Artoo all alone? (4)
Last Updated (Friday, 13 August 2010 16:51) Written by Administrator Wednesday, 11 August 2010 00:00
Art Notes
Spider-Sense Jawas!
Well, I'm smiling again now. Sorry to be self-centred but this page brings back all sorts of memories as it's another one of the earliest ones.
Funnily enough there's no real build up in the drama. Conventionally, you'd start with a wide-view, then move in closer - hinting at the presence of others lurking in the shadows. To be fair though, the gun is introduced for the first time in the last panel.
Check out the use of the BIG BLACK PERMANENT MARKER. How I loved that blunt instrument. And good God - some colour: Brown colouring pencil on the Jawas for all of one panel, then I lost interest. Doing the red eyes was probably the fun bit!
Film Notes
A classic hand-held, from the shadows shot
I seem to remember George Lucas himself saying that he was very much against that conventional 'wide establishing shot, medium-shot, close-up' sort of approach and it annoyed his set-designers when they'd see that much of what they'd built wasn't even in shot. In this scene though, he actually does use that approach.
He cuts-loose too though. According to Lucas, his preference at the time was for a hand-held news-reel or documentary style of camera-work. To be honest I'd never really noticed it but you can certainly see it in this scene as the shaky hand-held camera shoots from behind rocks - indicating a concealed observer; and as we see the pebbles (somewhat unconvincingly) dislodge and tumble down the boulder. Perhaps it was because we went through this scene in film school in the lecture theatre that I can too-easily imagine the presence of the cameraman and the person who dropped the pebbles from outside of the frame?
So it's an odd blend: Mounted camera using 'wide, medium and close-up' - and rougher, more self-conscious hand-held shots. Each approach clashing a bit with the other.
Can anyone tell me if he used shaky hand-held camera in the Prequel Trilogy? They simulated it with CGI on the animated battle scenes in Ep.II. It'd be another sad feature of those films if that more authentic looking camera style was actually only simulated on computer.
George, George, George... what happened?
On Friday: Artoo gets Zapped!
Comments
"Hey! - you can just do squiggly lines and it looks brilliant! Really quick to do." A bit of youthful bravado.
I was only thinking recently about the differences between Lucas and Spielberg's 4th Indy film and the first. One thing that sprang to mind was that canyon-bazooka scene. In the 4th film most of it looks fake, blue-screened and CGI-lit like a fantasy or dream-sequence. In 'Raiders' scenes like that canyon-bazooka one have the actors ACTUALLY in a REAL place, in a pretty standard set-up. Over-the-should er shot of Ford with the bazooka and echoing voices as if that's the sound really recorded on location. No post-production 'touch-ups'. Much better - more realistic.
For all i know, this scene might have been shot by a second unit - without his direction.
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