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Posted: |
Nov 28, 2013 - 9:42 PM
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By: |
manderley
(Member)
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I was a Director of Photography for 40 years.
There is NO continuity error in this sequence.
There are only three shots in the sequence, so a presumed continuity error
can only happen on a cut where there might be a gap in the footage. Since
there are only 3 shots, there are only 2 edited cuts where the continuity might
change radically enough to be noticed.
The set is a long rectangle with one of the long sides likely unbuilt and nearly open to the camera, two complete opposing end walls with full sets (a throne and an exit), and a relatively short "set return wall", which is part of the 4th wall, attached to the exit steps wall on the right side.
At one end of the set is the throne and the purple steps (with the hats).
At the other (opposite) end of the set is the stairway (also with purple carpet)
leading to the exit.
Shot #! - Begins on the throne angle and as the dance progresses, the camera
dolly pulls back as the principals are carried along the long wall of the set. A very
few frames from the end of this cut (probably no more than 12 frames or half-a-second)
the pink draperies framing the left side of the alcove (in which the exit stairs will soon
be seen) come into view on the very right side of the screen. Thus, the exit stairway
area is now already established in the very first shot.
Shot #2 - This shot is a very long wide shot of the whole exit stairway area, including the
left side of the alcove we've seen in the previous shot. Now we see the complete alcove
and the exit stairway and the right side, as well as a short straight set return wall at the extreme right alcove wall at this end of the set. The shot carries our dancers from the end
of the 1st shot, across the exit stairs background, and moves them toward this "set return" wall where they do some moves, and then start to move back toward the exit area. All of this is done in relatively static wide CinemaScope long shot.
Shot #3 - Picks up our dancers in a medium close-up match-action-move as they begin their move away from the set return wall, and as the camera eventually moves in they end up sitting on the exit stairs in close-up. And they are exactly 180 degrees across from where they started in the set at the beginning of the sequence.
During this sequence approximately 3 1/3 walls of the (presumed) 4-wall set are exposed to view during the three shots: Left full end wall...Long center back wall...Right full opposite end wall....and 1/3 of the 4th wall on the right side.
There is NO continuity error in this sequence, but it IS ingeniously choreographed to get three
near-non dancers moved through a very large set in only three shots and only slightly over 2 minutes!
PS.....At no time does the action "cross the line" and the screen direction is correct throughout
the sequence. Perhaps the moving camera flow is confusing everyone.
Additionally, SILK STOCKINGS is from 1957. Many of the set elements, dressing and wall sections on view derive from MAYTIME (1937), MARIE ANTOINETTE and THE EMPEROR'S CANDLESTICKS and THE GREAT WALTZ (1938), DU BARRY WAS A LADY (1944), ANCHORS AWEIGH (1945), THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1948), THE MERRY WIDOW (1952), THE GLASS SLIPPER (1954), and a few others. Waste not, want not. 
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Posted: |
Nov 29, 2013 - 3:33 AM
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By: |
manderley
(Member)
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.....Thanks for that analysis but the whole scene is visually incomprehensible to me.....
But now that I've given you an explanation in excruciating detail, it won't be incomprehensible to you anymore, right?
You can actually learn from this description I've given.
Did you picture in your mind the overhead floor plan of the set that I described in detail?
Did you picture in your mind the movement of the performers on that overhead floor plan for the entire sequence?
Did you picture in your mind the three camera setups on that overhead floor plan for the entire sequence?
It would be interesting to hear how YOU would have covered this number, on this set, with three performers---one of which, Lorre, has particular physical and dancing problems---given that information.
Would you have covered it in one large flowing camera move, knowing that you might have to do a take like that 30 or 40 times until Lorre either managed it or was worn out for the day?
Would you have shot it in separate static setups where the dancers exited each frame and entered the next (which would allow for endless flubs on Lorre's part and retakes) but which could have been pieced together later?
Or would you have undertaken some other shooting plan?
In my own experience I've found it's very easy to critique a project after the fact, but very difficult to stand on the set in the morning, knowing that something like this number must be done in a day, chewing up several hundred thousand dollars of the budget, and having the eyes of a hundred crew members watching you as you make the fatalistic shooting decisions that will set the agenda for the day and determine whether or not, or how, the scene will play out and be recorded on film during the rest of the day.
As I've indicated before, I see no major problems with the editing "matches" and, in fact, in frame-by-frame analysis which I'm not going to do, they may be near perfect. The editing is most certainly being done on movement.
It may well be that the crew was using the MGM Reverse Oscillating crane on this sequence which allows two cameras and two operators to be on the same crane simultaneously, one shooting the long or medium shot and the other shooting the medium or close shot, all synced with each other because they are a part of the same exact movement of the crane and dolly moves. This allows for almost perfect moving matched-action on dance moves and if a take is good, doesn't require the performer to do it over and over until a different size angle can be taken and approved for editing. The two angles are accomplished on the same take. Dance moves like these are extremely strenuous and physically tiring for even the best like an Astaire or Charisse and if you can get the various required angles for a dance number in the can in one or two overall takes then everyone, literally, rests easier.
One of the most important differences between a Fred Astaire/Hermes Pan film and a Bob Fosse kind of film is that Astaire was always adamant about seeing a dancer's feet in the shot. Fosse would often cut away from feet to other body parts for faster, more kinetic action movement, but that editing tempo and rhythm often substituted for the actual dancing in some sections of a number. In the Fred Astaire style, if you were in a medium shot with a full figure (feet to head) on the screen (as much of this "Siberia" sequence is) the only cut-away you could go to for editing purposes is a wider shot with excess floor beneath feet and excess set above head. There was no other place to go and still keep continuity.
It's my personal opinion that the "Siberia" number was laid out and photographed as one continuous moving crane and dolly shot, now represented on the finished film by Shot 1 at the head and Shot 3 at the end. At some point during the day's shooting, my guess is that the middle of the number could never be completed properly or without missteps or without severe wear on Lorre. As a result of this, they had to devise a "fix" to string the beginning footage to the end footage of the take, bypassing the middle failed material---and the longer shot (shot 2), taken from further back, was, literally, the fall-back position to get the number pieced together. This kind of thing happens pretty regularly in a musical, and the beautiful pre-planned shot you've worked out beforehand doesn't in fact work on the set, can't be completed, and then you have to find match points to pick up and bridge the missing portions from a different angle that will still cut visually. I have no trouble with the continuity or the spatial relationships of the people to the sets in this sequence as you do, but I agree with you, Regie, that it is not one of the great visual dance numbers of this film. But, as I've indicated, I think there was more going on in its actual shooting than we are currently privy to, and that is what makes it look like it does.
In discussing all this I AM surprised you brought up SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, a delightful, classic film which I love, but one which has one of the most blatant and notable continuity jump cuts ever put on film! Margaret Booth, the supervising editor at MGM for eons, once commented that to speed up action and cut out dead wood, she often instructed her editors to make jump cuts in the material. Her opinion was that no one ever really noticed it or commented on it if they were enjoying the film.
But that was the old days when you went to see a movie and that was the first and last time you ever saw it. Today we analyze and analyze and over-analyze films, running them frame-by-frame to pick them apart and then critique work that was completed 50-80 years ago and is now over-and-done and finished.
I personally don't like several of the brush strokes in Van Gogh's "Irises," but who's to say that he just wasn't feeling well that day when he made them?
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Posted: |
Nov 29, 2013 - 6:17 AM
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By: |
johnbijl
(Member)
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Regie: .....Thanks for that analysis but the whole scene is visually incomprehensible to me.....
Manderlay: But now that I've given you an explanation in excruciating detail, it won't be incomprehensible to you anymore, right?
Yes, but any movie should do without such an analysis, of course.
The first cut isn't explicit enough in the angel being changed. I'm no director or DP, but a simple pan or such after the cut would have explain the camera change and thus avoid the confusion.
Manderlay: In my own experience I've found it's very easy to critique a project after the fact, but very difficult to stand on the set in the morning, knowing that something...
Sure, but that does't mean I can't give critique, now does it?
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