Pull focus

Pull focus from Christina Howell on Vimeo.

I created a short film composed of clips featuring the focus being pulled from one object to another. I had not previously filmed anything or used Premier Pro so I did struggle somewhat with doing this at first. I included some clips which were less successful than others to show the varying work I produced. Unfortunately due to my lack of experience with Premier Pro I have included the same clip twice and cut out some of my other clips. I unfortunately cannot rectify this as the mac had some issues and my work has been deleted.
Although I encountered these issues, I feel that this work was very useful in the development of my film and editing skills, I can now pull the focus from one object to another which is important in film for drawing attention to a particular area or leaving points of intrigue. It can also be used as a narrative device as it creates contrast and connections within shots and also highlight the mise en scene. This relates to the 'camera stylo' approach of the new wave, a topic which I will be studying, as the camera is used like a pen to allow the elements of the shot to convey meaning rather than rely upon a conventional narrative.
This short film has given me a good understanding of the importance of light in film and the effect of altering the aperture, ISO, shutter speed and focus. I will experiment more with these and create sequences comparing the effects of them. I feel that the lighting was well balanced in these shots as I worked in an area full of natural light.
This experience editing with Premier Pro will help me with my future work, I will however be sure to back everything up on an external hard drive in the future. I can now crop and position clips and change the sound levels. I will work towards creating a longer film with more complex shots and featuring non-diegetic sound. I will also expand beyond college and shoot some footage outside.

Lighting equipment and setups

A small documentary where portability is paramount.

As these documentaries often involve time constraints and limited resources, the lighting must be affordable whilst also quick and easy to move around. A small portable LED light would be suitable; they don't radiate heat the way an incandescent or halogen light bulb does which makes it a safer light source as it does not become excessively hot to the touch when in operation. A snap on camera light would be useful for carrying and placing in scenes, improving portability. The aim is usually to replicate natural lighting for verisimilitude, however relying solely on natural light is unreliable and wastes time. Three-point lighting is often used to imitate this, it is a somewhat more complicated setup yet more powerful lighting may be needed in some environments. If using a camera light, a reflector can reflect the light into certain areas of the shot to utilise the light without using too many sources. A reflector can also be folded for portability and are quite cheap, however may result in overexposure.

'Talking head' style interviews

Often used in documentaries, this style aims to capture the subject clearly. The lighting must illuminate the face naturally and draw attention towards the subject. Three-point lighting is the most commonly used technique for this as these interviews are often simplistic and static so the lights can be fixed in position to provide the best lighting for the shot. The main light source is the key light which is placed to the side of the subject and camera, it shines upon the subject to illuminate their features and provide shadow on the other side. The secondary light is the fill light which is placed on the opposite side of the key light. It is softer and used to fill the shadows created by the key light. Finally, there is the back light, placed behind the subject. This is less direct and used to create definition and subtle highlights around the subject, separating them from the background and providing a three-dimensional look.

A 'night time' shoot

For a night time shoot, a much more powerful light source is required as there is little natural light to use. This is especially important as altering the ISO in low light can result in a very grainy shot. A large flashlight or spotlight would be ideal as this can flood an area with light and give you control over the direction and intensity. More light sources may be needed in wide open areas with no natural light. A reflector would be useful to distribute the light and avoid it looking too harsh with shadows and contrast. A softbox would give it a more natural appearance. The lighting would have to be carefully controlled to ensure there is no under or overexposure and that the camera settings must not be changed too harshly.

An example of the effects of lighting on moving image

http://filmmakermagazine.com/83083-why-your-film-needs-a-good-gaffer-watch-how-lighting-changes-a-face/#.V9qElDuP2L8

"The video, “Sparkles and Wine,” features music from the bandOpale and was directed and produced by Nacho Guzman. According to Petapixel, the video was shot “using a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR and two lenses (a Canon 24-105mm f/4 and a Samyang 35mm f/1.4). The lighting consisted of two 10×10 centimeter LED lights that were fixed to a ring and rotated around the woman’s face, as well as a string of Christmas light-style LEDs.”

On the Vimeo page, Guzman thanks “Clouzot and his amazing team for inspiring me.” He’s undoubtedly referring to this similar and amazing 1964 test footage of Romy Schneider from Clouzot’s L’Enfer. Check it out."


I discovered this video when researching the effects of lighting techniques and was captivated by the stark difference when varying lighting was used. The subject's face seems to morph in expression, tone, age and proportion. It truly communicates how vital a feature this is and has inspired me to be more aware and bold with my lighting choices as I now realise how much it communicates. Any second from this could range from horror to romance, madness to lust. I found the effect of the moving shadows of her hands on her face very inventive and somewhat disturbing. I will look into this director more and perhaps draw inspiration from their work. 

Camera and lighting techniques for moving image - research

http://www.lavideofilmmaker.com/filmmaking/film-lighting-tips.html

Why filmmaking needs lights

The reason for which lights are necessary in filmmaking is that film, and to an even greater extent video, does not respond to light the same way our eyes do. Specifically, film and video see things in a much more contrasty way. In other words, they cannot cope with the lighting contrast of real life: if you shoot a scene without artificial lights, either the shadows will go completely black or the highlights will go completely white. All of this means that if you want a scene to look natural, ironically the only way to do that is to have enough light to make film see the scene the way our eyes see the scene.
In any case, there is more to cinematography than simply making the actors visible and photographing them. For top results, the mood of the film must be carefully crafted with lighting, amongst other things. Not to mention the fact that there are many situations in which natural light will not result in exposure at all. For example, there is no way you can do an exterior night shoot without lights, even if there is a full moon.
There are other considerations I could make. For example, it has been noticed by many filmmakers and filmgoers that the best films present a heightened interpretation of reality; in other words, films that touch our hearts tend to offer a world that is “more real than real.” This is simply a way of saying that they are not bland. Presenting an enhanced view of reality involves using highly stylized lighting.
One of the biggest myths is that shooting video requires fewer lights than shooting on film. This is completely incorrect, because film can handle a much larger contrast range than video, and therefore suffers less if the lighting is excessively high-contrast. Video, on the other hand, has enormous problems looking even remotely decent when the lighting is not perfectly fine-tuned in such a way that the brightest spot in the scene it is no more than three stops hotter than the darkest point in the scene. Therefore, ironically, film is in theory the best choice when there is little or no control of the lighting, but the impressive lighting set-ups used on 35mm shoots has intimidated people into thinking that celluloid needs more light than video. The opposite is true.

Soft front light / hot backlight

A popular technique in film lighting is to use a soft (diffuse) light source from the front and a stronger, more directional light from the back, so that your subject has a hot edge. The soft frontal light is known as the fill light; the strong light at the back is known, unsurprisingly, as the backlight.

You can arrange the lights in such a way as to leave darkness between the area illuminated by the backlight and the area illuminated by the fill light, depending on how moody you want the shot to be. This tends to work very well, although even the moodiest films tend to avoid leaving dark shadows on the faces of female talent.

For a slightly different look, the backlight can also be soft, but it should still be hotter than the fill.

You should light your film or video shot by shot. This means that when you relocate the camera to shoot a different angle, the lights must be moved as well to ensure the subject is always lit correctly. This is partly why films take so long to shoot.

Setting up lights is the most time-consuming task in film shoots. It is therefore good practice to shoot a scene in such a way as to minimize the need to relocate lights – in other words, shoot in the order of the lighting set-ups.

Mixing color temperatures

Using lights of different color temperatures can be used to great effect. This simply means using lights of different color in the same shot. This was used to great effect by James Cameron in the steel mill scene of “Terminator 2”, in which he used blue and orange light (motivated by moonlight and molten steel respectively).
The only caveat with this is that you must determine the relationship between the two different colors before filming, because it is not really possible, for example, to make the blue bluer without also making the orange bluer (i.e. less orange).

http://www.knicecreative.com/blog/importance-of-lighting-in-video-production/

Reasons why lighting is need in video production:

• Lighting can determine the mood of the video

Notice how you get a cold feeling on the back of your neck when your watching horror movies. The way the scene is lighted will have something to do it with that. Contrast and shadows can have more of an effect on a film scene than you know. Even in TV commercials or online content.

• Poor lighting = more time in the editing room

If your lighting on a set is not really up to snuff, it means your editors are going to end up paying for your mistake. Unless of course you want to go back and re-shoot the scenes, but that means even more time needed to complete your project (never good because more time means more money). If not that means your editors will have to do their best to fix the lighting in the editing software. Which could make the editing process longer.

• Light determines the quality of your project

If lighting isn’t done properly, a video production can go from top quality to a cheap video. Often you see bad examples of commercials either using too much artificial light or too little. Think about it, if a commercial came on TV that was low quality with so much artificial light where it looks like a home movie, would you still by that company’s product? (I’m guessing probably not-I wouldn’t).

Even basic lighting in a production will make a huge difference on a set. One technique that is known by most people in video production is three point lighting. It’s one of the most versatile lighting techniques and is pretty much the most basic one, but this one technique will make a huge difference in your production.

Three Point Lighting:

• Key light:

This is the main light of the three and is placed to the side of the camera and is the main light that helps light the subject of the video.

• Fill Light:

Fill light is the secondary light and is always placed on the opposite side from the key light. Helping to fill shadows casted by the key light.

• Back Light:

Back light speaks for itself. It is the light that is placed on the back of the subject you are shooting. It helps distinguish the subject from the background of the scene and give them a three-dimensional look on camera.

Just using this basic technique of three point lighting will improve your video production’s quality immensely. There is noticeable difference in work that looks professional and work that doesn’t. Big part of that is lighting.

https://software.intel.com/sites/default/files/m/d/4/1/d/8/3d-figure-top.gif

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinematic_techniques#Lighting_technique_and_aesthetics

Lighting technique and aesthetics

• Background lighting
• Cameo lighting
• Fill light
• Flood lighting
• High-key lighting
• Key lighting
• Lens flare
• Low-key lighting
• Mood lighting
• Rembrandt lighting
• Stage lighting
• Soft light

To achieve the results mentioned above, a Lighting Director may use a number or combination of Video Lights. These may include the Redhead or Open-face unit, The Fresnel Light, which gives you a little more control over the spill, or The Dedolight, which provides a more efficient light output and a beam which is easier to control.^[1]

https://www.cinema5d.com/common-types-of-film-lights/

Know your fixtures

Before we get into the types of film lights, let’s take a quick look at the two most common types of fixtures.

Open Faced

An open faced lighting fixture is used to create hard light that casts hard shadows. It is not much more than a housing and reflector for the bulb, and provides nothing in between the bulb and the subject.
The commonly known 800W “Redhead” and 2000W “Blonde” are examples of open faced video lights.

Fresnel

A Fresnel lens is a special type of lens that is divided into concentric circles, resulting in a much thinner lens than a conventional lens of the same power. This lens evens out the light and allows for the beam to be varied from flood to spot by changing the distance between the lamp/reflector unit and the lens.

Practicals

A practical light is considered any light source that will appear in the scene such as a table lamp, any visible interior light sources, even a hand held flashlight. Often existing bulbs are swapped out for those of different wattage or color temperature depending on the needed effect and desired contrast ratios within the scene.

Performance Factors

CRI

CRI stands for Color Rendering Index. It refers to the ability of a light source to properly and faithfully reveal the color of an object compared to an ideal or natural light source. The highest possible CRI is 100 and is attributed to a perfect black body (a tungsten light source is a perfect black body, as is the sun).

Color Temperature

Color temperature refers to the “color” of white light emitted by a light source based on that radiated by a perfect black body at a given temperature measured in degrees Kelvin.
White light can be warm (yellow/orange) or cool (blue) and our eyes automatically adjust. However, the color temperature of light sources and especially the mixing of different color temperatures becomes very important when designing film lighting.
Temperature Source
1,700 K: Match flame
1,850 K: Candle flame, sunset/sunrise
2,700–3,300 K: Incandescent lamps
4,100–4,150 K: Moonlight
5,000 K: Horizon daylight
5,500–6,000 K: Vertical daylight
6,500 K: Daylight, overcast
15,000–27,000 K Clear blue poleward sky

Know your light sources

Tungsten (Quartz Halogen/Tungsten Halogen)

Tungsten light sources are basically related to the same type of incandescent filament bulbs which until recently were common in homes and offices everywhere.

The key difference is that these use bulbs that take advantage of what is known as the halogen cycle. The pressurized halogen gas inside the bulb helps to redeposit evaporated tungsten metal back onto the filament. The glass bulb is made from a much stronger quartz or aluminosilicate glass. The lamps operate at a higher temperature than normal incandescent tungsten bulbs, and so they can achieve a higher color temperature, and higher luminous efficiency. They naturally produce a warm light, but blue color correction gels can be used to simulate daylight.
Tungsten lighting fixtures can be open faced or Fresnel up to about 20kW in power and are dimmable. They produce a continuous spectrum of light from near ultraviolet to infrared, producing near perfect color rendition.
When dimmed tungsten lights become warmer in color, so gels are needed to correct the color temperature.

Uses

Tungsten lighting is usually used to light interiors as it matches the warm light associated with domestic incandescent lighting.

Advantages

Near perfect color rendition
Low cost
Does not use mercury like CFLs (fluorescent) or mercury vapor lights
Better color temperature than standard tungsten
Longer life than a conventional incandescent
Instant on to full brightness, no warm up time, and it is dimmable 

Disadvantages

Extremely hot
High power requirement
The lamp is sensitive to oils and cannot be touchedThe bulb is capable of blowing and sending hot glass shards outward. A screen or layer of glass on the outside of the lamp can protect users.

HMI

HMI stands for Hydrargyrum medium-arc iodide and is a metal-halide gas discharge medium arc-length lamp.
A HMI bulb contains mercury vapor mixed with metal halides. An electrical arc between two electrodes excites the mercury vapor and metal halides resulting in a very high light output and luminous efficiency. HMI lamps are capable of between 85 and 108 lumens per watt, up to four times that of conventional incandescent lamps.
The specific mix of gases in a HMI bulb is designed to emit a 6000K color temperature light, closely matching natural sunlight. Electronic ballasts produce a flicker free light due to their very high frequency operation. Pulse width modulation can be used to dim HMI lights.

Uses

HMI’s are often used when high output is required and when recreating or augmenting sunlight shining into interiors, or for exterior lighting. Powerful HMI’s can be used to light large areas.

Advantages

Very high light output
Higher efficiency than incandescent lamps
High color temperature

Disadvantages

Relatively high cost, but this is balanced out by increased output
High power requirement
Requires an external ballast for arc ignition (up to 70,000 volts)
Dimming is possible only to about 50% and the color temperature increases in conjunction with dimming, thus creating a bluer light
If dropped while lit an HMI bulb can explode releasing super hot quartz glass and mercury vapor

Fluorescent 

A fluorescent lamp uses the excitement of low pressure mercury vapor to produce ultra-violet light, in turn causing a phosphor coating on the inside of the glass tube to glow giving off light in the visible spectrum.
A fluorescent light is much more efficient than an incandescent light, and is capable of generating up to 100 lumens per watt, similar to the output of HMI.
The spectrum of light emitted is different to an incandescent source and depends on the mix of phosphors used. However a CRI up to 99 can be achieved. The color temperature of a fluorescent can vary also from 2700K to 6500K depending on the phosphor mix.

Uses 

Fluorescent film lighting is most often used in fixtures containing banks of tubes. These tubes are normally either tungsten or daylight color balanced, or the tubes can be mixed within the fixture to vary the overall color mix of the light. They produce a soft and even light and can be used in relative close proximity to the subject. Fluorescent lighting is often used to light interiors and has the advantage of being more compact and cooler in operation than tungsten or HMI lighting.

Advantages

High efficiency
Low power requirement
Low cost
Long lamp life
Cool
Capable of soft even lighting over a large area
Lightweight

 Disadvantages

Flicker can be a problem with domestic fluorescent installations not intended for photographic use. Those designed for film use have electronic ballasts and produce flicker free light.
Fluorescent lights for film use have a high CRI, however the use of domestic tubes may have a far lower CRI and poor color rendition.

LED

LED stands for light emitting diode and is a solid-state semiconductor device. Only recently, LED’s of sufficient power have become available to make practical LED film lighting possible. LED’s are extremely efficient but are still limited in overall light output when compared to any of the other light sources.
LED’s are by nature monochromatic, producing only a single wavelength of light. So the challenge of LED lighting has been in creating a full spectrum white light. This can be done in two ways, either by combining the light of red, green and blue emitting LED’s, or with white LED’s whereby the visible white light is actually created by phosphors that are excited by an ultra-violet emitting LED.
LED lights can be daylight or tungsten balanced, sometimes switchable or having variable color temperature. Some have variable color through the entire RGB spectrum, which is something not possible with any other lighting technology. The CRI rating of LED lighting can be over 90.

Uses

LED’s are becoming more and more common on film sets. They can easily be battery powered making them very portable and requiring no separate ballasts or heavy cabling. Panels made from LED lights can be small and compact, or large for a variety of situations.
LED’s are also powering more traditional Fresnel style lamp heads such as the Arri L-series. Overall power outputs are on the rise, which is good news.

Advantages

Soft, even lighting
Pure light without UV-artifacts
High efficiency
Low power consumption, can be battery powered
Excellent dimming by means of pulse width modulation control
Long lifespan
Environmentally friendly
Insensitive to shock
No risk of explosion

Disadvantages

High cost. LED’s are currently still expensive for their total light output.

Luminous Efficiency Compared

Tungsten Quartz Halogen:   Up to +/- 35lm/W
HMI:                                        Up to +/- 115lm/W
Fluorescent:                           Up to +/- 100lm/W
LED:                                        Up to +/- 150lm/W

There is no Winner

When all is said and done, all of these lights have a specific purpose, and you’re likely to see them all on any film set. Not one of these lights can be used for every purpose and any lighting kit list would be severely compromised if any of these were missing.

Big HMI’s are going nowhere. When you need to manufacture sunlight, the only way to do it is with big power hungry HMI’s. There is simply no other way to generate that amount of light. Yes, this means generator trucks and added crew, but when it comes to lighting big exteriors none of this is about to change. Even on a conservative job I would suggest having a 2K and 5K HMI available.
Tungsten light is cheap and is still the workhorse of interior lighting. LED Fresnel technology may at some point reach a practical equivalence but even with Arri’s most powerful L-series, it’s not going to replace the medium to high output Tungsten lamp heads soon.

LED’s are also a permanent addition to the lighting department. For space restricted setups and the sheer portability that battery power affords these lights have become indispensible.
Fluorescents provide a lovely soft even light. They offer higher output than LED panels and can be larger in size, although LED panels can of course be tiled. Fluorescents are also very cost effective.
That covers the most common types of film lighting, but it is only the beginning of the story. Creating light is one thing, but shaping and controlling it is the most important skill of all to learn.

Textual analysis - Easy Rider

Easy Rider (1969) is a landmark for the hippie counterculture in a age of road movies, revolutionising the Beat Generation for a new age of youths who rejected traditional mainstream American values. The acid trip scene is notable due to it's intensely personal and sentimental nature for collaborative writers Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, director and producer respectively. For instance, Dennis suggested the graveyard acid trip scene in order to draw on Fonda's dark past of his mother committing suicide when he was aged just ten. His character, Wyatt, emotionally pleaded with his dead mother with a taut performance which gave verisimilitude to the film. The denial present relates to the effects the acid trip has, causing a dissociation from reality.

The montage of shots features disorienting dutch angles such as the tilted, low angled shot of the sky and trees, this conjures a feeling within the audience of also experiencing an acid trip. This builds on the verisimilitude which was achieved through actual drug use throughout the duration of shooting the film, popularising the use of LSD and propelling social deviants into the mainstream. This changed the relationship people had with film makers, as youths went from seeing them as celebrities to relating to them through the experience of their own counter culture being represented in mainstream media. They identified with the outcast status and hopeless mentality which is presented in Wyatt and Billy's involvement with drugs and alternative lifestyle communes. Fonda even reported that his 'fan mail' had diverged from requests for autographs to asking questions such as "How do I keep myself from committing suicide?".

There is the recurring non-diegetic sound of what seems to be a machine or a train and an alarm throughout the sequence, which then has the diegetic sound of a woman reading from the Bible played over this. The religious iconography in the mise en scene of various statues and Christian symbols such as Christ on the cross reinforce this association. This contrast of modernity with tradition parallels the presence of weeds and plants overpowering the urban environment which Wyatt, Billy and the two hookers are in. This fits with the hippie mentality of rejecting the corporate and controlled state which was born from the pursuit of the American dream and resulted in a nationalistic mentality. They instead strove for a gentler world with emphasis on peace and love, thanking God for 'a place to stand'. In this sequence the mechanical sounds almost fade out as the prayer becomes more prominent and mentions resurrection, a theme in tune with the hippie idea of a new beginning. The frequent shots of the sun could represent this concept as it is that which gives us life and that which will eventually kill us, the varying zoom in/zoom out which is used also reflects the altered perception which the drug use has caused.

As well as freedom to take drugs and escape the rush of urban life, the hippie movement also focuses on the freedom of sexuality. A fisheye lens is used in the wide shot of a naked woman lying in a graveyard, the juxtaposition in the mise en scene seems perverted even in this age of supposed sexual freedom. The type of lens used gives the effect of looking through a spyhole, representing how these people are social outcasts who are viewed as peculiar beings from which one should keep their distance. This is supported by the contrast of the chiaroscuro lighting. It also touches on the frequent sexualisation and objectification of women in media, a problem which was especially notable in the more traditional time of the sixties. A woman in a pink top removes her clothing outdoors in a nonchalant fashion as she stands between two walls, suggesting that she is boxed in and unable to express her sexuality or perhaps simply display her body in a non-sexual way.

Natural lighting is prevalent throughout the scene and indeed the entire film, Hopper stated this was intentional as "God is a great gaffer". This diverges from the common use of extreme lighting and editing techniques in order to represent an altered state of mind. Another frequent technique is the use of lens glare which would often be considered quite amateurish and would be avoided by mainstream films. The fact that Easy Rider was so heavily edited with much of it cut gives this even more significance. Again it is more representative of the real environment which makes it seem as if the director wants us to feel as if we are there, supported by the use of handheld camera. The lens glare gives a sort of haphazard, unpolished feel which is shared by the characters. Overall this sequence, although disorienting and potentially disturbing, really utilities technical aspects to communicate key themes and ideologies which the characters possess.

Word count: 806

Easy Rider - research

Explain how the text has been constructed to create meaning

Identify specific camera shot types, angles, lighting techniques, editing and sound (diegetic, non-diegetic and dialogue) and justify why they have been used to help the audience decode the text and influence them to gain the preferred reading.

You can discuss these individually, but it is often a higher level discussion if you explore how they interact and combine with one another.

Also discuss how these techniques relate to the time/ era that the production was made – you may need to research wider context.

750 words and embedded clip

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-easy-rider-1969
http://sabotagetimes.com/tv-film/a-reefer-runs-through-it-the-making-of-easy-rider
http://gb.imdb.com/title/tt0064276/plotsummary?ref_=tt_stry_pl
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easy_Rider

Hopper and Fonda's first collaboration was in The Trip (1967), written by Jack Nicholson, which had similar themes and characters as Easy Rider.^[5] Peter Fonda had become "an icon of the counterculture" in The Wild Angels (1966), where he established "a persona he would develop further in The Trip and Easy Rider."^[6] The Trip also popularized LSD, while Easy Rider went on to "celebrate 60s counterculture" but does so "stripped of its innocence."^[7] Author Katie Mills wrote that The Trip is a way point along the "metamorphosis of the rebel road story from a Beat relic into its hippie reincarnation as Easy Rider", and connected Peter Fonda's characters in those two films, along with his character in The Wild Angels, deviating from the "formulaic biker" persona and critiquing "commodity-oriented filmmakers appropriating avant-garde film techniques."^[5] It was also a step in the transition from independent film into Hollywood's mainstream, and while The Trip was criticized as a faux, popularized underground film made by Hollywood insiders,Easy Rider "interrogates" the attitude that underground film must "remain strictly segregated from Hollywood."^[5] Mills also wrote that the famous acid trip scene in Easy Rider"clearly derives from their first tentative explorations as filmmakers in The Trip."^[5]

A landmark counterculture film,^[2] and a "touchstone for a generation" that "captured the national imagination",^[3] Easy Riderexplores the societal landscape, issues, and tensions in the United States during the 1960s, such as the rise and fall of the hippiemovement, drug use, and communal lifestyle. In Easy Rider, real drugs were used in scenes showing the use of marijuana and other substances.

Two young "hippie" bikers, Wyatt and Billy sell some dope in Southern California, stash their money away in their gas-tank and set off for a trip across America, on their own personal odyssey looking for a way to lead their lives. On the journey they encounter bigotry and hatred from small-town communities who despise and fear their non-conformism. However Wyatt and Billy also discover people attempting 'alternative lifestyles' who are resisting this narrow-mindedness, there is always a question mark over the future survival of these drop-out groups. The gentle hippie community who thank God for 'a place to stand' are living their own unreal dream. The rancher they encounter and his Mexican wife are hard-pushed to make ends meet. Even LSD turns sour when the trip is a bad one. Death comes to seem the only freedom. When they arrive at a diner in a small town, they are insulted by the local rednecks as weirdo degenerates. They are arrested on some minor pretext by the local sheriff and thrown in jail where they meet George Hanson, a liberal alcoholic lawyer. He gets them out and decides to join them on their trip to New Orleans in time for Mardi Gras.


Their mother committed suicide in a mental hospital when Peter, her youngest, was ten.

Bert Schneider (executive producer): Of all the scenes in the movie, the acid scene is the one most people remember and the one that most people were freaked out by.

Peter Fonda: The graveyard acid scene was Dennis's idea. He had come up to me with tears streaming down his cheeks because he was to film in a cemetery. "Oh man, you gotta get up to the statue now. I want you to get up there and ask your old lady why she copped out on you." "Come on, Hoppy," I replied. "I'm hip to Captain America having a mother complex, but you want to take Peter Fonda's complex and put it up there on screen!" "Nobody will know." "Everybody will know, man! They all know what happened!"

The budget was so limited, there was no money for an original score, so Hopper, the director, slapped on a scratch track of rock 'n' roll standards for the first studio screening. The executives loved the sound and insisted the songs be left in, and "Easy Rider" begat countless later movies that were scored with oldies.

Motorcycle movies were not fashionable in 1969 - link two symbols of rebellion -- motorcycles and the hippie counterculture -- and catch the spirit of the time.

A hitchhiker leads them to a hippie commune that may have seemed inspiring in 1969, but today looks banal.  The group leader gives the Captain and Billy a tab of acid and the solemn advice, "When you get to the right place, with the right people -- quarter this."

Captain America and Billy find the legendary whorehouse and drop acid in the cemetery with two hookers (including Karen Black in one of her earliest film roles). It's a bad trip, but maybe they chose the wrong place with the wrong people.

Jack Nicholson: The film changed more in the editing room that from script to film.

One of the reasons that America inspires so many road pictures is that we have so many roads. One of the reasons we have so many buddy pictures is that Hollywood doesn't understand female characters (there are so many hookers in the movies because, as characters, they share the convenience of their real-life counterparts: They're easy to find and easy to get rid of.)

Peter Fonda: Easy Rider really was a trip. Back when I was making studio pictures like Tammy And The Doctor, I got a lot of fan mail - thousands of letters a week asking for my autography and my picture. When I did Easy Rider, I got letters from people saying, "What do I do?", "How do I speak to my father?", "How do I keep myself from committing suicide?", "How do I live?" Nobody was asking me for my picture and my autograph any more.

changed the relationship people had with film makers, stopped seeing them as celebrities and related to them, saw their own deviant counter culture reflected in mainstream media, new age of hollywood, buddy road movie - close relationship formed with film makers through outcast status. People rejected traditional guidance e.g. parents and looked to media for influence - still religious 

"the movie's sentimental paranoia obviously rang true to a large, young audience's vision. In the late '60s, it was cool to feel that you couldn't win, that everything was rigged and hopeless."

Dennis Hopper: I wrote every word of the script. I directed every scene of the film. You can hear what you like. Here it is: I made that fucking movie, period.

Most of the film is shot outside with natural lighting. Hopper said all the outdoor shooting was an intentional choice on his part, because "God is a great gaffer