Week 56: Socials Roundup
Posts from 23th January to 29th January 2024
Week 56 saw posts on Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997), Scrapper (2023), The Big Short (2015), and Preacher (2016-2019).
Kiki’s Delivery Service
When Kiki fears she may be losing her ability to fly, she tries and falls - when she lands with a thud, the whole screen shakes as though the camera is in her world and being jarred by her hitting the floor.
Miyazaki repeats the gag when Kiki tries again; the shaking isn't just important the second time for consistency, but to make us really *feel* how Kiki's world is shaken.
Preacher
#Preacher 1.01 sets its tone as OTT-gory, irreverent, and funny: this match cut covers all those bases.
Cassidy grabs sunnies and an umbrella before jumping out of a plane, the camera follows his trajectory until . . . SPLAT!
A hard cut into something seemingly unrelated — a closeup on a plate being hit with a blob of ketchup (er, tomato sauce) — right where our eyes were looking in the wide a split second before. This clearly insinuates how Cassidy would look (and sound) upon hitting the ground.
The scene continues the gag by letting the conversation lead into Emily being grossed out, the same way we would have been by actually seeing Cassidy go SPLAT.
The Big Short
#SexySaturday
The edit in Margot Robbie's famous #TheBigShort bubble bath sequence, takes a huge 'stutter' at 60 seconds - about 24 frames of 'repeat' footage where Robbie picking up a champagne flute from two different angles.
It's not the 'big' mismatches of earlier where the J-cut serves as a voiceover (0:14-:015), it's a repeat visual which it *feels* like a continuity error. Yet, there's plenty of room to have edited without the dub-double take.
You can also comb back through and find other, seemingly smaller blips earlier in the scene (eg 0:42-0:43 where on the cut from one angle to another, Robbie is making a different hand gesture and her champagne is in a different position.) These are wholly intentional little flourishes, the big question is WHY intentionally edit these 'errors' ?
Well, the better to (some subsubtly, some blatantly) draw attention to the artifice of the whole scene.
Scrapper
Scrapper (2023) often puts Georgie at the bottom or in other ways 'small' in the frame, even in medium or closeup shots. This reminds us of how vulnerable and young Georgie really is.
Other small tweaks such as framing Jason on her level, but closer to the camera, emphasise how small this little scrapper is in the big big world.
Importantly, though Georgie is often small in frame, the film never hides her.
Whether through lighting, Georgie's motion, distinctive shirts, or making sure she is 'set off' from the background, etc., you can always SEE her, and thus exactly how small she is in the big world.
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
Did you find yourself listening to this week's Rating Descending and wondering "what IS that wild crotch-bounce shot Michelle St. Clare speaks of?”
We’re here to solve your very niche problem!
Rayden . . . okay before we go any further don’t yell at me (Mel) for that naming convention, I’m spelling it from the film’s credit roll!
Ahem, as I was saying:
The scene sets up for Rayden’s entrance in a perfectly normal way; characters look up, camera cuts to an upward direction suggesting that's where they're looking, then we see someone flying in front of a green screen . . .
and when he lands the effect (a hard cut between two different landings, OR possibly the same landing with a fumble cut out of the middle) paired with the camera moving feels as though the camera actually *bounces* backwards.
All accentuated with a 'whah-BANG' sound effect.
That . . . is a choice.