Simon Ubsdell
6
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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[Steve Connor] “I’m not saying that this is the wrong place to have this discussion but it would be a great thread to have over on “the Art of The Edit” forum. Tim?”
No, but it does belong here – what I’m saying is that I’ll be turning my back on all this NLE nonsense and going back to my Steenbeck.
https://www.tvtechnology.com/Portals/4/james4_022112.jpg
So it’s very much on topic.
😉
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
Yes, I’d agree that budgets are likely to be a contributing factor to the change in style (although I’d dispute that TV is always responsible for lowering standards, especially when the best TV shows now exhibit cinematic qualities of direction well in excess of many theatrical movies).
The irony though, as I’ve already suggested, is that well-thought out classical staging, blocking and camera movement can, when used correctly, dramatically reduce the time it takes to shoot an equivalent number of pages when compared to techniques that rely heavily on coverage.
And of course it also means less time in the cutting room because you’ve already made many of the choices in camera.
Not always but sometimes …
So maybe the real decline is in directorial technique?
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
The other point I mean to add to this Jeremiad against multicam is that it makes for compromised camera positions – as is only too obvious if you think about it.
One of the main results of this is that you can often get really poor eyelines … I know very few people seem to care about that stuff anymore but it bugs the heck out of me when I see it.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “surely there has to be at least a few movies from the last few years that are ambitious (good?) even though they aren’t Kurosawa?”
Hi Jeremy,
Although I was doing my grumpy old man act, I wasn’t really railing at the degeneracy of contemporary movies!
You don’t have to look as far back as Kurosawa to see what I’m talking about being done well – Mathieu (above) rightly pointed out that Spielberg (who is still making movies although with grey hair now, but they’re still super-commercial rather than arthouse) is a master of a shooting style that eschews cutting.
Somehow this has become a discussion about counting cuts, which although I brought it up, wasn’t really the crux of my argument. I have to declare that I love cutting – how could I not, having spent most of my working life as trailer editor!? – and most of all I love adventurous, surprising cutting. Seeing a Godard movie for the first time was one of the most exciting things I can remember – and clearly Steven Soderbergh (and legions of others) had the same revelatory experience.
What I really don’t have much time for is “functional cutting”, which is the staple of most modern movies.
Really what I’m getting at very specifically is the distinctly modern, technology-driven (cameras and NLEs) trend to shoot multicam and assemble something passable in the cutting room. This technique seems to me to be the polar opposite of the kind of film-making that Spielberg embraces so fully and magnificently.
If your game plan is to shoot multicam, it’s never going to involve planning the kind of developing shots that have always created the most engaging type of cinema – by the way, the camera doesn’t have to move to deliver a developing shot, as you can do a lot of the same things with creative blocking, so that a close-up can become a wide or vice versa without the need for cutting.
It should be obvious that a developing shot is always going to be more immersive than the same scene covered in cuts – developing shots create a perfect identity between the camera and the viewer (as Tony mentions in another post in relation to True Detective).
One of the things that strikes me as extraordinary is how pedestrian and clunky even something as basic as a two character dialogue scene has become – virtually all we ever see is shot-reverse shot accompanied by a 2-shot that is a flat-on side angle. There are of course a multitude of interesting and far more dynamic ways of blocking this kind of scene – they’re in the textbooks, for goodness sake! But we almost never see them anymore. (Compare the amazing dynamism and economy of the lift scene from Minority Report in Tony Zhou’s Spielberg piece.)
And the reason is I think in very large part down to the tyrannous domination of multicam. Multicam makes very scene from every movie slot into a rigid and tired formula.
The irony of course is that multicam is meant to generate more coverage more quickly, but in reality a well-planned developing master is far quicker to execute on the day. Directors like Spielberg who use this latter technique tend to wrap their movies a lot faster than the other guys.
Yes, really complex, bravura “long takes” require a ridiculous amount of set-up time, although they still manage to deliver a lot of screen time for a lot less shooting time. But “long takes” have become a degraded currency and they are isolated set pieces in movies that are largely shot just like old-fashioned vision-mixed TV.
There is a lot of difference between the exhibitionist “long take” (you have to blame Touch of Evil for this enduring directorial fad!), and the functionally economical developing take which dramatically reduces both set-up and shooting time.
So the enemy for me is not faster cutting – it’s multicam and the NLE technology that makes multicam editing so much easier than it’s ever been before.
I should end by saying that there’s nothing more exciting for me in the right context than fast editing that generates a sense of visceral excitement – – but that’s really not what I’m talking about here.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Herb Sevush] “One of my favorite John Ford anecdotes is about the wedding scene in “How Green Was My Valley” where you see Walter Pidgeon in the far background looking on as Maureen O’Hara drives off on her wedding day. Supposedly the DP asked Ford if he wanted to get a close up of Pidgeon and Ford said, “Lord no. If we shot it some idiot would probably use it.””
I love it – I’d heard that line before but never knew who said it and in what context.
Great stuff! Can’t really argue with Ford.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Herb Sevush] “Every decade we prove that you can get away with a little less detail, tell the story in a more fragmented way, and the audience will adjust and accept.”
Yes, in a broad sense this is true. But let’s not forget that the best TV is now very clearly staging a backlash and it is getting slower and espousing many more of the qualities of classic cinema.
My point, which has got slightly lost, was more about the overall picture rather than about counting cuts.
Multicam plus NLE technology means that a huge proportion of the movies now made are shot with a view to piecing something together in the cutting room.
This is simply poles apart from movies that are made with a clear vision of what each shot is meant to deliver.
Coverage is the great enemy in my view. It makes every film feel like TV, because instead of giving you the freedom not to cut, it imposes cutting as an imperative.
Most contemporary films, with obvious, striking and incredibly powerful exceptions, are in slave to this tyranny – and they look as they they have been vision-mixed from the gallery.
How could it be any different under the circumstances?
But this has nothing really to do with changing tastes – it has to do with market forces, lack of ambition, enslavement to technology and a host of other tiresome factors.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
That says it all really …
When you shoot “coverage” and bolt it together in the cutting room, you get something that works just fine.
When you shoot an idea, you get something amazing.
Tony Zhou is just great – he makes you want to go back and watch every movie he talks about. So inspiring.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Mathieu Ghekiere] “If you haven’t seen this already, you really are gonna like these videos: “
Yes, those videos are a really good examination of this – especially the point that instead of being flashy, bravura set-pieces which are designed to draw attention to themselves (and take you out of the movie), Spielberg’s “long takes” are “designed to be invisible”.
It’s fascinating to see how much cutting is avoided using this technique.
Of course, we shouldn’t suggest that Spielberg is doing something radical here – this is just good old-fashioned movie staging that you see perfected in so many classic films.
Related to this, Tim has a great article on Gregg Toland that explores deep focus and composition – an excellent read.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Steve Connor] “”Breaking Bad” “House of Cards”, “Better Call Saul” all great shows that keep the cuts to a minimum and are no less engrossing for it”
Yes, Breaking Bad is a fantastic example.
Because of the deep compositional staging of so many of the scenes, they print an indelible image on your memory – so many of the really great scenes play in wide shots, sometimes incredibly wide shots when we’re talking about the desert, so that the environment becomes a character within the story.
The interior of the White residence is clearly a character that undergoes its own transformation – and a lot of that is down to the fact that so many of those interiors play out in beautifully planned wides, where the spaces between the actors are pregnant with meaning. (And we’re not randomly “jumping in for the close-up”, or whatever.)
Haven’t yet seen Better Call Saul – can’t wait to binge on what looks like an amazing follow-up.
And yes, House of Cards is not so dusty either. Again, great composition which so many times eliminates the need for cutting,
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
Yes, sorry this is very off topic – but then everything is probably on topic on this forum now!
I totally agree about Spielberg – he’s superb at staging which is why his films are also so visually engrossing and immersive.
There’s so much compositional depth you really feel you’re inhabiting the world rather than just looking through a window onto it.
I don’t think he cuts very often either but I’d have to go back and look …
Again he’s a director who you feel doesn’t just rely on coverage so that he can find the movie later in the cutting room – you know that he’s entirely previsualised (in his head, not in the technical sense) how the movie is going to come together and shoots it that way.
Very old school!
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com