20 Camera Shot for 6 Seconds of Film
Remarks on cinema of the 90s. Excerpt from the book 'Movies of the 90s', by Jürgen Müller
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
It must be acknowledged that such technical progress had its beginnings in cinemas. There too it was digital sound quality, particularly in the multiplex cinemas, that opened up a new cinematic age. You need think only of Steven Spielberg's war film Saving Private Ryan (1998, p. 598), winner of so many Oscars, which in the first 15 minutes gave us a sort of phenomenology of the sounds of war.We can hear how the bullets ricochet off metal, how they hiss into the water or whistle past the soldiers' ears. Whereas the film material at the beginning of Saving Private Ryan looks grainy and is reminiscent of the newsreels of the 1940s, the sound is extremely varied. It is as though the images portraying historical events gain authenticity through the soundtrack. We even experience Captain Miller's deafness, when, beside himself in horror at the many dead, for a moment he no longer hears any external noises.
It has long been natural for the audience to see through the eyes of one of the characters in a film and to interpret a panning shot as the subjective view of a person. But in the 90s, we can even hear through the ears of a character in a film. The great success Spielberg enjoyed with Jurassic Park (1993, p. 130) was also due to the convincing use of sound, as we stand in the middle of a stampeding herd of small dinosaurs, or in the unforgettable scene in which a Jeep is pursued by a Tyrannosaurus Rex, whose powerful steps seem to make the whole cinema shake.
In the movies of the 90s, it is impossible to overestimate the importance of sound in making the images so convincing. David Fincher produced a winner in this regard with Alien 3 (1992). In the most gruesome scene of the film, a post-mortem has to be carried out on a young girl, as no one knows whether there is an alien in her body.We see the instruments that are needed to carry out the procedure.We don't see the actual post-mortem itself, but we do hear the child's ribcage being opened up. The scene is almost unbearable and is one of the coldest "images" that modern cinema has produced. Film scenes of this sort illustrate the power sound can exert and that it can be just as effective in its own right as the actual images of a film.
All the examples mentioned concern the reproduction technique of cinema and television as creators of illusion. But has the video also changed the aesthetics of film in the 90s? The example cited above from The Silence of the Lambs shows the extreme extent to which images can be accelerated. This becomes clearer when we think, for example, of the influence of music videos, which are largely characterised by brief shots and frequent cuts. Pictures are shown for only fractions of seconds, so that they are barely perceptible.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
It must be acknowledged that such technical progress had its beginnings in cinemas. There too it was digital sound quality, particularly in the multiplex cinemas, that opened up a new cinematic age. You need think only of Steven Spielberg's war film Saving Private Ryan (1998, p. 598), winner of so many Oscars, which in the first 15 minutes gave us a sort of phenomenology of the sounds of war.We can hear how the bullets ricochet off metal, how they hiss into the water or whistle past the soldiers' ears. Whereas the film material at the beginning of Saving Private Ryan looks grainy and is reminiscent of the newsreels of the 1940s, the sound is extremely varied. It is as though the images portraying historical events gain authenticity through the soundtrack. We even experience Captain Miller's deafness, when, beside himself in horror at the many dead, for a moment he no longer hears any external noises.
It has long been natural for the audience to see through the eyes of one of the characters in a film and to interpret a panning shot as the subjective view of a person. But in the 90s, we can even hear through the ears of a character in a film. The great success Spielberg enjoyed with Jurassic Park (1993, p. 130) was also due to the convincing use of sound, as we stand in the middle of a stampeding herd of small dinosaurs, or in the unforgettable scene in which a Jeep is pursued by a Tyrannosaurus Rex, whose powerful steps seem to make the whole cinema shake.
In the movies of the 90s, it is impossible to overestimate the importance of sound in making the images so convincing. David Fincher produced a winner in this regard with Alien 3 (1992). In the most gruesome scene of the film, a post-mortem has to be carried out on a young girl, as no one knows whether there is an alien in her body.We see the instruments that are needed to carry out the procedure.We don't see the actual post-mortem itself, but we do hear the child's ribcage being opened up. The scene is almost unbearable and is one of the coldest "images" that modern cinema has produced. Film scenes of this sort illustrate the power sound can exert and that it can be just as effective in its own right as the actual images of a film.
All the examples mentioned concern the reproduction technique of cinema and television as creators of illusion. But has the video also changed the aesthetics of film in the 90s? The example cited above from The Silence of the Lambs shows the extreme extent to which images can be accelerated. This becomes clearer when we think, for example, of the influence of music videos, which are largely characterised by brief shots and frequent cuts. Pictures are shown for only fractions of seconds, so that they are barely perceptible.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
Movies of the 90s
Flexicover, 19.6 x 24.9 cm (7.7 x 9.8 in.), 800 pages
$ 39.99
$ 39.99
An opulent factbook that any self-respecting moviegoer shouldn't be without
Stills from 'Silence of the Lambs', USA, 1991