(This is especially for you, Cine-Sib!)
Take a look, gentle reader, at an interesting piece on the history of the movie fight scene. It comes complete with video clips!
I have one comment to add: a pox on whoever invented the "shaky-cam" approach to action sequences! Since when are visual incoherence, lack of clarity, and jerky camera contortions good things? Are you trying to give me seizures? Really. Ditto on the pox for whoever invented the approach that apparently consists of shooting a fight scene, turning it into confetti, and throwing the whole scattered mess at the audience (as it clutches its tortured retinas and moans through its migraines).
If the audience can't make visual sense of what's going on in a fight scene, then what's the point?
3 comments:
I feel the same way about shaky cam fight scenes, but maybe that speaks to our generation. Kids gobbled up "Transformers," even though I couldn't make sense of the film's climactic battle scene. Maybe all that motion and blurring clicks with young minds weaned on video games. I hope this isn't the case ...
Maybe the "shaky cam" obsession is about the constant need for visual (over?)stimulation. Can't be good for continuity! It's the whole movie with ADHD.
Good point on "Transformers," though amid all the scattered action, there was also, oddly enough, too much talking by both Optimus Prime (babbling on about self-sacrifice) and Megatron (standard boilerplate evil yakking).
I was told by a cousin, an out of work stuntwoman who may be holding a grudge, that such technique and editing spare the studio the rehearsel time and money needed for a great fight, with or without CGI.
She always points to the Bourne and the Matrix films, more the former, as examples of directors taking the time needed to choreograph, train the lead actors, rehearse and storyboard the scene which results in just what films are about. The suspension of doubt because the fight or the emotions seem real.
But then she's always madder whenever she comes over as I can still out point her in boxing. She hates that and then usually tries to convince me to do backflips with her off of the garage in to the pool. I am way to old for that any more!
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