Scene Shot Breakdown - Self Education

rayw

rayw

I'm deconstructing a single scene chosen almost arbitrarily to improve my own camera work and film making skills as a director.

I just thought I'd bring you guys along for the ride, mostly to the benefit of any nubes via any advice/perspectives from those with more experience pointing out the error(s) in my ways.
(There's an old Navy-days* story in there someone should remind me later of).

This is the 50 second clip, it's from the Tony Scott film UNSTOPPABLE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMQM9s1VME8

Here's my breakdown using screengrabs:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/...mPt-nnva0yy9c0/edit?hl=en_US&authkey=CIPboI0M

At some point in the very near future I will attempt to recreate this simplified version of the scene's essential elements.

The intent is to learn my own equipment better & faster as well as cultivating a better understanding of how to approach a scenario.

One would hope that after deconstructing and reconstructing a dozen or so of these kinds of scenes my skill would improve for both emulating and departing from them.


Any and all useful advice and actionable pointers are greatly appreciated.

* "Yes", I know my port from starboard sides.
 
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Cole -
Chroma/Luma/Motion = Gold.
Very nice. Sensibly I figured the in-frame-motion part aside from the DoF distinctions.
The other two I hadn't considered and see them as being certainly useful approaches, luma being the easier of the two to pull off.

I like to focus on one aspect of the craft at a time to really procure a deeper understanding of that one aspect and how it relates to the other stuff I've learned to that point.
Same here.
Gotta eat that elephant one bit at a time, although I suppose film making is more like building a ship one plank at a time.

My next project:
http://www.sciencephoto.com/image/319171/530wm/P9300226-Ship_in_a_bottle-SPL.jpg
vs.
Michael Bay's current project:
http://www.ha.ax/erik/Kultur/England/England 06/DSCN1073.JPG


Joe -
Fantastic.
Not the short. The effort you put into hunting that three year old thing down. Very thoughtful of you.

That was a pretty nice little bit of reenactment and green screening.
It certainly brings to front how much effort & skill it takes to make a nice sequence look GREAT!

I wanna know the mechanics of how to make six hours of effort not look like sh!t, beyond acting and story.
DoF?
Lighting?
Scene composition?
The physical relationship of characters & elements?

Take (brace yourselves) SKYLINE for example. (Again, not an endorsement)
The audio was fine - not an issue.
The camera work was fine - not an issue.
The SFX were often fine and only sometimes cr@ppy, which sunk the final product - the patchy SFX was a fairly big issue.
The "acting" and emoting were actually fine - not an issue.
But the worst issue was the story - story sucked dead dog turds. If you give actors dog-poo lines there's only so much they can do with it. If editing allows too many three-extra-frames of delay in too many scenes just to fluff the time the whole thing looks like cr@p.
Some of the acting was bad, but only because the story and editing blew chunks out the stern porthole.

But I don't care about that.
If the story and SFX were better then all the rest of the elements the overall product would have fared better.
SFX & story aside, SKYLINE's in camera work looked fine.

NIGHTS ON RADANTHE was the last big PoS I watched with great actors and probably a fine story - but OMG - it was horrible to watch. The camera work was fine, the lethargic misery of the story sucked, so that's not useful.

I don't wanna beat up on any of the industry fan-fic feature drivel regularly submitted here.
What I need is a fairly recent movie to beat up on with terrible shots.
Something we can freely pull scene after scene from and crucify without regard.

I need a rather expensive ugly LOOKING movie to beat up.

I just watched PIRATES OF TREASURE ISLAND to see what The Asylum could do with $1.5M.
Sad to say, poor ol' Lance couldn't save it. Shocker!
It looks like cr@p.
Why?

The other week I watched TEETH.
Some shots looked fine. Some looked terrible.

A month ago I watched THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE: FIRST SEQUENCE. A fine way to spend >$2M bucks, er... Euros, whatever.
Same thing.
Some shots looked fine; others cringe worthy.


Why?
Why do straight-to-video features often look like sh!t?
What are the mechanics, acting and story aside?
What can I do to keep a fine story from looking like baboon's a$$?
t180303_baboons%20ass.jpg
 
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"What can I do to keep a fine story from looking like baboon's a$$?"​

Read this thread (all 4,000 posts):

Ask David Mullen ANYTHING

You want to control the light and particularly the contrast ratios on digital sensors. This takes big lights and big bucks sometimes. Other times it takes scrims and butterflies overhead to soften the sunlight. It takes fill and smoke machines and hazers and reflectors, multi point lighting...
 
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Joe -
Super. Thank you. Just... gimme a few days and I'll choke down all... 4,000 posts and wrap that comprehension up in with a nice bow! ;)

No, seriously. I will.
Probably will take me awhile though. :)


Cole -
Rockin'.
Chroma/Luna/Motion/DoF and... I dunno about 3D.
I'm sure it will become all the rage before the decade's done, but I think I'll just stick to the Four Horsemen of My Debaclelypse for now, thank you very much. ;)

(Meant to type bite rather than bit, but fortune smirked at me).


John -
Just finished watching THE SOCIAL NETWORK with director commentary (fairly decent, the commentary specifically) and the DVD extra about the making of.
Combined = EXCELLENT.

When you asked about why I was including distances in my breakdown it appears I'm doing blocking in my head and I'm trying to communicate that learning process onto... paper, such that it is.

http://actioncutprint.com/filmmaking-articles/filmmakingarticle-05/
http://www.indie-film-making.com/blocking-out-a-scene/

If you haven't already, and in all your spare student time, (ha! been there, done that) check out TSN extras.
Boom ops in pairs, one for each dialog principle. Steel pole tracks. Director to actor communication. Attention to detail. Beautiful.

The commentaries on Fincher's FIGHT CLUB are still the best I've heard, but I'm now inspired to go review all Fincher flicks for BTS + commentaries.
However, I'm pretty sure SE7VEN doesn't include feature commentary, which sux fly balls.
ba-CWS_SCarolina_0501859122_t.gif
:D
Oh, well.

Now, if you wanna compare director styles at extremes you could bookend Fincher's OCD/99 takes per scene/editors GD nightmare with Sylvester Stallone's "You wanna try that? Sure."/practice four times+shoot it two or three times/move on approach voiced on THE EXPENDABLES.

Advantages to either, I'd probably lean towards the Stallone/Sorkin paradigm.
I have a hard time asking others to perform with an X-Acto knife the same as I would.
Close enough, is... good enough.

Time again I've observed it's all about the story, more so than the placement of a coke can or twitch of an eyebrow.

I mean, I wanna be good, but sheesh, at some point you're just gilding the moths on the lilies, as well. And the grass. And the dew. And...
Seems my natural inclination is for high caloric rather than nutritive content.
Nuance is (oft) wasted upon me.
052211/341
 
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Alright, I've thought about it all day, I'm going to try a variant of the INCEPTION - Most Skilled Extractor scene shot using myself as all three characters.

http://cdn.nolanfans.com/screenplays/inception_script.pdf
Relevant action/dialog begins midway down pg 3 to same on pg 4.

I'm not even going to try to regurgitate this script dialog, only a similar exchange, with primarily focus on recreating the shots & blocking.

Should look something like this:
20110524INCEPTIONMostSkilledExtractor-Blocking.jpg

(Note: using frame centers as a guideline, the 180° rule is adhered to).

Hope to shoot, edit & upload tomorrow.
Wish me luck and feel free to try it yourself.
Please share!
052411-426
 
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rayw, your shot-break-downs are rather impressive. However, I seriously doubt the director and/or DP had it planned-out in such great detail, insofaras how it would look in the edit.

COVERAGE.

Some specific shots require very specific moves, but for the most part, I think plain-and-simple coverage is what allows an editor to work their magic.
 
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Kholi -
Boy, that looks complicated! Haha!
Nah, it's just three, maybe four, different camera positions layered into a single image.

20110524INCEPTIONMostSkilledExtractor-Blocking2.jpg


In the end, it takes a lot of money to make something as pretty as INCEPTION!
Can't even begin to compete.
Best I can do is imitate the set-ups until they just come natural.


Brian -
So, I need some tutoring as to why this isn't breaking the 180 degree rule. Cameras seem to be on both sides of the axis.
I advise against looking in my direction for any tutoring. :lol:
I'm just observing and guessing my way through much of this.

Regarding the 180° rule, the scene is primarily the conversation between COBB and SAITO.
AURTUR I consider an insert, therefore his bit's presence doesn't violate the 180° rule for the larger scene.

With that perspective, note the yellow lines in the fourth panel in the illustration above.
Those lines approximate the centerline of that camera's field of view.
Where they intersect is less than 180°; looks like about 140° to me.


Joseph -
However, I seriously doubt the director and/or DP had it planned-out in such great detail, insofaras how it would look in the edit.
You're probably right.
As a nube I'm likely over-analyzing the pudding outta this.
Takes what it takes to get it through my thick skull.

Some specific shots require very specific moves, but for the most part, I think plain-and-simple coverage is what allows an editor to work their magic.
Yeah! Exactly!
Rather than attack a scene with a shotgun approach (last night I watched the final extras on THE SOCIAL NETWORK, seems Fincher submitted 268 hours of material to the editors. GACK!) I'd like to cultivate an instinctual process that allows me to run and gun.

A whole lotta thinking and very little time+effort.

We'll see.
Might be a flip-flopping disaster.

Ray-ism: "Better to try and fail than to be successful at doing nothing."
 
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Can't do it this evening.
It's too windy outside.
Like... 3X what's needed to fly a kite windy.

Rest of week & through the WE isn't looking good, either, schedule-wise.
I'm mildly livid.

:grrr:
 
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rayw said:
20110524INCEPTIONMostSkilledExtractor-Blocking2.jpg


Brian -
So, I need some tutoring as to why this isn't breaking the 180 degree rule. Cameras seem to be on both sides of the axis.
Click to expand...

OK... in the first of the two shots, it looks like S1T1, S7T1b and S3T3 are shot from the same position with a zoom and a pan... B is left of frame, A right - follow A to the right with the Pan to S3T3, then Reverse in the second setup to S9T2/S2T2 - as B moves, the line is shifted and S8T4 becomes a reverse of that position on the new line... so It's a pair of shot/reverses on 2 separate lines which are changed using blocking.

The line shifts from A-B to B-C. As A moves, the line changes on the A-POV shot of B Moving from the table. Haven't seen the scene, going by the diagrams.
 
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This is like dividing fractions all over again.
Stop that!
It ain't that bad.

Yeah, the point of reference can change and in this case does, but only conditionally.

The primary activity in this scene is the conversation between subjects A & B, COBB & SAITO.
The back and forth between them adheres to the 180° rule.
ARTHUR's shot is a secondary element, and a weak one at that.

The only questionable violation comes from the transition between SHOTs 7 and 8.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/...cZo7b8o/edit?hl=en_US&authkey=CPz6ruIF&pli=1#
The brief insert of SAITO wiping his mouth before rising returns the volley counter-clockwise back to COBB's end of the table which makes the camera jump to SAITO's left to shoot C, ARTHUR look like a 180° violation if the return volley continues the established pattern of the next move should be clockwise.

Yeah, you could argue from SHOT 7 to 8 would have been an acceptable ~40° clockwise rotation, but I guess the editors just wanted to include SAITO's facial expression as he politely excused himself from COBB's vigorous attempt to close the sale.

Now it's gotta be argued the <180° counter-clockwise (a violation of the established volley) rotation from insert to SHOT 8 is copacetic.
(BTW, I love it when my vocabulary exceeds that of the auto-spell checker! Just got flagged on copacetic! LOL!)

IMHO, it's fine. I really don't care.
Sometimes I do, so what I need to learn is WHEN is it plausible and WHEN is it munkey sh!te.
 
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