Coppola and his "live cinema"

It's not theater, it's not a reality show or a sitcom. It´s not even a filmed theatre play. It's "live cinema".

Francis Ford Coppola publishes now in Spain his latest book " Live Cinema and Its Techniques", in which he bets on this contemporary genre, an experiment that he already tried in the 80's with "One From The Heart" and that was discarded in spite of the filmmaker , - "I regret, I did not get to experiment with live cinema" - for technical lighting and recording reasons, as confirmed by Vittorio Storaro, his photography director, according to EL PAÍS sources: "There was no digital technology to coordinate so many cameras and it was impossible to illuminate all that, we filmed in a traditional way with a camera. If it had been two years later ... ".

The book, published by Reservoir Books, is focused as a kind of manual with technical indications and language theory that is based on two experimental workshops that Coppola carried out in 2015 at the University of Oklahoma and in 2016 at the University of Los Angeles. In addition, it offers practical resolutions as the tricks to change the scenario through the modular scenario devised by Edward Gordon Graig in 1912.

According to Coppola: "The purpose of this book is not to recreate myself in nostalgia (...), but to explore this new medium, discover how it differs from other creative forms, what its virtues and requirements are and, above all, learn to use it and teach it.

" The final goal is to make one day a live film production from my own screenplay. "

He does not only renounce to the usual control of a filmmaker when making a film just for being, obviously capable after his long and fruitful career, but basically, he says, he does it because he believes that he has finaly achieved a cinematographic aesthetic and understands that in the public the emotion increases when you know you are watching live cinema ... "Maybe if we saw everyone preparing to shoot live a program that we don´t know how it will turn out, we would become aware that it is live and we would ask, anxious, if everything will succeed".

In spite of this is not the first time this kinf of filmmaking is done. George Cloony describes as his most complex challenge a live scene of an emergency episode and in 2017. The director Woody Harrelson dared to direct and star in a comedy in London which was broadcast live in 500 theaters (Lost in London). Coppola goes one step further because he aims to include skills such as scenario changes and scene planning as in a normal shoot.

His project is based on a 500 page script that follows three generations of an Italian-American family through the conception, birth and history of television. He intends to divide it into six deliveries, by changing time zones and broadcast both in movie theaters and on television. This is how he describes it "My script is very long and far from finished, it is titled Dark Electric Vision and at the moment it has two works: Dark Vision and Elective Affinities. My dream would be to produce them in a studio like CBS Television City".

A real challenge that this 78-year-old artist and winner of 8 Oscars does not intend to lose.

Sources:

https://www.efe.com/efe/espana/cultura/francis-ford-coppola-reflexiona-sobre-el-cine-en-vivo-un-libro/10005-3575281
https://elpais.com/cultura/2018/04/05/actualidad/1522943201_794665.html