Your Best Favourite Shot

[Thomas Fant]

Maybe it's cliche, but the serpentine dolly shot of the woodcutter walking through the woods in "Rashomon"

[Tom Bays]

The Scene where Father Lankester Merrin walks up to the house in the exorcist is one of the best ever...bar none.

[Joe Hemsani]

Here are many ahots that I like

 

In Tarkovsky´s STALKER a really slow dolly into a room with a bed. Beautiful!!!

In Antonioni´s THE PASSENGER the last shot

In Antonioni´s RED DESERT, the shot when julianna is in the garden looking at the scenery

In NIGHT OF THE HUNTER the unerwater shot with the dead woman and the seaweed

[Guest acoreasc]

Anything in Throne of Blood, that film is so errily beautiful.

The opening shot of Barry Lyndon

The close-up of Grace Kelly as Stewart wakes up in Rear Window

The wide shot of Jude Law smothering the stabbing victim while the L train goes by in the background in Road to Perdition (Anything by Connie)

I'll give it up to David....The shot of Nolte delivering a sermon to his parishoners in the church with the back wall missing and the beauty of nature in the background - Northfork - that DVD is expensive dammit!

The opening shot of Le Samourai

The Dinner Scene opening wide shot in Bigger Than Life

Any of the wides and long establishing shots in East of Eden (Ted McCord is the man)

The TV Shot in All that Heaven Allows (might be my favorite of all time!)

too many to list....

[Daniel Clark]

That's from 'Mirror'.

 

They did that by having a helicopter hover above the field, just out of frame.

 

Damn straight! Thanks for the pointer.

[Sakari Suuronen]

Just last night I saw for the first time Alain Resnain's L'Annee Derniere A Marienbad (Last Year At Marienbad) shot by Sacha Vierny. It looked amazing and I'm really happy I finally got to see that film.

 

By the way, does anyone have any ideas how the last shot Antonioni's Passenger was made (the long one)?

Nice to see that other people also like Melville's Le Samourai which is one of my favourite films all time. Le Cercle rouge (The Red Circle) is also great and I think it has everything that a french crime movies should have.

[kpv rajkumar]

The opening shot of Barry Lyndon

thahk you for reminding me of john alcotts awesome candle lit work on that film! ( i simply love that tracking shot during the battle march!0

i'm also perpetually entranced by dante spinotti's work in heat-especially the shot in which niro chats up brenneman on the terrace -overlooking la's city lights, with goldenthal's touch and go trance taking care of the rest! any one on the same trip ?

[kpv rajkumar]

Anyone for a bestshot.com site using steadishots.org as a model with comments from the sender.

It could be the ultimate source for designing a shot any style, as long as the comments

clarifies on the motivations of camera moves, lighting and actors performance, sound, cutting

and other aspects of film making.

Alexandre

 

love that idea, alex, count me in and let's start with the pacing of larry mcconkey's awesome, jaw dropping, four minute steadicam shot in ballhaus's goodfellas!

ok,as a self-teaching , (rather late starting), fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, lighting-cameraman who makes a living by also writing & directing his

commercials/corporates, this idea is like dear ol' connie coming up in my dreams and blessing me by giving me his own meter !

[Mei Lewis]

Wow, love the wide angle on this:

 

Shot from Tom yum goong

http://steadishots.org/shots_viewer.cfm?shotID=58

[Jim Carlile]

The opening shot to 'Thieves Like Us.' Nothing else like it:

 

http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2006/07...es_like_us.html

[George Ebersole]

Many years ago when I saw CONFORMIST , one hand held camerawork never fade away from my heart , or in SHELTERING SKY when John Malkovich is dead and Debra Winger came out alone , camera follow him in a reflection of the sun in the water . This shot is very magic . Do you have any shot in your mind which you think is the best .......thank

There's an over the shoulder lock down in "The Never Ending Story" where the kid is talking to the two Sphinxes. The composition and lighting with a starfield background, to me, is very magical.

 

There's a shot of two planes in "The High Road to China" whizzing by the camera as they fly over a waterfall late in Act II as the characters fly to Nepal/China.

 

Another airplane shot is the famous one in Spielberg's "Empire of the Sun" where the boy imagines an American P-51 Mustang pilot waving to him with his canopy open. The thing that gets me about that shot is that it's the actual pilot smiling and waving as he flies by (perilously close I'll add). No matte work whatsoever.

 

Another film, "Dragonslayer" is full of great shots. Some good long shots, and some solid composite work with the dragon. Whoever shot that really captured Ireland's natural beauty and worked it into the film.

[Jay Stewart]

One of the shots that inspired me to go to "film school" back in the day came from Blood Simple. It was that dolly shot along the bar where the camera moved along the bar top and avoided bumping into a passed out drunk sprawled out on it by lifting up and going over him. Classic. And subtle.

[Thomas Smith]

A shot from "Klute", near the end when Jane Fonda talks with the assassin, she's backlit from a window, there are many beautiful shots on that movie, just amazing.

 

There are so many in other films too.

[Shaan Aslam]

It just popped in my head, but I have to say the shot in Pan's Labyrinth, (Guillermo Navarro, ASC, AMC) when Ophelia enters the dying fig tree.

 

Also, in There Will be Blood, (Robert Elswit, ASC) in the beginning when they reel up the anchor and find it covered in oil.

 

And pretty much any shot in Bladerunner, (Jordan Cronenweth, ASC), Lawerence of Arabia, (or any other movie shot by F. A. Young, BSC). I really could go on for at least another ten and a half years or so. ;)

[Ben Brahem Ziryab]

Why did no one mention the opening shot in "Touch of Evil" or car chase/single-shot sequence from "Children of Men"?

My favorites are probably the rain scene from "Road to Perdition", train robbery from "The Assignation of Jesse James by coward Robert Ford" (+ every shot in the entire film), "Amelie" (several shots), chicken scene in "City of God" and, of course, handheld camerawork of "Soy Cuba" (I am Cuba). And many gorgeous shots from Ron Fricke's non-narrative "Baraka".

I also pretty much agree with most shots that has been mentioned here, as of the fantastic composed imagery of "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Barry Lyndon"...2001, Blade Runner (amazing visuals), There Will Be Blood etc.

Edited June 17, 2010 by Ziryab Ben Brahem

[Kemalettin Sert]

Many shots from The Night of the Hunter

[DanielVentura]

Definitely the beach scene in "Father", by the portuguese director Artur Ramadas.

A plain mesmerizing shot.

[Austin Serr]

There are a lot of great shots from P.T. Anderson's films that I found to be inspiring. One that comes to mind is the shot in Punch Drunk Love where Adam Sandler and Emily Watson are moving toward each other and eventually kiss. It cuts to a silhouetted long shot of them in this archway. People pass by as they kiss, and the moment they stop kissing, the people stop walking past, almost as if the hustle-bustle of people walking past mimicked the passion the both of them were feeling.

 

I also loved the final shot of Magnolia, where it stays on the girl's face while John C. Riley says how much he likes her. The extremely slow dolly-in and eventual 4th wall-breaking look into the camera just gives me shivers every time I watch it. So powerful.

 

The single tracking shot in There Will be Blood where it enters the church with a dolly-in and eventually leaves with a dolly-back while Paul Dano gives his powerful, creepy sermon was fantastic as well.

 

Another absolute favorite is in In the Mood for Love. It's during one of the recurring montages of the two main characters interacting with one another. They're both sitting in front of this big armoir that has multiple mirrors on it. The camera trucks several times from left to right, right to left and back again showing their expressions in the reflections of the mirror, ending with Tony Leung slowly lifting his head to gaze longingly at Maggie Cheung. It's subtle, powerful, relevent, and absolutely gorgeous to look at. The same can be said about the entire film.

Edited November 17, 2010 by Austin Serr