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Dilemma with a long shot.

dlevanchuk

dlevanchuk

When i wrote this scene, i always pictured this portio of dialog as one long take.. but when I shot it - I don't know how I feel about it... Need your opinion on what do you think. It's very first shot, from
0 to 0:38
a girl was kidnapped by human traffickers and now she s been evaluated to see how much she can be sold for.

I do have a bunch of cut aways ready, just in case if I didn't like how it turned out.

Sound is still unprocessed and it has cheesy sound effects for my audio guy reference. Footage is still raw too..

(The link has been removed)

Keep the first shot, or break it up into smaller chunks? Does the slow pace work for you?
 
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First thoughts (and its difficult not knowing what came before)
the first 6 seconds, before the girl gets brought into the room stood out the most for me, I found myself watching the guy on the far right...
 
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The whole shot is too wide for me. The interesting part in long shots is when they go from wide to close and back again. The environment around them changes, you see different angles of the space you haven't seen before. It's interesting and technically impressive.

Not much changed in this shot and just seemed static instead of being dynamic.
 
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Perfect. I see what you re saying. Because there isn't really interesting that's going on - that's why it looks so stale.
I was trying to figure out what was about it that I didn't like and I think you nailed it. Thank you!
 
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Np.

Another way to do an interesting long shot is to keep the camera motionless and have people come in and out of the frame.

Eg, say it's a medium shot of the girl in the chair. Lady comes in frame to inspect her, another man joins her a bit after, lady leaves frame, a third off camera voice is heard. We don't know how many people are in the room, who is in charge, what is going on. Expressions on the girl's face are changing...
 
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When it comes to timing, which of course it what your question is all about, the answer is usually completely subjective, but sometimes not.

The one way in which I think discussion of timing is not really subjective is when it comes to trimming the fat. Ferguson mentioned cutting the first six seconds of the shot. Actually, I think it's the first three seconds that need to go, but I agree with his logic -- there's not really any reason for us to watch three seconds of our lady-villain pouring whiskey.

The way in which timing is 100% subjective, however, is just in how the pacing feels. One editor might think it feels right, while another might not. I know I'm stating the obvious here, but I do so for a reason -- to point out the fact that, for now, only you can answer the question of whether or not this particular shot is too long.

Don't get me wrong, I fully advocate seeking outside opinions. However, in this particular instance, I don't think the outside opinions can be fully advised without being able to see this scene in it's entire context. Depending on what comes before and after this scene, the pacing might be just right or just wrong. For example, the question of whether you should cut the first three or six seconds could be very heavily influenced by what immediately precedes that shot.

With that long-winded disclaimer aside, I will say this: I think the shot is definitely slow-paced. I think Ernest gave a pretty good explanation on this subject -- the shot in question doesn't throw a particularly large amount of info our way, or in a particularly visually-stimulating manner. Yeah, you could pick up the pace with a different edit, but is that what you need? Maybe, maybe not.

On a side-note, the one thing that did kinda weird me out was when she stabbed villain-lady with the chopstick. The first time I watched it, I grasped the concept that she had stabbed her, but I had no idea with what. I had to watch it again, specifically searching for what the stabbing-implement was. If there's any way for you to make that more clear, I'd recommend it. Do you have a shot with the chopsticks in the foreground? Maybe with our heroine looking at them or something? Any way to foreshadow the impending stab?
 
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Hmm, I see what you're saying. I'm trying to edit scenes as I shoot them, but it looks like to get some answers I need to have an entire footage on my hands :)

Yes, the chopstick close up. I have that piece of footage floating around. As I mentioned this is a preliminary edit, just so I know what goes where when it comes to do an actual edit of an entire 80 of this.

Thank you for the input CF! I think I will put this scene on hold as of now, until I'll have all the pieces to figure out an exact pacing.

Perhaps I jumped the gun too early :-D
 
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I don't know that you jumped the gun. Whether you edit it now or later, you're still just editing scene-by-scene. No matter when you put your pants on, they still come one leg at a time. Even if you had waited until later to edit this scene, you still wouldn't really know how it fits in with the rest until you've edited the rest. Same-same.
 
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I think the thing that jarred for me the most was the weird 'almost-crossing' of the line that happened in the first three shots. I've certainly done similar long shots handheld that have worked before, and perhaps if you use cutaways to shorten the long gaps, it might work a tad better. I think it would potentially work better as a series of shorter handheld shots - for example, at first I was distracted by the fact that focus had moved from the guy to the girl, and not moved back again, when he was clearly the most interesting in frame and seemingly what we should be focussing on. But then I realised we were really waiting for her to get around and say her line. I feel like the whole scene could be paced a bit quicker..
 
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