Harold Michelson

Harold describes how he conceptualized the storyboards for the hotel room scene in THE GRADUATE: "When they were in the hotel room and they were finished with their lovemaking, I took a shot from the TV set to Dustin. And I had her walking back and forth. He is watching TV. You just see him. You see her, you don't see her head. It's from her neck down to knees. And she walks past in front of the screen, getting dressed. She goes from left to right and she puts on her underwear. And as she goes by, she has more clothes on. Then from right to left she puts on something else. And finally the door slams. I just did it. I thought it was hell of a shot, and I'm proud of it." Show less «

Harold describes how he conceptualized the storyboards for the hotel room scene in THE GRADUATE: "I'm trying to get as many different compositions as I can without making it a dull two-headed monster or a two-headed screen of just two people talking and cutting back and forth, which makes it absolutely deadly. I don't care how good the dialog is." "There was this scene and I decided to have in the foreground the angle of her leg, which created a triangle, and put Dustin Hoffman in between. We saw him immediately, and you also got the feeling of a sexual escapade." "It's your ideas that they want. They don't want your style." "In reality - and I won't say this - it's like directing. You have to have all this knowledge of directing just for this piece of paper. After that, they can do whatever they want with the piece of paper, but all these truths are part of the art of cinema." "These compositions, which, when you're doing a storyboard, are really up to you. There are many ways of bringing the central character to the eye of the audience by putting them at the end of a vanishing point... which is two lines going off in a distance like a railroad track. Your eye is led by the railroad tracks. These are the devices we use to capture the audience's view." Show less «