Cinema Report: Dog Soldiers

Did up an average shot length for Neil Marshall's first feature Dog Soldiers. Knew it was cut pretty quick, came up with an ASL of 2.4 seconds. Could probably stand to do a second pass, as I might have missed a shot here or there in the action sequences.



Even the dialogue sequences are cut pretty fast, however, particularly near the beginning. That bit from about 7:00 to 11:00 (7:30 to 11:30 on the DVD) is just the characters sitting around, talking and swearing after being dropped off by helicopter. Majority of the shots in that sequence are under 2 seconds.

Feels like the dialogue sequences were a bit slower later on. Wonder if the early quick cutting is similar to the overly done shaky-cam at the beginning of Cloverfield. Or if it's an attempt to amp up the energy early on, while the audience is still kind of deciding on watching the film.


What do you think: Alien 3 homage?

Anyhoo, definitely feels slower, apart from the action scenes, once the squad holes up in the farmhouse, around about 35 minutes. After that point, you can readily spot which are action sequences, which are dialogue sequences by the general cutting pace.

Here's the ASL plot, with a 6th degree best fit (the red line):


Full details are here.

For comparison, here's Marshall's second film, The Descent, with slower ASL of 3.4 seconds:


The second plot seems shorter because The Descent has around 1680 shots, while Dog Soldiers, which is only 5 minutes longer, has around 2530 shots.

Details for that one are here.

Okay, that's it for now.

Take it away, Pvt. Witherspoon.

Cinema Report: Something to Tide You Over

I've been meaning to pull together a collection of screen caps of my 10 (or so) favorite shots, and to maybe wax wise about them, but until I get a chance to do that (or in case I don't), here's a little something to tide you over.

A great moment from The Haunting, Robert Wise's adaptation of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House.






Note here not only the use of the unbalanced scope frame in these shots (which follow one after the other), and the way Wise and his cinematographer Dennis Boulton offer four individual variations of the freaked out reaction shot in short succession, but also who's getting singled out simply by their placement within the frame.

I know the Wise sometimes gets flack for what happened to The Magnificent Ambersons, but this movie makes up for all cinematic sins, as far as I'm concerned. I watch it at least a few times every year. It still holds up. Really one of the great works of the genre.

Cinema Report: A Mouthful of Greek Salad - Addendum

Obligatory Day lolzombies:

Cinema Report: A Mouthful of Greek Salad

And another Romero down, Day of the Dead this time, from 1985. It's late on a Sunday night (or early on a Monday morning), so just a couple of notes to jot, to maybe come back to later.

First, the vitals:

Average shot length: 4.8 seconds
Length of the film: 97 minutes 41.1 seconds
Number of shots: 1233
Minimum SL: 0.4 seconds
Maximum SL: 39.3 seconds
Range: 38.9 seconds
Standard deviation: 4.7 seconds

Which should be about right, give or take reaction time and the odd missed shot.

And it looks like this:


Details here.

The ASL wound up being smaller than I'd expected after a trial run, partway through, last week. I was expecting something closer to 6 seconds. Still, definitely a touch slower than the Romero films from the seventies, and much slower than Dawn

Couple of brief notes:

1. Editing this time by Pasquale Buba, who edited Romero's films from Knightriders through The Dark Half. Cinematography by Michael Gornick, Romero's DP from Martin through this film. (Gornick also did a great job as the radio talk show host in Martin.)

2. Relatively flat lighting in a lot of the shots inside the compound, especially before things go crazy.

3. Not a lot of close ups til the one hour mark.

4. Most of the singles and over the shoulders tend to be off the line by a bit. 30 degrees, maybe? It's pretty consistent.

5. Most of the singles tend to range from medium shot to medium close up, again until closer shots start appearing more frequently about 60 minutes in. Here's a typical shot-reverse shot to show what I mean:



6. Combine that with the centered compositions used for most singles, and you tend (or I tend) to feel a little removed from the action. One of the reasons why, despite the setting, this film often feels like the least claustrophobic of the Dead films, again for me.

7. A lot of the shots, particularly shots of characters, seem to be framed for later cropping down to 1.33. I don't think a lot of the compositions would suffer that much if they were cropped down for VHS release (as it would have been in the mid-80s).

8. A couple examples to demonstrate notes 5, 6 and 7. And by a couple, I mean a bunch.
A. The opening:




B. Daily routine:






C. Steel Under Fire



(That first one is a relatively rare shot that's more or less on the line.)

D. Run Through the Tunnels





9. Lateral movements of zombies past the camera also lend themselves to later cropping, as they shuffle past the camera in turn:

(Always dug this zombie.)


(This one too - the long-haired zombie in orange.)


(And everyone's favorite, the clown zombie. Yay.)

10. Compositions that depend on the edges of the frame are rare, but do pop up from time to time, again especially once things start getting bad:




(In the above, Rhodes keeps going to exit from frame right.)

11. Nevertheless, the centering tendency still applies to a lot of the gore shots:



(Note that in this last shot, the head is pulled more or less directly back, keeping the whole gory affair in frame regardless of aspect ratio.)

12. To some extent, I guess, this seems a little odd for a horror film, given the utility of having monsters lurk and lunge from frame's edge. When they do come in, it's usually a ton of them rather than a single, specific attack (I think). And even on those where occasions where the edge of the frame is used this way, as when Rickles gets it:





The very next shot places him back in the middle again:



Okay, all of that took longer than planned, to demonstrate a few minor points. Again, maybe I'll come back to this film later. In the meantime, here's one of the best moments of the film, featuring the greatest zombie in any zombie movie ever made - Bub, in a brilliant performance by Howard Sherman:


(And for the few who don't know, that's Lori Cardille reacting to him, daughter of Chilly Bill Cardille, the reporter from Night.)

Okay, that's it for the moment.

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.

Cinema Report: Change of Pace, Change of Place

Took a crack at the Dawn remake yesterday. Too many errors to submit by the time I was done, but it's looking like an ASL around 2.9 seconds? 2.8? 3? somewhere around there. So, a little bigger than that of the original, like I suspected. The remake will probably have a larger standard deviation, though - it goes really fast, but not as often as the original.

Hadn't watched the remake in a while and man, it really doesn't hold up well. Setting aside that no one sounds like they're from Wisconsin (where it's ostensibly set), it's just kind of, I dunno, it is what it is. It's largely a generic action movie, filled with stock characters moving along stock character arcs to hit the expected story beats. It seemed to miss the point of the mall setting, which only provided a) a backdrop for the "Get Down with the Sickness" montage and b) a generic source of all supplies necessary. (The whole "let's watch how they go about making this place work as a hideout before everything goes to hell" element of the original is gone.)

And the remake raises what I'll call The Cougar-Dawn Paradox: Cougars are scary. Zombies are scary. But zombies that run and sound like cougars are not scary.

Oh well. On the plus side, the actors did well enough with what they had and were likable enough, the zombie makeups were generally good, and the opening reel and the opening credits are still pretty good. Best addition to the whole thing was Andy's gun shop, and how that all played out.

Anyhoo, changing latitude and attitude, today, I ASL'd Kelly Reichardt's Old Joy, a brilliant, quiet film from a couple years back. Got two extra shots in by mistake. (Really wish there was an "undo last shot" button in the program.)

Set in and near Portland, the movie follows Mark (L) as he heads out for a trip to Bagby Hot Springs with old buddy Kurt (R):


Mark leaves behind his pregnant wife Tanya, who's not so big on the idea:


Here's the trailer, if you're unfamiliar with the film:


And here's the skinny:

Average shot length: 16.9 seconds** --> See note 1, below
Length of the film: 70 minutes 53.9 seconds
Number of shots: 251** --> See note 1, below
Minimum SL: 1.7 seconds
Maximum SL: 111.7 seconds
Range: 110 seconds
Standard deviation: 16.9 seconds

And it looks like this:


(As before, any lines ending in a red dot continue past the edge of the graph as shown. Just trying to keep it down to a manageable size.)

Details here

A few notes. Spoilers ahoy.

Kind of dumb to talk about spoilers for this kind of film, and the audiences for this kind of film, but I often find, when the plot itself is relatively slight, and low-concept, if you know plot points ahead of time, the sense of moment-by-moment discovery which is vital to this sort of film gets compromised. (For example, I wonder if some of the mumblecore backlash was due to this.) So if you're reading this, and you haven't watched it, go watch it. It's only 70 minutes, won't take you too long.


Really.



No, really.




Okay now.

1. Taking out the two extra shots, at about 45 minutes and 66 minutes, there's 249 shots, giving an ASL of 17.1 seconds. (Note that an extra shot or two in a more quickly cut movie, or a longer movie, will have less impact on the overall ASL. Here, it shifts it a bit.)

2. . I'll need to go back and check to see what the longest shot was. I think it's the one where Kurt's in the car, and Mark's outside the car, in the background, talking to Tanya on his cell. The shorter shots (under 4 seconds, say), seem to come not quite regularly, but not irregularly either.

3. Second dip comes after the evocative, 65-second St. John's Bridge shot:

First shot that follows is 18+ seconds, pictured at the top of the post, which leads into the wordless series of shots that get Mark and Kurt to the gas station. About 2 1/2 minutes without dialogue at this point. Just driving through the Northwest landscape with Yo La Tengo on the soundtrack.

Immediately prior are two longer shots of about 73 seconds and 69 seconds. This is the "End of an era" conversation:



Taken together, those four shots make up just over 5% of the film's running time. Which gets into the issue of just how much of your time watching the film is spent kind of settled back, taking in those long takes. (Another wish for cinemetrics - direct access to the raw data generated by the process.)

4. Good use of a two shot in the car scenes, to let us watch each character react to what the other says, without overemphasizing each reaction. Fine performances here as well.

5. A couple of other temporal markers:
- Credits end at just under 7 min. (note that this is on the above graph - there's about 20 seconds difference between it and the time on the DVD, since I didn't start the clock til the first shot.)
- Mark and Kurt reach the little campsite at 26 min, the morning after comes in at 35 min.
- They reach the Spring at about 48 min. (note the slope of the graph here)
- They head back at about 62 min.
- Mark drops off Kurt at about 67 min.

6. Don't know if I'd try to break this into 3 or 4 acts, but let's see:
I. 0-17 min. - "End of an era." - Mark heads out on a trip with old friend Kurt, leaves wife Tanya behind.
II. 17-35 min. - "I miss you." They hit the forest. Kurt gets them lost. Builds up to Kurt's confession by the campfire, and Daniel's reaction to it (at about 33 1/2 minutes on the graph)
III. 35-48 min. - "I never doubted you, man." The next morning, they make another go at finding the spring.
IV. 48-62 min. - "Sorrow is nothing but worn out joy." What happens at the Spring.
V. 62-71 min. - Epilogue. Mark and Kurt drive home, part ways.

Something like that, maybe. I guess you could also say there's a break at about 10 minutes, at the beginning of the drive, once they're out of town (more or less) and the talk radio cuts out.

7. This shot reminds me of a shot from Erik Gunneson's Milk Punch (2000):


Okay, that's all for that. Was going to do Eagle Pennell's Last Night at the Alamo next, but I want to catch a 9:15 of No Country, so that'll have to wait til later tonight, or tomorrow.