Dogme 95 Film Style - Research

Dogme 95 is a film making style what was created by Dutch film-makers; Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, Kristian Levring and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen in 1995. The sole purpose behind this style of film making is to preserve a raw form of producing visual stories, in order to produce a film of this style the directors had to follow 10 rules:

• Filming must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in.

• Music must not be used unless it occurs within the scene being filmed.

• The camera must be hand-held; filming must take place where the action takes place. 

• The film must be in colour. No special lighting. 

• Optical work and filters are forbidden. 

• No superficial action (No murders, weapons, etc.)

• No temporal or geographical alienation.

• No genre movies.

• The aspect ratio must be 4:3, not widescreen. 

• The director must not be credited. 

 This is a documentary that discusses the impact of digital cinema, particularly how it has affected the evolution of film-making and cinematography; challenging the way directors of mediums such as films engage with their audience. at (16:07) the documentary has a segment on 'Dogme 95' discussing how this style impacted the industry but also specifically how cinematographer "Anthony Dod Mantle" incorporated the style within the film "The Celebration".The segment elaborates on Mantle's reasons to why he wanted to shoot in this style, what creative freedoms did it offer him and how did it benefit the product.

This style of film making initially had my curiosity as it gave the story an organic feel to the project as it consisted primarily on in camera techniques and minimal equipment, causing the entire product to be driven by the performance from the actors. This would be an interesting factor to bring more emphasis towards the relevance of the characters within my short film. However there ultimately was too many technical implications that I encountered with this style that I felt would add more complications to achieving my vision as well as an overall visual preference and style. This is all due to the need to manipulate particular shots within post-production in order to connote a certainly meaning or emotion; most importantly I'd like to present my short-film in an anamorphic aspect ratio in order to provide it a far more professional and cinematic look.