It's a weird thought, but it just occured to me. When we watch movies, we're essentially viewing them as a third party the same way we read stories told with a third person narrator. That's even true of movies that have first person narration like "You're probably wondering how I got into this mess" because we're still viewing the story from the perspective of an outsider. By that logic, would movies like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield be considered first person movies? What do you guys think?
My first thought is that the 'found footage' movies are more like stories that include documents, such as somebody's journal entries or a written manuscript that the narrator is presenting (as in the John Carter of Mars books). You know—I fear the reader may find the following tale completely fanciful and may indeed decide it's all cockadoodie, but I assure you my uncle presented me with this manuscript, penned by his friend the eminent and worthy John Carter himself, detailing his incredible adventures on Barsoom, the planet we know as Mars. But yes. movies are mostly third person objective, since they can't get across a character's inner thoughts or feelings without some awkward device like a voiceover, or doing it all through dialogue.
I'd agree with Xoic. One movie that relies heavy narration is "Goodfellas" and Scorsese was careful to keep most of it focused on Hill, shooting only environments in which he was physically present. There are a few exceptions, though. You raise an interesting point, though. True documentaries filmed by one person, like Fred Zimmerman used to do, could be considered "first person" because you're seeing exactly what that person saw in their eye-pieces. When the people in front of the camera are talking to the camera, they're actually talking to the person behind it. I don't think you could get more first-person than that.
Good point. After thinking about for a while I arrived at the same conclusion as well. Yes, the 'found video' or 'found footage' segments do function like letters, journal entries, inter-office memos, etc in a written story (Dracula was composed I believe entirely of these kinds of devices), but in itself, each one is about as 1st person as you can get.
There's far more first person movies. American Psycho is a FP book adapted into a FP movie. We may "see" the movie and the character from a third person perspective, but everything's already filtered by the character and we're shown what he sees.
Yes, but isn't this just the way 3rd person works? I mean, unless it's Hemingway or something, with absolutely no human connection to what's happening.
I believe the main difference between 3rd person limited and first person with regards to movies is whether the surroundings have already been filtered by the POV character. Else the only FP movie I know of is that weird action one.
That's not exactly the way you view movies. You don't read them. They are not books. There are specific rules in writing a scenario. It's always gonna be in 3rd person, present tense and that's that, but this doesn't say much about the POV. It might be objective or subjective, depending on the scene and the emotion of it as a whole, as well as the emotion of each character separately. When reading a scene in a well written script, the director understands (decodes)? the emotional values and chooses how to show them through various tricks, visual and auditory. If the script is awful and these values aren't there but he still has to direct for instance, then he has to put them in solely by himself. He edits the script heavily or it doesn't work. Having the camera shooting from character's A pov for example doesn't mean that what we are viewing, what we are focusing upon is his pov. Well, of course it's his pov, we view the world from A's eyes, but how different would that be if we had on top of that character's B voice over? It's a mixed media, with various tricks. It's a complicated matter to analyze in a few words, so here is a good video I found about it. Hope it helps.
Haha! Yeah, that's just about as close as a movie can get to 1st person I think! If you'd add a voice-over telling his thoughts and feelings that would be even closer, but as Malisky said, I think there's some big differences between written stories and movies, and maybe there can be no such thing as a true 1st person movie. This is a very intriguing thread, making me think outside of what I previously had.
I always thought that movies are third person omniscient narrator. You can follow a character, but suddenly the camera can abandon the character and linger on a piece of grass, and suddenly there’s a rotting ear being eaten by ants*. No character knows about this yet, except you and the omniscient narrator that’s showing it to you. (*That’s “Blue Velvet”, but it’s just an example that popped into my mind.)
Third - we the viewer are ever-present voyeurs. Lady in the Lake 1946 - did a first person narrative - you only see Robert Montgomery once I think in a mirror but that gives the viewer a weird position of second person narrative that the viewer is simultaneously Robert Montgomery and not.
Omniscient implies we're privy to the innermost thoughts and feelings of the major characters, and movies can't give us that without voice-overs. I see movies as a lot closer to 3rd person Objective, like the way Hemingway wrote, never going inside anybody's head.
I don’t know if I agree with that. You’re saying that only a book can give us the inner feelings of a character, because only a book can go inside a character’s head? I’m not very savvy on movie terminology but I don’t think that’s correct. In movies, you have to rely on the actor performance to show us the inner feelings of the character. Maybe someone more knowledgeable in movies can chime in on this.
Basically, yeah. My background is in animation/film, where I learned to do as much as possible visually, partly by studying the great silent comedians and some very visual directors like Kubrick. I did a search shortly after joining this forum because I was told that I wasn't properly using the great strength of writing over movies, which is that interiority. And many sites confirmed it. In a movie you don't get direct access to a character's innermost thoughts, feelings or memories, you need a character for them to talk to. This was done for instance in the movie Coraline. Neil Gaiman said he completely understood why they needed to invent the character of Wybie, because otherwise there was no way for Coraline to express certain things that were easily expressed in the book. A good actor can do some amazing things, but it's more along the lines of suggesting thoughts. Complex or extensive inner monologues can't be expressed in a movie without words, and that means either inner monologue (voice-over) or add a character for them to talk to. Here's an article that supports this: 5 Important Ways Storytelling Is Different in Books vs. Movies Especially in Part 4 where she says "When Jason Bourne gives us that tortured look in the movies, we aren’t told what he’s thinking. We have to fill in the gaps for ourselves. Not only will readers be unable to see the character’s expression (and trying to describe it in an attempt to gain the same effect rarely works), but they will expect to be told what the character is thinking. The principle goes even farther. When in a particular character’s POV, readers need to know what that character knows, which means even details that are obvious from the subtext often have to be explained or at least acknowledged." Also check Part 5 about Exposition.
The camera--quite literally--is incapable of entering a character's head. It can observe, interpret, and prejudice itself (if it chooses too), but it can't enter the character's mind like an omniscient narrator. Or any literary narrator, for that matter. The camera is the very definition of an objective narrator. It knows only what it sees. It can go no further. It is not possible. The point you make about actors is a good one. In most instances, the actor's outer emotions do correctly capture their inner feelings. At least the familiar ones like anger, happiness, surprise, disgust, confusion... none of which require much explanation. But those are still interpretive for the observer, whereas a literary POV can interact with the character on their innermost level and--often to the story's determent--spell out every little conflict, niggle, flip flop, or emotional caprice that enters their head.
Repeat after me Seth: "CGI is not reality." ... then there's Being John Malkovich, but it's all trickery I tell you. All trickery!
Slightly unrelated, but Cormac McCarthy is a master of the objective point of view, and the movies made from his books, like The Road and No Country for Old Men, are excellent because his POV style translates directly into the film. All you have to do is recreate what he wrote--often word for word and scene to scene--and stick a camera in front it. Presto! No other embellishment, adaptation, or interpretation needed. Granted, there are entire Faulknerian stream of consciousness chapters in The Border Trilogy that would be impossible to film and likely make the movie adaption fall a bit flat, as so much of the novels are based around those elements. I think All the Pretty Horses was made into a movie at some point, but I never saw it. Interesting take. And a great example. Every scene has Patrick Bateman in it, which is necessary given the whole fantasy/hallucination angle. If the camera were allowed to drift away from Patrick's POV, even for a few moments, it would betray the idea that everything is happening in Patrick's head. I guess I would say that the camera is inherently objective (which is a subset of 3rd person) but will sometimes mimic first person or second person, as in the example @peachalulu mentioned. I don't think we could ever call it omniscient, though. We could maybe call it omnipresent, as in the camera is all seeing and can go anywhere it wants, but it certainly is not all knowing. In fact, I'd say the camera doesn't know shit. It points and reports but it's up to the viewer to interpret and "know" what is being presented.
I guess that’s what I was trying to say. Yes, and I’m the first one to defend this idea, a book can give readers an insight on characters’ minds like no movie can. Movies can do it too, to a point, but it’s a different language. The viewer has to fill the gaps and the movie has to be good enough to fill the right gaps. A good movie almost makes you guess what the character is thinking. In a book, if the POV is deep enough, you don’t have to guess.
IDK, found footage still feels a bit third person. Hardcore Henry and FPS are more first person, in the sense that they are shot entirely from a single perspective :the main character. DOOM did a little bit of FPS at the end, but it felt gimicky, compared to the other two I mentioned where they are entirely in FPS format.
That's really the same as found footage though—you're seeing what the character sees. For found footage, we're seeing through the camera he was holding, which is like seeing through his eyes. In 3rd person we'd be seeing the character from an outside point of view.
