Distance Shots/Talking Heads #04 — Meanwhile, From Far Away
October 22nd, 2011
We really love those distance shots, don’t we?
Impressions:
Don’t let the clip fool you, it’s just the longest uninterrupted bit of action in the episode… and even that is still about half Saber standing there, narrating what’s going on. Most of the the episode was the same static shots from 50 feet away and focusing on everything except the fight that has plagued every single episode to date. "What’s Tokiomi up to? I bet it’s super important. Let’s cut away and watch him sit rock still for the next few minutes. Exciting! I’m so glad I got to see a slow zoom of his eye instead of some boring fight." Try counting how many times they use shots like this with slightly different backgrounds… usually for at least 30 seconds at a time, I think it’s at least 6. Close-ups of feet and weapons from 6 inches away while shaking the camera are the main attempts at ‘action’ through the first half.
The second was definitely better, but every 10 seconds of ‘fighting’ is punctuated by two or three minutes of then talking about it. Better than cutting away entirely as the first half did, but still tedious and keeps the episode from ever actually being exciting because it feels the need to expound at length instead of trying to make what should be a visceral scene actually visceral. Sometimes I like to imagine if other media pulled this crap. "Bond is fighting Jaws but… wait, let’s see what Q’s up to right now. Maybe he’ll have a new invention. No? Okay, back to Bond. They punched each other once. Now Bond is wondering what Jaws’s teeth are made of. Enough of that, let’s cut to Goldfinger watching the fight via monitor off-screen. Now they’re staring at each other. Fan-bloody-tastic." Don’t make me start using Blood-C as an example for how to direct a cohesive action scene, UFOTable. I’ll do it. I will do it.
At least a couple minutes is better than nothing though, but it’s still struggling to get even up to Blood-C’s level of action, let alone what C3‘s done for the last couple weeks. That’s not a good place to be.
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