The answer is, no! A thousand times, "No!" At least not the in the close way those kind of shots are served up in current films. Close like that, the actors are made to seem so sappy, so devoid of context, so self-indulgent. They kill the suspense in a scene because we know the actors aren't going anywhere. The format nails them to the floor so they can carry the scene with face acting alone.
I prefer wider over the shoulder shots like the one above. Made wide like that, there's more suspense. You never know if the actors are going to fight or not, or if one of them is going to bolt and run. The body poses are more nuanced, and the visible background lends a context to the conversation.
Live action films seem to require a variety of shots, including medium shots and close-ups. Even so, if I were a live action director I'd always be looking for opportunities to use full shots like the one above. I love whole-body acting.
Funny comics (above) were the perfect medium for that style.
I don't know why anybody would want an over the shoulder shot in a comedy. The reaction to a gag is often just as funny as the gag. You want to see both at the same time.
If you must use an over the shoulder shot, at least have the decency to dress the foreground figure in wool, as Auralynn is here.
Come to think of it, maybe there is room for an occasional OTS. Here's a video I did which contains nothing but over the shoulder. If the video has annoying stops try clicking on the hidden YouTube icon on the bottom right.
It almost appears as if that first shot has little to no perspective at all. The women look like they are side by side. It astounds me when amateurish crap like this ends up in a major motion picture.
I bought Thad's book "Sick Little Monkeys" and absolutely could not put it down and stayed up late just to finish my reading and I thought he treated the subject matter fairly and objectively without resorting to ad hominem attacks against anyone. Steve Worth and Mike Fontanelli really need to give this book a chance, IMO. He had many quotes and citations to back up his conclusions so they would be logically sound. He even cited your blog in a couple of the pages.
Thad also pointed out how the various parties involved in the production of the show all had their disadvantages and character flaws, though you obviously didn't like much of what he had to say about the Adult Party Cartoon. The detractors that you described had interesting ways of describing how they felt about John criticizing their work and it's exactly what I expected. Brutal honesty is painful sometimes and also the pressure to maintain artistic integrity and quality against a limited budget, time restraints, censorship issues, and television deadlines. I think the executives at Nickelodeon knew they had a hit show on their hands and wanted to milk it as much as they can, but found it frustrating when they weren't getting their product on their terms and deadlines, like the book alleges.
I truly think that cartoons were meant for the theaters for the reasons I note above.
I'm trying to think of any classic cartoons that use that kind of shot but none come to mind. Because classic cartoons didn't have many conversations. Sometimes they had banter, like in the Jones hunting cartoons but not conversations. Imagine Daffy, Elmer and Bugs bantering using over the shoulder like the example from Tangled?
I guess it's indicative of the trend toward live action style direction. There's plenty of modern books on animation encouraging this kind of framing and all sorts of fancy, tricky camera angles.
Your deeper point, I take it, is that full-body expression is preferable to face-alone acting? I think this is mostly also true in live action. Close ups are usually better as punctuation rather than used over extended time. And face-alone acting is much harder to get right, more likely to read as insincere, as we're more finely tuned to detect dishonesty in nuances of facial expression than in body performance.
The example you give at top suggests TV soap opera. I guess that it was historically suited to that kind of dialogue-driven TV drama, with a fast rate of production, studio bound in bland settings, and destined for low resolution NTSC cathode ray screens. And contemporary filmmakers will often have watched more hours of TV drama than anything else, so there' may be a subliminal normalising of this kind of approach.
It's probably also made worse when carried over into the now-normal widescreen format. Old film and TV aspect ratios meant that more of the hands and body were likely to be included in such a shot.
Perhaps things will change as people get more used to high definition video/TV in the home. I recently re-watched Moonrise Kingdom on an old cathode ray TV and noticed how much was lost. All of the detailed wide flat shots seem particularly suited for high definition digital viewing. The technology makes possible an experience closer to live theatre where your eye can wander across the set, where the viewer can follow the action without the camera always needing to move in to provide enough resolution.
I don't really get the point of Over The Shoulder Shots as well, let alone in animation. There are far more interesting ways to stage a scene. In fact, "Film Technique & Film Acting" by V.I. Pudovkin suggested how certain close ups combined with the right editing can be emotionally powerful. However, I don't know how well that bodes for the kind of acting that John K prefers. Have you ever read Pudovkin's book or Sergei Eisenstein's film books by chance, Eddie?
Off topic thing btw; do you ever wonder if the lack of flexibility in movement of film cameras in the early days of sound was a liability or a advantage in disguise? I'd like to hear your thoughts on that.
One more thing; John K did a great post a while back that discusses the topic of staging scenes like this, link below. Its pretty clear that over the shoulder shots are more trouble than they're worth in hand-drawn animation.
OTS shot...in production they'll say "this is his shot", the guy on the other side of the shoulder, but this shoulder is also so freakin' huge in the frame-it's really still both their shots. You may as well just keep it a medium two shot. See, I really was in production for too long.
Wrt the first image setup, most 3D "animation" characters still lack subtle details real people have, so a closeup of face is often a plasticity affair. Not true of the top end motion performance characters such as Gollum; all sorts of subtleties there.
A camera angle rare in animation is the "dutch camera" (tilted/ skewed), distorting parallax which would make drawing characters even more difficult.
Meanwhile, Ralph B's a short $5K away from his kickstarter goal!
It almost appears as if that first shot has little to no perspective at all. The women look like they are side by side. It astounds me when amateurish crap like this ends up in a major motion picture.
ReplyDeleteI bought Thad's book "Sick Little Monkeys" and absolutely could not put it down and stayed up late just to finish my reading and I thought he treated the subject matter fairly and objectively without resorting to ad hominem attacks against anyone. Steve Worth and Mike Fontanelli really need to give this book a chance, IMO. He had many quotes and citations to back up his conclusions so they would be logically sound. He even cited your blog in a couple of the pages.
Thad also pointed out how the various parties involved in the production of the show all had their disadvantages and character flaws, though you obviously didn't like much of what he had to say about the Adult Party Cartoon. The detractors that you described had interesting ways of describing how they felt about John criticizing their work and it's exactly what I expected. Brutal honesty is painful sometimes and also the pressure to maintain artistic integrity and quality against a limited budget, time restraints, censorship issues, and television deadlines. I think the executives at Nickelodeon knew they had a hit show on their hands and wanted to milk it as much as they can, but found it frustrating when they weren't getting their product on their terms and deadlines, like the book alleges.
I truly think that cartoons were meant for the theaters for the reasons I note above.
Good question. Good answer.
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to think of any classic cartoons that use that kind of shot but none come to mind. Because classic cartoons didn't have many conversations. Sometimes they had banter, like in the Jones hunting cartoons but not conversations. Imagine Daffy, Elmer and Bugs bantering using over the shoulder like the example from Tangled?
I guess it's indicative of the trend toward live action style direction. There's plenty of modern books on animation encouraging this kind of framing and all sorts of fancy, tricky camera angles.
Your deeper point, I take it, is that full-body expression is preferable to face-alone acting? I think this is mostly also true in live action. Close ups are usually better as punctuation rather than used over extended time. And face-alone acting is much harder to get right, more likely to read as insincere, as we're more finely tuned to detect dishonesty in nuances of facial expression than in body performance.
ReplyDeleteThe example you give at top suggests TV soap opera. I guess that it was historically suited to that kind of dialogue-driven TV drama, with a fast rate of production, studio bound in bland settings, and destined for low resolution NTSC cathode ray screens. And contemporary filmmakers will often have watched more hours of TV drama than anything else, so there' may be a subliminal normalising of this kind of approach.
It's probably also made worse when carried over into the now-normal widescreen format. Old film and TV aspect ratios meant that more of the hands and body were likely to be included in such a shot.
Perhaps things will change as people get more used to high definition video/TV in the home. I recently re-watched Moonrise Kingdom on an old cathode ray TV and noticed how much was lost. All of the detailed wide flat shots seem particularly suited for high definition digital viewing. The technology makes possible an experience closer to live theatre where your eye can wander across the set, where the viewer can follow the action without the camera always needing to move in to provide enough resolution.
Good post!
ReplyDeleteI don't really get the point of Over The Shoulder Shots as well, let alone in animation. There are far more interesting ways to stage a scene. In fact, "Film Technique & Film Acting" by V.I. Pudovkin suggested how certain close ups combined with the right editing can be emotionally powerful. However, I don't know how well that bodes for the kind of acting that John K prefers. Have you ever read Pudovkin's book or Sergei Eisenstein's film books by chance, Eddie?
ReplyDeleteOff topic thing btw; do you ever wonder if the lack of flexibility in movement of film cameras in the early days of sound was a liability or a advantage in disguise? I'd like to hear your thoughts on that.
See ya--Sparky
One more thing; John K did a great post a while back that discusses the topic of staging scenes like this, link below. Its pretty clear that over the shoulder shots are more trouble than they're worth in hand-drawn animation.
ReplyDeletehttp://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2010/06/34-left-to-right-camera-angle-vs-over.html
OTS shot...in production they'll say "this is his shot", the guy on the other side of the shoulder, but this shoulder is also so freakin' huge in the frame-it's really still both their shots. You may as well just keep it a medium two shot.
ReplyDeleteSee, I really was in production for too long.
Wrt the first image setup, most 3D "animation" characters still lack subtle details real people have, so a closeup of face is often a plasticity affair. Not true of the top end motion performance characters such as Gollum; all sorts of subtleties there.
ReplyDeleteA camera angle rare in animation is the "dutch camera" (tilted/ skewed), distorting parallax which would make drawing characters even more difficult.
Meanwhile, Ralph B's a short $5K away from his kickstarter goal!
Part of the problem is filling a wide frame in Panavision.
ReplyDelete