Weird camera moves & Inside Man

Watched Inside Man the other night. This may have been the first time I watched a film because I liked the cinematographer. The arty Matthew Libatique (works often with Darren Aronofsky) mixes light temperatures a lot which is a nice look. He's also good at doing that flourescent green look I like so much. The more I think about it, the more it's amazing to me that before the last few years, most films didn't go through digital intermediates. I don't think this went through a DI either (I could be wrong)*. At any rate, between Libatique and Spike Lee, you couldn't get a more unlikely pair of creative types working on what's basically a seventies-style caper film.

One of the reasons I wanted to see the film was to see the moving desk shot. If you remember Spike Lee's work from his TV commercials, he was always putting people on platforms and moving them around. In Inside Man, Lee puts Christopher Plummer on a desk on a platform and moves the whole thing. The result just looks like an exaggerated push in, almost like a push in/zoom out. It's a nice effect that doesn't stand out as much as you might think. It's a lot of trouble for that one shot but made sense for the emotional content.

I had my own weird shot escapades the other day. I wanted to do a slow push in to a prop camera. The problem is, the prop camera was pointed at a slight downward angle. When I did the push-in the prop camera seemed to rise in the frame because of its angle. It was a weird, unexpected effect that could be useful for something in the future. You have to do the shot in one of two ways. You either stop the camera when the subject is centered within the frame or you keep tilting the camera upwards.

Siwaraya ran into the same camera move problem with the push she did in her phone Nazi film. She was pushing in to the guy on the second floor but because she wasn't tilting the camera, the push seemed to go into the wall. It would have looked better to cut out of the shot earlier.

Speaking of weird shots, I was looking at hollywoodcamerawork.us the other week. They sell an instructional DVD about blocking and camera movement. They have a couple of videos posted that are pretty useful and interesting. I liked the one on pivoting.

*Inside Man DID go through a DI.