Saturday, February 27, 2010

CLOSE-UPS


Don't you love close-ups on big movie screens? Having live silhouette heads between you and the screen makes the experience even better.



If you've never seen a Clampett cartoon on a big theater screen, then you've really missed something. His characters are always leaning into the audience and looking down. They plead with the audience, patronize them, almost pat them on their heads. You don't get that when you see the cartoons on TV.



I love the idea of giant heads and bodies looming out over the audience and looking down. You don't even need 3D to get the effect.



If you're Eisenstein or Richard Lester or Sergio Leonne then you love the technique where you show the audience an ultra-long shot then....


...then, on the same shot you have someone step in front of the camera for an ultra close-up.



I love it when monsters stick their heads out over the audience and look around, as if they're trying to figure out which person to eat first.



Amazing but true: on a big 2D screen you can give the audience the physical sensation of looking up at something. I don't mean a simple upshot, I mean a shot where you get a definite sensation of light-headedness and insecurity about your balance, as if you'd tilted your head way back. To see what I mean, click to enlarge.

It's not enough to tilt the camera up to get this effect. You have to have something very distracting to look at up there, else the audience's logic will kick in, and they'll talk themselves out of the vertigo you want them to feel.



Oddly enough, shooting a glamorous woman in close-up doesn't always work. You can convey personality and charm in a close-up, but not sexiness...not sexiness in the glamour meaning of the word. I guess visual sex cues have a lot to do with proportions, and you need to step back a little to take that in. The close-ups are just punctuation.



Okay, there are exceptions. How about "Rear Window" where Grace Kelly leans into the audience and almost kisses the camera? Watching this scene was what your grandfather did to cure erectile dysfunction in the days before Viagra.



I saw "North by Northwest" on a big theater screen and the experience was a revelation. On a big screen the close-up shots in the cornfield make you feel that Cary Grant wants to jump into your lap. He seems to be appealing to the audience for help. I never got that from seeing the film on TV.




12 comments:

  1. After a request I made to a community college, I got to see some Clampett and Popeye cartoons projected on their giant screen in an auditorium, on a day with no school. It was a great experience!

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  2. I never thought of close-ups for something like that, now that has me wondering...

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  3. Anonymous12:33 PM

    Reminded me of this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISAjvVIyzB4

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  4. Great post, Eddie!

    I never thought of it this way before.

    The wider the viewer's angle of vision, the wider the angle of the "lens" you can use.

    TV cartoons are flat because from a it's like looking at something close to the horizon. They don't make them like the old theatricals because it's bad for you to sit too close to the TV.

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  5. Justin: What a luxury!

    Anon: Hilarious! David Lynch...he needs to have his own TV show!

    Pappy: I thought sitting close to the TV was only bad if it was one of the old cathode ray sets.

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  6. Ah yes, silhouette heads. Looks like you've been watching some Mystery Science Theater 3000.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EAXYH4b4yM&feature=related

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M4_XZ3FLHw

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  7. I seem to remember from film history 101 class, that close-ups were jarring for audiences, when they first started being used. But then again, isn't there a closeup in the Edison"Kiss"? That's pretty early on, before 1900, I think.

    I think that thing with Clampett characters talking"down" to audiences came from vaudville too. It implies that the screen is a proscenium stage, and in fact most movie theaters have proscenium stages. Early on, there probably were live vaudville acts that were mixed in with the movie, shorts, and cartoons.

    Nice post Thanks!

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  8. They have new cathode-ray sets now?

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  9. Jenny9:30 AM

    Very astute, and good examples(I'll pass on the vision of "Grandpa", though)!

    Re the "looking up" observation-I'm pretty sure I was taken to a monster movie when I was less than 4 because from that age I started having nightmares where the chief frightening thing was exactly that "vertigo" you write of...it's a potent filmic trick, alright.

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  10. Not the place or time, but I mentioned this fellows book on one of your previous architectural theory posts, and I saw that Boingboing recently pointed to a gallery show of his blueprints of sitcom dwellings

    http://www.markmooregallery.com/artists/mark-bennett/

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  11. Hans: I can't get a sense of it from the blueprints and i can't remember what you said about him (Sorry). I'll look him up.

    Thomas: Yes...the implied high stage. I hadn't thoought of that.

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  12. They used to tell us in layout to put the horizon line at the bottom 1/3 of the field for standard long-shots. As an animator, that always struck me as weird, since the character would always be in upshot.

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