Another Look At Spielberg's One-Shots

I didn't even notice this one when I posted the other video earlier today. This is fun.


The Spielberg Oner - One Scene, One Shot from Tony Zhou on Vimeo.

Spielberg's Long Takes

From Vimeo user Tony Zhou, who has done a few of these.


The Spielberg Oner - Eight Lengthy Examples from Tony Zhou on Vimeo.

Wouldn't Hold Up Today

Over at LAT, David Horsey bemoans how action movies are predictable fluff. I like this observation about 'White House Down' and 'Olympus Has Fallen':

If a viewer did not know they were made at the same time, it would be easy to think one was a remake of the other.

True -- for these two and other action movies. We see the same stuff all the time.

Horsey mentions the surprising and innovative moment in 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' when Indy shoots the highly-trained swordsman instead of taking him on hand-to-hand or sword-to-whatever. It was a funny moment, everybody in the theater laughed, and it's true -- we were all ready for some convoluted action fight sequence and it was refreshing to see the scene end so enterprisingly. It caught us off guard and people talked about it for years.

I've always liked that bit so I checked it out just for kicks. Watch the extras a few seconds into the clip. They move from left to right then, about midframe, they turn around and walk back the way they came -- all of them. They're practically tripping over one another to execute a U-turn.

Obviously, this was a practical solution used to make it look busy, like there's hundreds of people milling around instead of just, what, thirty or so, but it looks terrible. You only see four or five guys actually make the turn but the impression is pretty poor. A contemporary audience would spot this in a second but it wasn't a big deal in 1981, before kids grew up watching hundreds of movies on DVD.



Here's footage of a more conventional version where Indy fights the guy with his whip. Apparently, they couldn't make it work and gave up, but what they ended up going with, bailing out though it may have been, worked great, even with the guys shuffling back and forth in the background.

You can tell the sun is higher from the length of the shadows. It must have been hot and tiring going over the moves trying to make it convincing. Harrison Ford was probably glad for the 'just shoot him' idea -- might even have been his, to get the scene before sundown. I wonder.

Today's movies are almost always technically perfect, glossy, sure, but not as fresh feeling. This has heart you don't see much anymore.

'The Mighty Eighth' Gets A Trailer

According to JoBlo (who has concept art worth checking out):

THE MIGHTY EIGHTH was written by Kurt Johnstad (300, 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE, ACT OF VALOR) and is produced by David Hoberman (THE FIGHTER, THE PROPOSAL), Todd Lieberman (THE FIGHTER, THE PROPOSAL) and Greg & Colin Strause, with director Rick Jacobson (BITCH SLAP, Starz Spartacus: War of the Damned) taking the helm.

Apparently, there are two productions about this subject. HBO, with producers Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, is developing an adaptation of Donald L. Miller’s 'Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany', which is about the flyers of the (Mighty) 8th Air Force, and would run as a miniseries. That one is called 'Masters of the Air'.

Production value is off on this trailer, however it looks like they captured the random frenzy of battle. I'd want to see the final product.