Cinema Report: "Goddamn It, Cowboy"

And another one down. Eagle Pennell's Last Night at the Alamo (1983), which is about a bunch of regulars gathering together in the Alamo bar on the last night before it's torn down.

Here's the skimjinny:

Average shot length: 12.8 seconds ** See Note
Length of the film: 78 minutes 11.7 seconds
Number of shots: 367** See Note
Minimum SL: 0.6 seconds
Maximum SL: 111.7 seconds
Range: 111.1 seconds
Standard deviation: 16.1 seconds



Note: 2 extra shots in the count, so the ASL goes from 12.78 seconds to 12.85 seconds for 365 shots in 01:18:11.7.

- A lot of medium shots and medium close ups in this one.
- A lot of the longer takes motivated by characters ranting (like the first of the 70+ second shots, a couple of minutes in).
- A lot of shots with a character in medium close up in the foreground, 2 or more characters in long shot in the background, drinking, smooching, or listening in to the foreground character - sense of community sort of thing.
- A whole lot of cussing in this one.
- Editing/shooting style kind of reaching a compromise between the low budget use of quick editing and the low budget use of long takes. Sort of.

Not even sure if there's a point in doing these, since the group of films I'm looking at isn't a unified body of films, in terms of production circumstances, personnel, period, financing, genre, etc. Still, what the hey.