Visual Storytelling Through ‘Spikeisms’

Nearly every Spike Lee movie includes what the director calls a “Spikeism,” a heightened visual flourish that makes you take notice while moving the narrative forward. His new film, “BlacKkKlansman,” about an African-American detective who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan, continues that tradition with one simple yet effective technique highlighting faces in a crowd. Here is a closer look at that scene and other distinctive moments from Lee’s films, with commentary from the director.

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During an early scene in “BlacKkKlansman,” activist Stokely Carmichael, who had adopted the African name Kwame Ture, delivers a speech to black college students. He tells them they are charged with defining beauty for black people and encourages them to celebrate their features. “Our lips are thick,” he says, “our noses broad. Our hair is nappy. We are black and we are beautiful.”

During an interview at his production office in Brooklyn, Lee explained, “Kwame was about trying to get the shackles of colonialism off black people.”The scene includes cutaways to the crowd — reaction shots that are more traditional at first, but as Ture’s speech continues to build, the cutaways become close-ups of audience members, warmly lit against a black background, the rest of the crowd seemingly faded away. They are a montage of faces, with two or three filling the frame. The subtle lighting was achieved by cinematographer Chayse Irvin, whose credits include a segment of Beyoncé's visual album “Lemonade.”

Lee said he decided on the day of shooting that Irvin should also do these portraits. The main part of the scene was shot in a club space, and to film the faces an additional camera was set up in a changing room on the side. Shooting the two aspects of the scene at the same time proved to be a challenge because the same extras appeared in both the wide shots of the crowd and the portraits. “The continuity is crazy in that scene because we were snatching people out of seats to shoot them in the other room,” Lee said.

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One visual signature that appears in many of Lee’s films is what has become known as the double dolly shot. The effect makes characters seem as if they are floating down a street rather than walking. It’s achieved by putting both the camera and the actor on dollies (wheeled platforms on a track).

Lee said that he was not the first to use the shot, but he has worked it into his films more consistently than other directors. He first experimented with it in the 1990 drama “Mo’ Better Blues,” shot by his frequent cinematography collaborator (and fellow New York University student) Ernest Dickerson.

“We made a joint decision that we could not use the shot unless it fits into the story,” Lee said. “Otherwise, it would look like, oh we’re still in film school, let’s try this.”

He singled out his 1992 film “Malcolm X” as a notable example of how the technique can help along the narrative. When Malcolm, played by Denzel Washington, is walking to the site where he will be assassinated, he glides through at a medium shot, a look on his face that seems to project knowledge of his fate while Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” plays on the soundtrack.

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Lee’s 1994 film “Crooklyn” was a semi-autobiographical look at growing up in early 1970s Brooklyn. It’s a less confrontational and more straightforward family drama than the director is known for. But it includes one Spikeism that feels ambitious and surprising even today.

The film is told from the perspective of Troy (Zelda Harris), a keen observer of life in her neighborhood. During the summer, when she is sent to stay with relatives in Virginia, that world feels completely alien to her. Lee depicted this by shooting those scenes with anamorphic lenses but running them in a normal aspect ratio, which created a squeezed and compressed frame that made the shots look elongated and odd. It’s a bold move, but it did cause some confusion.

“When that film came out, people were knocking on the projectionist’s window shouting, ‘Hey! What’s up with this? What’s wrong with the screen?’ Then eventually Universal had to put signs up explaining it.”