Joel and Ethan Coen

Joel and Ethan Coen, commonly called The Coen Brothers, are Jewish-American film directors best known for their quirky comedies such as Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski, as well as for darker film noir dramas such as Fargo and Blood Simple. The brothers write, direct and produce their films jointly, alternating top billing for the screenplay. Until recently, Joel received sole credit for directing the films, and Ethan for producing, but the two brothers work so closely together and share such a strong vision of what their films are to be that actors report that they can approach either brother with a question and get the same answer. The brothers are known in the film business as "the two-headed director."

Camera techniques

Visually, the Coens favor moving camera shots, especially tracking shots and crane shots; when the camera is "static" it is often still drifting slightly. Their films are also distinguished by cinematic visual flourishes that mark turning points in their films.

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The "Raimi cam" rush

Occasionally in their tracking shots they "rush" the camera forward, as in the scene in Raising Arizona where Nathan Jr. is discovered missing; the Coen brothers dubbed the rush forward the "Raimi cam" in tribute to their longtime friend and director Sam Raimi, who used rushes extensively in Evil Dead (which Joel Coen helped edit). The Hudsucker Proxy features not one, but two, consecutive rushes when Norville shows Mussburger's secretary the Blue Letter: first on the mouth of the lady screaming on the ladder, and then on Norville reacting to the scream.

Related Topics:
Sam Raimi - Evil Dead

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Lenses

The Coen brothers' earlier films (with the exception of Miller's Crossing) made extensive use of wide-angle lenses, which are the preferred lenses of their regular cinematographer, Barry Sonnenfeld. Roger Deakins, who replaced Sonnenfeld when he left to pursue a directing career, has been trying to wean the Coens off these lenses since he started working with them (wide angle lenses allow great depth of field but cause considerable distortion in the apparent size of objects based on how far they are from the camera). Deakins has been working towards longer lenses, which appear to shorten the distance between objects, but have shallower depth of field.

Related Topics:
Wide-angle lens - Barry Sonnenfeld - Roger Deakins - Depth of field

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Camera angles

The Coen brothers use camera angles which sometimes hide rather than reveal information, as in Fargo when Jerry Lundegaard is hiding in the shower, in Miller's Crossing when Tom goes into his room after Leo leaves, (Verna is on the bed behind him), and in Blood Simple when Abby is sitting up in bed with Ray and the Volkswagen pulls up outside her window.

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Disguised cuts

They also frequently "hide" their cuts in a close-up on an object, in the style of Alfred Hitchcock's Rope: one occurrence of this is obvious in Fargo, when Carl is banging on the television to get it to work (when the picture finally comes in clearly it is in fact a cut to Marge's television as seen from her bed). The brothers make a similar cut in Miller's Crossing when the close up of the window at Vernie's house pans away to show a man dead on the floor at another; in The Hudsucker Proxy when Amy Archer is cheering "Go Eagles!" after Norville hires her (the film cuts to her showing the same cheer to her coworker at the newspaper); and in Blood Simple when the "close-up" of the ceiling fan over Marty's head at the bar turns out to be from Abby's point of view on the couch at Ray's house.

Related Topics:
Alfred Hitchcock - Rope

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