What Bettman calls "eye candy" I call "abstraction enters into the film via narratively-justified mise en scene." The reason this idea is important is because it is subtle, much less obvious than the self-consciously artistic approaches that have become commonplace among post music video directors. It is indeed a "missing link" between mainstream cinema and art film.
You can see a good example in Spielberg's Minority Report. At the beginning of the film Tom Cruise's character is desperately looking for a house in which a murder is about to take place. When he discovers the right address he bolts for the house. We see this from a variety of angles with the camera shutter strobing to intensify the action. One notable shot shows Cruise running toward the door while in the foreground, a child's merry go around spins ferociously adding to the strobing effect. The action then continues as Cruise runs up the stairs past the railing, with each rail continuing the strobing effect.
The child's merry go round is so well justified in this context that it recedes from our memory. All we remember is the intensification of action. This is one of the main differences between Spielberg and Lucas. Spielberg is less obviously abstract; Lucas more obviously so.
1 comment:
i wonder if there is something like "abstraction enters into the film via BUDGET-justified mise en scene"? For example, I read an interview with the Gladiator d.p., and he said that their Raging-Bull-plus-color techniques used for some battle scenes came about because they didn't have the money to do it as originally planned, and so some scenes were just cut from the script. then ridley scott said see what you can do to make it work, and they hated it at first, but it later became the signature look of the film.
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