BSA 206 W10 : Shyamalan Research

Night is a weird one to research because its hard to find things about his style or directorial intention amidst all the articles concerning his career path. He's had a very strange career in film with how inconsistent it is and how far he fell from the high point at which he started with The Sixth Sense. He made some of the best movies of the late 90's and early 2000's and some of the worst from the late 00's and early 2010's.

https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/oral-history-of-unbreakable-with-m-night-shyamalan-and-samuel-l-jackson/

Shyamalan: One of my favorite movies is Pulp Fiction, and I really wanted that flavor that Sam and Bruce gave in Pulp Fiction for Unbreakable. Obviously, [it’s] a totally different story and all that stuff, but that kinda cool, edgy, grounded quality that they both had in that movie… I thought [Willis’] quietness versus [Jackson’s] pizazz could be really fun. It was really from Quentin that I grabbed that union.

A big part of what sets unbreakable apart from other super hero properties is that its set in the real world, and thus has to be grounded. A lot of the way the film is made is done with this as a focus, it's needs to feel real and like it applies to the same rules as our own world. It's not a flashy cartoon, but a down-to-earth drama. This quote supports that, showing that Shyamalan even worked towards achieving this effect through the casting of the major roles.

Shyamalan: Three-minute takes, two-minute takes, four-minute takes – really aggressive filmmaking. And they just had to trust me. There’s no close-ups. There’s no this, there’s no that. And it’s very play-like.

This quote is just to show that the director admits to using longer takes and creating a stage-like atmosphere.

https://offscreen.com/view/shyamalan


One of the most striking aspects of Shyamalan’s expressive realist style, with respect to how his films ‘feel’ compared to other mainstream, popular American films, is their pacing.


With respect to editing style, Shyamalan sets himself apart from most of his popular contemporaries with a more measured, relaxed editing style that is statistically confirmed by the average shot lengths (ASL) of each film.

There is a noticeable pattern in The Sixth Sense concerning scenes between Cole and Malcolm and those between Cole and Lynn which is linked to the “intimacy long take.” This crucial difference is that Shyamalan uses the long take more frequently in scenes with Cole and Lynn than in scenes between Cole and Malcolm. 

I earlier characterized Shyamalan’s style as being within the bounds of classicism, but marked by a freedom to reinvent or invigorate traditional rules of classical continuity. An example is the way he sometimes restages the conventional method of shot counter shot dialogue scenes. One of the ways Shyamalan does this is by positioning characters in profile to the camera, and tracking in to the characters as they talk (as in the restaurant scene in Unbreakable) or tracking laterally from character to character (as in the second kitchen scene in The Sixth Sense or when David and Joseph meet Elijah at his art gallery).  The earlier described left-right camera movement in the second kitchen scene in The Sixth Sense is very similar to the left-right ‘pendulum’ tracking shot in the opening train scene in Unbreakable

Talking about the longer held shots in the film Shyamalan says "Basically the number one benefit of pacing it like that is that you feel part of that world more so, it helps me achieve a symbiotic relationship between the main character and the audience which is the goal".

Joanna Johnston, Costume Designer: "There was a big design premise...the David Dunn world was a warm world and then the Elijah world was a cold steely world".

Bruce Willis: "Night has very strong opinions on how his character should look".



M Night: "My goal as a filmmaker is to make cultural phenomenons". *eyeroll*

He goes on to brag about his box office success here and explains how he created a cultural phenomenon with The Sixth Sense.