I love Model. It’s the most enjoyable for me of all Wiseman films. I’ve seen it a lot, but not for maybe ten years. I was worried that I knew it too well for another viewing to offer much, although that’s never been a problem for me with his films. This time I was frankly surprised by how deeply watchable it still is for me, and I felt like this time I was finally figuring out things in a way I hadn’t before. “Figuring out” with a Wiseman film doesn’t mean that now you entirely understand it. That’s the nice thing about ambiguous and complex movies. It means you are connecting things in different ways or have finally noticed more fully some elements which you only somewhat sensed in earlier viewings. Anyway, I feel like I’ve got a lot of things to get down quickly in this Model-writing-day, knowing that I’ve got a few fresh and hopefully useful things to say.
I’ve been trying to stay pretty jargon free (I think there’s only been one “non-diegetic” so far), but let’s do a very necessary one: self-reflexive. Why it’s necessary here is that Model is practically a textbook on film-making, and is of course itself a film, so that’s what self-reflexive is about. It’s a work commenting about itself - a media work about the making of media. Why this is important is that self-reflexivity becomes an analysis of the differences between what we’re seeing explored in the film and how the film that’s observing these things is dealing with the same issues. When Wiseman explores film and media (which includes not just film, but photography, some bits of video - generally any media production), when he does this, you can see an artist examining his own tools and his own art. This is what makes Model a great film. It is a film of self-examination, that is about Wiseman’s ways of making a film. To explain this better, I’m going to pull together a list, remind you quickly of some examples, and suggest why I think this matters so much. There are plenty of other things one could say about Model, but let’s see how we can do by giving this a go.
Here is a bunch of what I think are self-reflexive elements in Model. I’m going to letter them, so we can look at each briefly. Some of them I break down a bit further, so I can go into more detail to persuade you of their importance. I want to be specific on each, and then we’ll go wider briefly just after.
A. Casting
B. Cameras
kinds
also lenses and filters
loading film (actual analog film and videotape)
C. Lights (for sure) (light umbrellas, effect of losing sunlight, much light positioning)
D. Other equipment
tripods
swivels
tracks
sound recorders
tv monitors
E. Directing
controlling performance
positions of actors - looks, positions of arms and legs, body angles
framing
F. Editing
G. Color vs. Black and White
H. Rehearsing, and repeating actions
I. To stage or not to stage
J. Use of interviews
K. Special effects
L. Feedback and Analysis of the result
A. Model shows quite a bit of choosing who is going to be appropriate for each project. We hear right off from Zoli, head of his eponymous agency, that any women under 5 foot 7 inches will not have a modeling career because she won’t fit well in the clothes. A regular feature of Model are the repeated reviews of portfolios brought in by prospective models, with immediate assessments of their suitability. We also get some casting sessions, and in what are immensely more glam versions of what we’ve seen already in Welfare, waiting rooms full for prospective models and actors. They are generally selected and paid, unlike in Wiseman's films, where he’s pretty much given us non-actors and he’s not paying any of them, although clearly he finds those here quite photographable and interesting.
B. There’s barely a sequence in Model that doesn’t include people being photographed, and Wiseman just about always shows you the cameras being used - that is, we see close-ups of the cameras taking the images of what we are also looking at. Sometimes, and it’s a tricky process, we see almost exactly what the cameras photograph - almost like from the point-of-view of the camera we could say. Lots of times it’s still cameras, and there we get a good look at different types - varying in size and manufacturer. Nikons and Hasselblads look to be the favorites. Besides still cameras, we get old fashioned video cameras (back when they were recording on videotape), and also a good number of bulky film cameras - the commercial kind rather than the handheld sort Wiseman himself would be using. For these too, we get many attentive shots of the cameras themselves. The camera we never see is the camera filming our movie. That could be possible if it ever shows up in a mirror, but I don’t think that ever happens in a Wiseman film. We see enough cameras already.
Another analog throwback is to see film actually loaded into the cameras. I felt as nostalgic at seeing this as when typewriters have shown up in other movies. To see rolls of film being loaded, even I think one time seeing that the roll going in allowed for 36 photos, was something I hadn’t remembered - too many 16gb SD cards now holding thousands of photos. At this time, I think film cameras, at the time especially portable ones like Wiseman’s, could only hold ten minutes of film, which is why credits for a Camera Assistant are so common - they’re probably loading magazines of film. Also, there’s visible interest in lenses and filters. We see lenses focused and switched, and we see filters in the form of plastic sheets held over lenses and also the screw-on type, and there’s some discussion of the effects of different filters on what’s being filmed.
C. Lights are a continuing obsession of Model, not regular lighting, but the special lights needed for commercial work. Along with shots of cameras, there is scarcely a scene where we don’t get direct shots of lights being put to use in service of filming. The umbrella light, where a bright bulb bounces light off a white canvas umbrella, is shown in probably five scenes, and there are also big movie-set type lights that we get close-ups of several times. In some of the few times we’re outdoors, electric lights are still used, and there’s worry as well about losing the sun and the effects of shadows. There’s also a far amount of finicky light positioning, to get the image just right. This is all quite ironic in a Wiseman film, as I doubt whether he’s ever set up a light himself or even turned one on or off in any of these films.
D. Besides cameras and lights, commercial photography and film-making is an equipment-heavy enterprise. Pretty sizeable crews can be needed to lug around all the extra stuff. Assistants abound. We also see visual attention given to all sorts of additional equipment. I like the swiveling camera mount used to photograph a model walking down a few steps, which is itself attached to a set of wheels to allow for a smooth camera movement to follow her. Important too are tripods to keep shots nice and steady. And let’s not forget sound, which means recorders (tape in those days) and clapperboards to mark synchronization. And then there are television monitors, something we’ve seen a good amount already in other Wiseman films. Here they can even be drawn on, as happens with the eight leg positions the model must match in the stocking commercial.
E. We might think photographers and film-makers just photograph and film things, but Model shows them to always be directors too. The sound of photographers telling models what to do, expressing either effusive approval or ordering changes in what they’re doing, feels like the principal dialog of Model. We see all sorts of ways performances are coaxed from models and actors. I really like the “waiting for a bus” auditions, which we first see without being told what’s going on (typical Wiseman method, of course), although we likely know it’s acting because you don’t wait for a bus inside a room. The audition director tries to coach them a bit and then tapes them again (the second time we watch it on a monitor), and it’s about as stilted as the first time around. We then see a second pair of actors play the same scene, with some direction tossed in, and it’s not much better to watch. Again, this is kind of the anti-Wiseman way of doing things, as he doesn’t coax performances from any of the people we’ve seen in these films, even though we have seen much deep emotion and great dialog spoken without it having to be coaxed by a director. (We might not trust the director we see in this sequence too much anyway, as he thinks Warren Beatty starred in Days of Heaven, suggesting he doesn’t know all that much about film actors.) My favorite line of a director motivating an actor comes later in the film during the big leg commercial section: "Think young executive, rather than guy standing at street corner.”
In addition to performances, a good deal of directing in Model is aimed at the precise controlling and positioning of the people being photographed. Looking in the right direction, having the right expression, getting that arm in the right position next to the face, the foot turned the right amount in - the tiny differences might matter, or it might seem like a false kind of control to fairly little visible difference. But it does stress the concern all these directors have for the visual aspects of their work. And it’s also antithetical to Wiseman’s way of doing things. We get a load of interesting people in his films photographed quite well, but they are creating their performances, as it were, on their own - looks, facial expressions, body positions, and all the rest. A great line in Model directing a look is the instruction: "look in the direction of your face”. The model looks as perplexed while attempting that as we are hearing it. How in the world do you do that?
Directors also frame their shots, and Wiseman displays this brilliantly in a photo session where the model is being photographed literally inside a frame. So we get a frame inside a frame, as here too the camera position looks to be exactly what the photographer set up for himself - our camera replacing his. Composition is a crucial aspect of a visual image, and Wiseman is acutely aware of it. Another kind of matching moment occurs in a weird scene where models are posed along a long wall while a party is going on. They are on a platform, and Wiseman films them at an extreme angle up, just as several cameras within the scene do. In another scene, of three models being photographed against a white paper background, the direction they’re given is "don't come in and out of the frame too much”, though it’s unclear how they could figure that out for themselves. It’s a director’s problem.
F. You probably have to scroll up to see where we are in this list. Editing, though, which would include both the selecting of what shots from all the material photographed will be used to construct sequences, and a concern for how the shots are ordered and put together, is clearly for Wiseman one of the most important aspects of his making films. He is known to take a year or so in this process, after a month or so of filming. Here too, Model makes this an explicit topic several times. We get to see individual slides from a photo session gone over closely and the best ones selected. During the big leg commercial again, when they’re filming a piece of it outside the Guggenheim Museum, the director explains his idea of how the two or three shots he’s filming there will be cut together with the others, and his associate refers to the “beautiful cut point” that should result from how he’s envisioned the sequence. In another of those director-coaching-an-actor scenes, there’s a good description of one way to assemble a film: “And one thing you say kind of ticks off something else until you build on it.” No doubt Wiseman was aware of this as a self-reflexive moment.
G. Wiseman will eventually turn to color when the technology made it much easier. We’ll discuss color further after he makes the change, but everything so far, of course, has been black and white, largely because color does require more light. Also, I’d say, black and white has a long association with documentary and looking real, while color suggests artificiality and stylization. For now, though, the point is that color versus black and white is directly referenced in Model several times too. It’s a subject when models show their portfolios to Zoli employees - they talk about which shots are effective in one or the other, while of course we can only see black and white. One photographer filming his model says “This is color now. Does it make you think differently." I think he’s being quite serious when he says this. I’m not sure he’s more substantive when he adds: "When it's black and white they can fix all the mistakes. When it's color, it's got to be right." Whether we agree, it’s more awareness of the medium we’re viewing.
H. In Wiseman’s films, there’s no such thing as rehearsing because there aren’t any actors. In Model though, before the filming-within-the-film starts, many times they practice what’s going to be filmed. Where the line is drawn between practicing to do something to get it right and then actually filming it becomes quite blurred, but we do get lots of “Let’s try it first” and “Now let’s do it for real”. What’s a “real” moment, meaning when are they seriously filming, can be hard to spot. We do get the big movie command of “Action” sometimes to mark these starts (and sometimes see those clapperboards), but it’s kind of wonderfully fluid in Model not to always know when is something being filmed or photographed, and when is it not. Of course what we’re watching is all stuff that has been filmed, so what we don’t always know is where is the film inside our film. It’s maybe almost a big enough additional thing to be its own letter on our list, but repeating actions is an important self-reflexive activity. We see the same thing done over lots of times. Rehearsed scenes and then actual scenes are a major type of this. Also, there is frequently much dissatisfaction with one version of what they’ve just shot or a desire to do something a bit differently, so over and over again is what we see, many times to the sound of click-click-click of cameras. I think we get up to fifty-something leg movements for that four second bit of a commercial, though we only watch ten or so. Even fairly uninformed movie viewers know that films are generally made up from a number of “takes”, different versions of the same events filmed, and then selected from and assembled later in editing. Model makes us privy to this process, shows it to us in action.
I. Staging is different from rehearsing or repeating, and it’s important enough for its own alphabet letter. Staging means setting up something to be filmed, including such things as building sets, hiring actors, creating the world of the film. Wiseman here too does none of these things. The difference between staging and not staging is clearly illustrated in Model in two scenes that are pretty widely separated, but easily connected in our minds. (Of course we’ve got to do that a lot in Wiseman. The things that connect don’t have to be right next to each other.) Early in the film there’s a pretty funny phony protest scene. I don’t think it’s meant to be taken seriously, since it’s a bunch of models in a fake street protest holding up signs that say things like “Equal Fashion for Women”, kind of a mock feminist march being filmed for a commercial. It’s another of those scenes of a few repetitions, the group of models takes a few steps forward and then are told to go back, one time told “give us a nice big jump and a yell”. An hour or so later in the film, we get the real thing, an actual Black Protest march that we immediately recognize as really taking place, unless by now we’re suspicious of anything being unstaged. Staging itself, of course, is another thing that’s decidedly not the Wiseman way. He’s observing, not telling anyone what to do. So seeing a false protest and a real protest gives us a chance to consider the difference. We don’t have to prefer seeing one or another, we just have to understand that’s another film-maker choice.
J. It’s a bit along the lines of staging, but quite a major issue in documentary, as to whether or not the film-maker should speak directly to the people he/she films. In many films this takes the form of interviews. It’s another of those things Wiseman doesn’t do directly, but sometimes, as here, he does show people being interviewed. That’s the self-reflexive difference - seeing other people use a film technique versus doing it yourself. Here we see some male models interviewed in a hotel room for some presumed documentary film, including interviews in a shower. When the scene begins, we hear a model given a common interview instruction: “When I ask you a question, kind of include my question in your answer so that people understand what you're talking about.” (Even though told to do that, for many of the questions he answers, he fails to do that. If done correctly, the interviewer can disappear from their finished product.) He’s also given another bit of interview direction when told “When you answer the questions, you can look right into the camera, right here." Interviews are a staple of many documentaries, but you don’t see them in Wiseman films unless it’s in this form - where in this case the pitfalls of using interviews can be pretty apparent - it’s a way of getting people to tell you what you want to hear, not really a suitable method in these films, which again are observing rather than getting people to answer questions.
K. Wiseman’s films are obviously devoid of special effects, an element of cinema we’re more familiar with in this age of CGI and other digital techniques. Movies from their beginnings, though, from the great Georges Melies (see Martin Scorsese’s ”Hugo” please) onward, it’s often been a component. Model’s bravura 25-minute segment about the making of one hosiery commercial, includes a great example of special effects, the eventually 4 second piece mentioned already of a leg in a series of repeated positions. That we see this accomplished in such detail exposes massive amounts of specific detail about elements of movie-making - serious self-reflexivity. An important part of this too is seeing the finished commercial within our film, so that we can see that what takes 25 minutes in our film (and many hours longer when it actually was done) winds up being 30 seconds long as a finished product. That’s maybe not so different from Wiseman filming for a month or so, producing perhaps fifty or sixty hours of actual film, and winding up with a film of two or three (or four or one time six) hours. But apart from how long Model shows it can take to produce four seconds of film, this sequence shows how much camera trickery can be involved. Again, Wiseman doesn’t do it this way.
It’s a complete off-the-subject thing, but I think I’m the first to notice someone in Model deserving of a little extra attention, and catching his name when I froze an image yielded someone I had just read about. We do spend some time watching the director of that 4 second special effect, who looks to be very smart and also quite sympathetic towards the work of his leg model (who is herself, by the way, quite a famous model named Appolonia van Ravenstein, who Wiseman starred in his “Seraphita’s Diary” two years later). The director is never addressed by name, but if you look carefully on his clapperboard, you can see he is listed as Hal Tulchin. If you look him up, you can learn that in 1969, ten years earlier than doing leg commercial effects, he shot all the film material of six music shows which were part of the Harlem Cultural Festival. This material has languished in various vaults for fifty years, until now the musician Questlove has made the film “Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)” from Tulchin’s material, and it was shown as part of the most recent Sundance Film Festival on its way to a general release. Tulchin died in 2017, so it’s nice to see him in Model, and interesting to recognize it’s the same guy now back getting much well deserved attention.
L. Last but not least, as they say, is one more aspect of film-making, which is people having opinions of your work. The work being done in Model is under continual scrutiny, and everybody seems to have an opinion. I can’t think of another movie that talks about itself as much as this one does. That’s self-reflexivity of a pretty high order. While things are being filmed, we can get opinions from others as to whether it’s any good or not, or someone expounds on how brilliant their work is. One great moment of this is the guy who offers his ideas about the different amounts of time that theater pieces and motion pictures will employ, leading to the conclusion that therefor 30 second commercials are “probably the most difficult art form there is”. This bit of analysis may be pretty rudimentary, but it does lead the viewer to be thinking more critically about the whole process of film-making. Whether a shorter result is more challenging can certainly be contradicted by the film we are watching, if it wasn’t already obvious. Beyond that one observation, awareness that film can be scrutinized closely (we do even get a magnifying glass as mentioned) might be asking things of us as viewers too.
I’ve gone into more detail on this than I expected to, but allow me just to offer a bit further of a payoff on this self-reflexive stuff, why it was worth giving this a look as a way of appreciating the attention it gets in Model. For one, as I’ve mentioned several times with earlier films, Wiseman’s films make special demands on viewers because of his unique approach - all these things like how the films are constructed, not having people we follow for any length of time, not directly stating what’s important in what we’re viewing, and other like matters we’ll keep looking at. In short, we can’t watch these as we do most films, which usually invite us to lose ourselves in a linearly-presented world of clearer meanings and intentions. In most movies, we’re invited to forget we’re watching a movie. In Wiseman’s films, that’s really hard to do. So looking at the process of what goes into a movie and makes us think about how we watch it, is consistent with making us be more active viewers. We can certainly be deeply involved with what we are seeing, and even sometimes enjoy it too, but we know it’s on us not to be passive viewers who forget it’s a film we’re watching. Another way to look at that list above is to ask yourself with each, is this something Wiseman does or not, and either way, why do you think that is? Is he criticizing the use of these devices by taking a different path himself? Either “our” film is employing similar means, or by exposing the methods by which many films are made, ours is implying an alternative way. However we might feel about what we watch, the film is constructed so that it invites thinking about both the activities within the film, and then to the even bigger subject of how all media are made, including the one we’re watching. It also occurred to me as the film was ending that we never saw models doing what we might have most expected - appearing in any fashion shows or any kind of live modelling to audiences. When we’re not in Zoli’s offices, every modeling job is to be photographed or filmed - I think for the purpose of staying focused on the questions we’ve been looking at here.
As a brief end comment, another strong reaction Model now invites is to see that 1979 was just before the beginning of the AIDS crisis, and the film captures a moment before the world shown in the film would be so terribly decimated. Wiseman’s role as a chronicler of his times can be acutely felt. Even though this is just before the disease surfaced and it therefore is never mentioned in the film, in its way, it now feels like “Near Death” is very close. Zoli Rendessy, the head of the agency and much seen in Model, died of AIDS in 1982, and it’s tragic to think how many of the models and other artists we see in the film may have suffered the same fate. While the films themselves don’t feel like they have aged, they are indeed snapshots in time.