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Post by Isapop on Apr 12, 2024 17:43:07 GMT
...because such a wide screen would allow audiences to see everything they need to see with just one efficient set up!
This is one of the surprising and funny revelations in the book Hollywood: The Oral History. Director Robert Wise is telling how he was among those invited to see Zanuck's first demonstration of CinemaScope at Fox:
"Zanuck's idea was that CinemaScope was going to be a great time and money saver for films, but also a great money maker...Zanuck had in mind to simply shoot everything right out in front. You had a 3-page scene with 5 actors, and you'd stage it. And your camera would be there, and that would be all, no coverage, no alternate angles, nothing. You'd just shoot the sequence and go on to the next one. He thought you could then make pictures in 10 or 12 days...CinemaScope at first was a tool primarily intended to get the costs down...but it didn't work out that way."
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Post by politicidal1 on Apr 12, 2024 17:47:42 GMT
It rarely works out that way.
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Post by spiderwort on Apr 13, 2024 0:52:44 GMT
...because such a wide screen would allow audiences to see everything they need to see with just one efficient set up! This is one of the surprising and funny revelations in the book Hollywood: The Oral History. Director Robert Wise is telling how he was among those invited to see Zanuck's first demonstration of CinemaScope at Fox: "Zanuck's idea was that CinemaScope was going to be a great time and money saver for films, but also a great money maker...Zanuck had in mind to simply shoot everything right out in front. You had a 3-page scene with 5 actors, and you'd stage it. And your camera would be there, and that would be all, no coverage, no alternate angles, nothing. You'd just shoot the sequence and go on to the next one. He thought you could then make pictures in 10 or 12 days...CinemaScope at first was a tool primarily intended to get the costs down...but it didn't work out that way." It certainly didn't work out that way! One of the consequences was that too many films looked flat, like they were on a proscenium, and were therefore dull and not cinematic. In my opinion the first CinemaScope film that really looked like a film was East of Eden (1955), shot incredibly well by Ted McCord under the direction of Elia Kazan. But even after that wide screen films too often fell into the proscenium look. There were other exceptions, David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai, among others, but that proscenium look prevailed a lot throughout the 1950s. Interesting to hear Wise's comments about Zanuck's (theoretical) way of saving costs, however. Wise, of course, later became a master of wide screen productions, making beautifully cinematic films like West Side Story and The Sound of Music. Thanks for the post. Very interesting, indeed. |
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Post by Doghouse6 on Apr 13, 2024 23:42:18 GMT
Adding my thanks to spiderwort's, Isapop. That's a story I'd never heard before, and it explains a lot. I'd always assumed it had to do with veteran directors' unfamiliarity with the process but, now you mention it, 'scope productions from 20-Fox were especially prone in those early years to what you describe (my name for it is CinemaScope Stasis). Still, I'd wager that any number of actors might have preferred that approach to the standard, piecemeal, start-stop/new-setup mechanics that had become the norm by the early '50s. Must have given them more of a sense of continuity and momentum of performance to play entire scenes through uninterrupted, as though onstage. The ways in which film makers, either eagerly or unwillingly, adapted to new technologies - along with the ins and outs of the technologies themselves - are always fascinating topics. |
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Post by Isapop on Apr 14, 2024 13:59:16 GMT
Adding my thanks to spiderwort 's, Isapop . That's a story I'd never heard before, and it explains a lot. I'd always assumed it had to do with veteran directors' unfamiliarity with the process but, now you mention it, 'scope productions from 20-Fox were especially prone in those early years to what you describe (my name for it is CinemaScope Stasis). I've only seen 2 or 3 CS movies from that early ('53-'54) period. Maybe those early directors were attempting to follow Zanuck's workplan. Hmm, "CinemaScope Stasis" - I like that. |
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Post by SixOfTheRichest on Apr 17, 2024 12:06:26 GMT
I guess Zanuck didn't have much creative flair or vision for the language of cinema. He only ever directed 2 productions, one was in the late 20's and the was a co-director. He was a bean counter.
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Post by SixOfTheRichest on Apr 17, 2024 12:11:02 GMT
...because such a wide screen would allow audiences to see everything they need to see with just one efficient set up! This is one of the surprising and funny revelations in the book Hollywood: The Oral History. Director Robert Wise is telling how he was among those invited to see Zanuck's first demonstration of CinemaScope at Fox: "Zanuck's idea was that CinemaScope was going to be a great time and money saver for films, but also a great money maker...Zanuck had in mind to simply shoot everything right out in front. You had a 3-page scene with 5 actors, and you'd stage it. And your camera would be there, and that would be all, no coverage, no alternate angles, nothing. You'd just shoot the sequence and go on to the next one. He thought you could then make pictures in 10 or 12 days...CinemaScope at first was a tool primarily intended to get the costs down...but it didn't work out that way." It certainly didn't work out that way! One of the consequences was that too many films looked flat, like they were on a proscenium, and were therefore dull and not cinematic. In my opinion the first CinemaScope film that really looked like a film was East of Eden (1955), shot incredibly well by Ted McCord under the direction of Elia Kazan. But even after that wide screen films too often fell into the proscenium look. There were other exceptions, David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai, among others, but that proscenium look prevailed a lot throughout the 1950s. Interesting to hear Wise's comments about Zanuck's (theoretical) way of saving costs, however. Wise, of course, later became a master of wide screen productions, making beautifully cinematic films like West Side Story and The Sound of Music. Thanks for the post. Very interesting, indeed. Composition, angles and movement all add to the creative vision for cinematic effect. Thank god for directors like Kazan, Wise and Lean. I haven't seen either for some time, would you say that Eden has better utilization of Cinemascope than Rebel, directed by Nicholas Ray? |
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Post by spiderwort on Apr 17, 2024 18:51:51 GMT
It certainly didn't work out that way! One of the consequences was that too many films looked flat, like they were on a proscenium, and were therefore dull and not cinematic. In my opinion the first CinemaScope film that really looked like a film was East of Eden (1955), shot incredibly well by Ted McCord under the direction of Elia Kazan. But even after that wide screen films too often fell into the proscenium look. There were other exceptions, David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai, among others, but that proscenium look prevailed a lot throughout the 1950s. Interesting to hear Wise's comments about Zanuck's (theoretical) way of saving costs, however. Wise, of course, later became a master of wide screen productions, making beautifully cinematic films like West Side Story and The Sound of Music. Thanks for the post. Very interesting, indeed. Composition, angles and movement all add to the creative vision for cinematic effect. Thank god for directors like Kazan, Wise and Lean. I haven't seen either for some time, would you say that Eden has better utilization of Cinemascope than Rebel, directed by Nicholas Ray? Although I believe that Rebel was cinematic, I do think that East of Eden is far superior in its use of the wide screen format. Its high and low angles, canted angles, dramatic foreground objects, and powerful lighting that created interesting depths of field are among the best of any film from that era, and hold up even today. In my opinion, it's a truly remarkably cinematic CinemaScope film.
And I agree with you 100% on this: Composition, angles and movement all add to the creative vision for cinematic effect. Thank god for directors like Kazan, Wise and Lean.
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