Chapter 1 photography "Cinematographer"

This was a little confusing for me you see no one is list as cinematographer or director of photography for the movie Clerks. Kevin Smith is the director and David Klien is the camera man. Now most of Kevin Smiths movies; Mallrats, Clerks 2, Chasing Amy and Zack and Meri make a porno David Klien is listed as his Cinematographer. According to Imdb.com David Klien's bio he has Clerks listed as cinematographer. So I will write on David Klien. Clerks is David Kliens first film as a cinematographer but he had many rolls in this film. He was also the camera man and at lest four characters in the movie. The movie Clerks was shot with one single camera and out side of a few shots it was mostly filmed in a convenient store that a Kevin Smith worked at. Most of the shots the camera remained in an iles. Focusing on Randal and Dante at the counter. The out side shots are also limited to the front of the store and there are four or five shots in the video store and one shot they made it look as if Randal had gone to a much larger video store when it was actually the same location only shot in a different part of the store. There is the roof top hockey scene and the funeral scene which Kevin Smith did not have permission to go into the funeral home so they only shot the guys park in front walk up the side walk and run back to the car.
The film is in black and white, most of the filming takes place at night when the store is closed so they covered the back windows and explained the black windows with the idea that the gates had gum shoved in the locks. So with limited time space and location, Kevin Smith and David Klien became creative. When they were filming in RSV video store they gave it a sense of being a very small video store by limiting the angles in which they shot the film. Only time we had a view of the store was when it was viewed as Big Choice Videos. The convenient store also has the image of being small as we only see certain angles and views of the store. I Jay and silent Bob strike back we see the inside in color at at a different angle so the store seems larger and brighter.
At times the movie looked grainy and dark, The story how ever played out nicely on the screen.

The theory of Clerks

Chapter 11 covers many different film Theories that a movie may follow. Well to me Clerks almost falls into the neorealist theory. Stylisticly it follows the formula for neorealism. The story has episodes that evolve from the situation of the characters. Dante constintly reminds everyone that he was not even suppose to be at work that day. If he had not said yes to working he would still have Veronica as a girl friend, Kaitlyn would not be traumitized and he would not have faught with Randel nor been involved in the casket being knocked over and in the origanil cut Dante would still be alive. The film is done in a real convinent store. Kevin Smith used unknown actors some as several characters with costume change. The entire movie is conversational speech between Dante and Randel. Finally the movie has a styleless style. It does however focus on laborers and just plane common people just someone trying to stay in their comfort zone with out making any real changes that would bring on a challenge. There are no underlying messages in this story which is why it falls short of the neorealism theory.