Movie Video Essays When your channel is highly rated Every frame becomes a painting When it made its comeback this summer, its creators Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos took a close look at “sustained two-shots,” which capture a conversation between two characters in uninterrupted succession. Although this expression is rare in today’s shoot-everything-edit-to-be-edited ethos, it was often used in classic Hollywood movies. Take, for example, the work of a Polish-born writer and director. billy wilder He began his film career in pre-war Germany, then went to Hollywood and “embarked on a series of films that were ostensibly bold and disillusioned, contrary to the cheerful atmosphere of the Americans.”
David Thomson writes: New Biographical Dictionary of Movies. “double compensation It was a thriller based on the principle that crime stems from human greed and depravity. lost weekend It was the most graphic depiction of alcoholism in film. foreign affairs It features shots of ruined Berlin, set to the song “Isn’t It Romantic?” sunset boulevard It mocks the crazy glamor within Hollywood. ace in the hole Expose the unscrupulousness of sensational reporting. Stalag 17 This is a POW movie that undermines camaraderie. ” and a well-honed comedy The Apartment or I like it hot Over the decades, the rarity has become even more interesting.
But was straight comedy really Wilder’s forte? His photos are interesting, but often depicted in a very specific way. His “characters don’t mean what they say, and they don’t mean what they mean,” Zhou explains. This is verbal irony. But it contains two further ironies. One is dramatic, which occurs “when the audience knows more than the characters,” creating suspense about whether the characters “will know the truth and what will happen as a result.” And the situational one occurs “when a character makes a choice that leads to an unexpected but inevitable conclusion.” In his script, Wilder was able to “weave all these kinds of ironies together while maintaining a strong emotional core.”
Yet great filmmakers are more than just storytellers. Despite being primarily known as a dialogue writer, Wilder “insisted that his films should function first as images.” Among other techniques, “he placed the camera where the subtext was present, which allowed the audience to follow the emotion of the scene, not just the literal meaning.” The film was shot with as few camera settings as possible, without cutting any pages of the script. (Informatively, the video compares Wilder’s original scene. Sabrina Same as its hopelessly awkward counterpart in Sidney Pollack’s 1995 remake. ) Nor is it incidental to the perseverance of his filmography that he embodied an old-fashioned combination of respect and contempt for the viewer. “Let the audience add two plus two, and they’ll love you forever,” he once advised young filmmakers.
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Every frame of the painting returns to YouTube, exploring why the persistent two-shot disappeared from the film
decipher the script of shining, moonrise kingdom & dark knight: Watch Lessons Learned from Screenwriting
Based in Seoul, Colin Mbemust write and broadcastIt’s about cities, languages and cultures. His projects include the Substack newsletter books about cities and a book Stateless City: A Stroll Through Los Angeles in the 21st Century. Follow him on Twitter @Colinbemust or facebook.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
