On Fri, 11 Jan 2008 20:09:42 -0800, Chambers wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> I can't disagree with any of those - though I have to admit the
>> lightsaber fight between Luke and Vader in Jedi was beautiful to watch
>> with the contrast between the dark backgrounds and the bright sabers.
>> And the wide shots of that fight were very good.  Too much today fight
>> scenes are a series of close-up cutaways, and while the "action" is
>> faster, it doesn't feel as authentic.  I wish fight scenes were more
>> often shot from a distance sufficient to see the combatants and the
>> camera was more or less stationary.  With good fighters, many fight
>> scenes would be absolutely beautiful if they just let us watch it in
>> one shot.
> 
> You've got a problem there - most actors can't do an entire fight in one
> shot.

Well, true, but even with actors who are capable of it, there aren't a 
lot of long shots.  Honestly, I could sit and watch Jet Li do Wu Shu 
nonstop for 90 minutes, and I think he could handle it (or at least in 
his prime he could have, not sure now that he's older).

But even if it was just a couple of cutaways, that'd be OK; the thing 
that bothers me is the constant switching of camera angle and the fact 
that many of the shots are so close you can't really tell what's going 
on.  It looks sloppy.

> That was one of the unmentioned strengths of the second Matrix movie,
> that the shots for the fight scenes were much longer than in the
> original.

True.  That was about the only thing Matrix 2 had going for it, though; I 
was very disappointed in the sequels.  Technically they were stunning 
nonetheless, but I think they would've worked better if Neo's final line 
from the first had actually been what 2 & 3 were all about, instead of 
just another big techno-war.  The thing that worked for me about the 
first one is that the technology supported the story.  In 2 & 3, the 
technology *was* the story, and 2 & 3 to an extent suffered the loss of 
humanity that was present in the first one.

> Also, the recent version of "Pride and Prejudice" (the one with Keira
> Knightley) had some rather long shots in it, with the camera moving
> through various rooms and people / events / conversations coming into
> and out of focus in it.  In one scene in particular, I was like "That's
> cool, moving the camera that way... Huh, they haven't cut yet... Wow,
> this is still the same take!"  It's the kind of thing you can imagine
> getting all the way to the end, and someone making a dumb mistake and
> ruining the whole shot, but nobody did.  I was very impressed by that :)

It is impressive when they can do that - and I for one (and my wife for 
another) appreciate the difficulty of shots like that and tend to be 
impressed by good cinematography.

Jim

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