Do you think that the camera should be invisible?

[Adam Frisch FSF]

I remember that shot. Didn't mind it as much as you did, but it stuck out. I also remember the swinging-with-the-camera-upside-down-POV shot from A Thin Red Line which is similar in execution. Except in that film it's probably my favorite shot.

[Guest Peter Waal]

I remember that shot. Didn't mind it as much as you did, but it stuck out. I also remember the swinging-with-the-camera-upside-down-POV shot from A Thin Red Line which is similar in execution. Except in that film it's probably my favorite shot.

 

Apocalypse Now features a very obvious shot where the camera spins with Willard as he's captured by the Montagnard army and turned upside down in the mud, suggesting his world is about to go totally loopy. It was jarring, but the purpose was clear and relevant. I liked it a lot.

[Brad Grimmett]

I remember that shot. Didn't mind it as much as you did, but it stuck out. I also remember the swinging-with-the-camera-upside-down-POV shot from A Thin Red Line which is similar in execution. Except in that film it's probably my favorite shot.

That's the big difference. It works in the context of one movie and not in another. I love shots like that, but they have to make sense in the movie first, and be cool second.

[Mike Williamson]

Pure cinema is an entire film shot from one point of view only, like a play. Everything else is a convention you've been condiotioned to like.

 

Going to have to disagree with you on that one, Adam. It's ALL a convention and it's ALL constructed, you can't have a shot that isn't fundamentally different from the present, three-dimensional human experience of an event. That's why the internal logic of a film is what counts, because there is no way that you can bypass the formal properties of the medium and proceed directly to "actual human experience", let alone "truth". Once you accept that, the idea of a motivated camera move makes sense because you're working with the rules of a particular film, not the rules of human perception which are fundamentally different.

[Adam Frisch FSF]

Well, Mike, I think we're getting at the same point. You say that any movement is correct given the internal logic of the film in question. So do I. Therefore you can't label one shot motivated and another one not - it depends what deal you've made with the audience. This is what I meant when I talked about taste.

 

In the context of other estblished shots, it's easy to create a shot that sticks out and doesn't fit. But this goes for all the disciplines - editing, costume, production design etc. But exactly what is a motivated shot? Could someone give me a definition? Surely it can't just be "a shot that doesn't stick out"?

 

That's a bit like Baldrick's definition in Black Adder when he's asked to define what a dog is: "not a cat", he answers.

[Wendell_Greene]

I tend to like films where the camera feels like another character, but it can certainly become distracting if done poorly or at the wrong time. An good example of this being done poorly (in my opinion) is in About A Boy.

 

 

Remi Adefarasin, BSC who was the cinematographer for "About A Boy" posts here from time to time, so perhaps he'll see this topic and comment on this shot.

[Robert Edge]

I haven't seen About A Boy or Thin Red Line. As described, the shots sound very similar to a shot late in the film Trainspotting, where the point of view is not from above, but from below. If I were asked to react to the Trainspoting shot, I would call it "Jazzing around".

 

The Apocalypse Now shot is qualitatively different. It is highly reflective of the character's situation, much like the rhythmic shots in the sugar cane field in I Am Cuba.

[Dan Salzmann]

"There is a novel by William Faulkner called The Sound and the Fury that essentially consists of one story told from several different points of view. I'm quite sure that it is possible to do the same thing in theatre or film."

 

Kurosawa's "Rashomon" is a film that does it remarkably well.

 

I fully agree with Adam about taste. Every law creates several outlaws and some are more clever than others.