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Post #1427586

Author
sherlockpotter
Parent topic
The Rise of Skywalker: Ascendant (Released)
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1427586/action/topic#1427586
Date created
4-May-2021, 6:09 PM

Jar Jar Bricks said:

sherlockpotter said:

Hal 9000 said:

I like that idea, Sherlock, but I wonder if that’d be weird to actually have sequenced that way.

Scenes and scenes and planets have gone by, and Hux just now tells him “it was a coordinated incursion.”

I do like the idea of slowing down with an establishing shot after we settle in with Lando, and possibly at the end of that scene, with engines lighting up.

And - this may sound blasphemous - but I actually don’t really like the establishing shot before the necklace scene? The scene is so quick that it basically feels like the film is cross cutting between Kylo’s ship and Lando’s sex dungeon. An establishing shot is usually reserved for a whole scene - does a cutaway warrant that? We’d basically be spending more time in the establishing shot than in the meat and potatoes of the scene.

If we applied this same logic to Mustafar then we wouldn’t have come up with all those establishing shots.

I’m all for establishing shots, and for slowing down the film’s pacing. But it’s not the same as Mustafar. Mustafar is an entire sequence, where, like…things happen. And it’s over a minute long. And it’s the very first scene in the movie, so it makes sense to establish not just that location, but the film as a whole. For settling into the movie.

To me - and this is subjective - it would feel weird to be in the middle of one scene, have an establishing shot of a different one, 25 second “scene,” and then cut back to the first location. With a cutaway like that, editing implies that the scenes are happening concurrently. So if you’re in the middle of a conversation, another conversation may be happening at the same time; but you wouldn’t want to just sit there idling waiting for the conversation to restart. You’re already settled into the Lando scene. You can’t just uproot yourself and settle into a completely different location, and then snap back. It’ll be jarring.

Think of it this way: you’re listening to one conversation. You turn your head, and see another conversation on your other side. Then you look back at the original conversation. If the first conversation wasn’t done, you wouldn’t pack up your things, walk to a new location, settle in, and find a different conversation, right?

Again, this is all subjective; but we can’t just use establishing shots willy-nilly. We should treat them how a professional director/editor would; establishing shots are more about settling the audience into a scene than they are about padding it.