second and the scene still feels, it just doesn’t leave you with the same electric presence of being beside her while she worked. As editors know, this is the challenge at this stage of the process and there are so many incredible editors who will cut scenes so truthfully.
This portion of the process is the best example of the theory because it can make or break an entire film. Entire scenes can be cut to alter the story, which alters the truth, and odds are, nobody perfectly envisioned, cut for cut, how a movie will be exactly. Even a superhero film with millions of dollars worth of previs will still have differences in their end product.
V. AUDIENCE
This last phase of interpretation is the audience. Hundreds and thousands of interpretations that only see the last 10% of the original emotion in the experience. It could connect to millions of people or just one or two. It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for where you lock a group of people in the room and they will say “This is good.” or “This is not good.” This is the last phase of interpretation and their enjoyment or disdain determines the perception of the film.
PART III. CONCLSIONS
The tertiary energy consumption in filmmaking is an unspoken feeling that addresses the eb and flow of emotion as it evolves through the filmmaking process. It’s modeled after the transfer of energy between trophic levels, a biological concept. And films are dramatically shaped through the collaboration of artists and the interpretation of emotions and nobody can exactly predict what the audience will watch on screen.
When I pay attention to this in my own movies, most of the time it’s an incredible advantage. I wrote a movie about my experiences with toxic masculinity, and through collaborating with the actors and designers, I learned about their interpretations and it affected the way I viewed the original experience. I feel like people can use this theory to turn their stories into something larger than themselves and understand the lucidity of the process.
It’s also funny to think about different mediums. Like plays and musicals are so famously good because they’re performed in person and the audience is automatically getting 100T. The production is that performance on that night and I think that’s interesting. I’ve definitely felt the difference.
Also, documentaries are interesting too because many of them skip the screenplay portion and aim to capture the experience firsthand. That’s a really wild thought. So is the camera capturing 10,000 T and how does that affect the ratios going down the line?
There is an opening for debate in this theory. Is it always 90% loss across the board? Or do some phases of interpretation give or take more as they evolve? Does this only apply to the auteur theory? If you feel passionately, blast my theory and poke holes in it. My email’s at the bottom of this page.
humph127@mail.chapman.edu
Source for biology: