A technical editing critique of Letterman’s “My Next Guest”

[Simon Ubsdell]

An very interesting critique and well observed. We don’t spend enough time thinking about the language of talking heads generally – it all seems far too obvious to analyse, which is why mistakes so easily get made.

One of the problems here that is not touched on is the use of the side angle – not the side angle two-shot which is OK, but rather the side angle single.

Coupled with the fact that this is quite a low angle, it undermines completely out the feeling of participating in the interview and it’s jarring and dislocating. We don’t feel we are part of the conversation (which surely we want to feel here!) – we feel we have been excluded from it and are merely an onlooker. It’s a really important factor and so few directors seem aware of it.

I raised this particular point in a COW thread some time back:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/88262

Another factor that seems to be influencing the style of the Letterman show is “multicam-itis”.

It’s great to be able to create all this coverage, but why are we doing it? Generally there are really only three cameras that have valid angles for a set-up like this, but the existence of multicam has created the demand to use it all the time for everything and not actually think why you’re doing it.

And then because you’ve shot all those angles you feel you have to use them which means (as here) that you cut far more frequently (and randomly) than is desirable. Multicam has contributed to the notion that it’s the eye candy that’s important, not the meaning of each individual shot.

It’s a terrible development.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Greg Janza]

All good points Simon.

Multicam is both a blessing and a curse which can easily be abused due to how easy it is to edit multiple angles.

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[Simon Ubsdell]

One of the really startling things about the redundant side angle single in the Letterman set-up is how the colour of the background is utterly different to the over-the-shoulder single.

Cutting between those two shots is always going to be jarring because of this basic colour issue – partly a production design miscalculation, but it does show clearly the issue of multicam-itis. You stick cameras everywhere with little thought as to how the angles are meant to work together in the final piece. Because multicam is now a production imperative that no-one ever questions …

Another slightly disconcerting thing is how the camera is quite a bit lower in the side angle than in the OTS – again that really isn’t going to help the cut. It’s always going to feel like a bump.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Mark Suszko]

It could be that the producers believe this kind of cutting is what a “millennial” audience likes and is attracted to, whether it makes story-telling sense or not, or is true or not. That’s my thesis in my post in the Cinematography thread called: You’re doing it wrong”, referring to mis-use of a side- angle when the speaker is addressing to/thru the lens.

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/54/865447

[Simon Ubsdell]

That was a very interesting thread.

I think it’s possible to pinpoint when this side-angle trope first started to become normalised.

It is associated with the advent of the DV camera in the late 90’s. It became common practice to use the DV as a second camera, frequently shooting from the side. And typically, because the quality was so poor in relation to the main camera you would heavily stylise the look, usually making it black and white.

My recollection however is that when this started it was more about picking up close-up details that you wouldn’t necessarily hold on for very long and hence it was more of a “textural” device.

My guess would be that it’s only more recently, once the price of all cameras came down (?) and especially now that multicam coverage is considered “essential”, that the side angle became an angle in its own right.

You make a good point about how the side angle effectively alienates the viewer from the conversation and I think this is very important. I would go further and point out that all camera angles really have a psychological component and that this helps to explain why we feel alienated by this device.

Imagine you and George and David are having a conversation at a party. What would naturally happen, if all three of you were being polite, is that each contributor to the conversation would try as much as possible to face the other two equally. You as the third party would feel that David and George were “including you in the conversation”.

Now imagine that George turns away from you and speaks directly to David, showing you the side of his head instead of including you in his look. It goes without saying that George is “excluding you from the conversation”. You feel slighted, demoted in status, irritated.

It’s exactly this psychological reaction you get from being suddenly presented with the side angle. It’s not just a question of film grammar – it’s about how the shot feels to you as someone who thought they were a participant in the conversation and have just been unceremoniously kicked off it.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Mark Suszko]

My point exactly. But a lot of newer practitioners just don’t comprehend or accept this principle. My sense of it is that the ones that abuse that angle/shot don’t generally have much of an education in film aesthetics, so they tend to mis-apply things that they think look “cool”, – without understanding the semiotics or context of when to use such a shot.

Now I have to adjust the onion on my belt, so excuse me…

[Greg Janza]

All interesting points being made and yes that other thread was good too.

When set up correctly the side angle can be quite effective at getting further into an interview or punctuating a thought. The best example that I have from my own work is a show I worked on that had a very brief existence on ESPN. It covered Barry Bonds’ run up to breaking Babe ruth’s home run record and I’d argue that the two angles for his sit down interview work very well at heightening the interest of what he’s saying.

At 1:50 in this clip:

https://vimeo.com/11504127

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[Simon Ubsdell]

[greg janza] “When set up correctly the side angle can be quite effective at getting further into an interview or punctuating a thought. “

Yes, that’s effective but it’s quite a bit different from the type of side angle used in the Letterman set-up.

Your example is much less a side angle and much closer to an intimate close-up that creates greater connection with the subject and not less.

You can still more or less see into the eyes, which is the important difference, wouldn’t you say?

Also what’s important is that the shot size is very substantially different to the more frontal angle which means the cut is much less jarring. In the Letterman shots the shot sizes are uncomfortably similar:

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Greg Janza]

[Simon Ubsdell] “what’s important is that the shot size is very substantially different to the more frontal angle which means the cut is much less jarring. In the Letterman shots the shot sizes are uncomfortably similar:”

agreed.

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[Oliver Peters]

I think there are a couple of things going on here. First is the director’s desire to have constantly moving cameras. These obviously will reach the end of their travel and often at undesired points, which will force unmotivated cuts.

The second is that this appears to be a highly edited show. I doubt much of it is “live”. Look at the cut at 4:49 – “the pattern”. The former President’s hands are clearly mismatched, so it’s a cheat to make the edit work. I suspect there’s a lot of that. Once you start doing that to pull out stumbles, “ahs”, pauses, etc, you end up with a lot of cuts dictated by these edits. As a result, when you have clean (unedited) sections, you end up increasing the pace of the camera cuts, as well, just so that the more-highly-edited sections don’t stick out as badly.

The third trend is to simply have a cuttier show, which is edited like a concert video (unfortunately without the musical motivation.)

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com