For a lesson in the art of directing from American master Steven Spielberg, here is an educational exercise courtesy of another American master, Steven Soderbergh. On his site Extension 765, Soderbergh has taken the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark and posted a version of it in which he has removed the color and replaced the entire soundtrack with a contemporary — and very Soderberghian — score, in order to study the staging, pace, and other visual elements of Spielberg’s direction. And, yes, Raiders looks superb in black and white, thanks to its cinematographer Douglas Slocombe (still alive at 103 years old!), who also shot such classics as Rollerball, The Lion in Winter, The Lavender Hill Mob, The Man in the White Suit, and one of my all-time favorites, The Fearless Vampire Killers. If you ever wondered what Raiders of the Lost Ark would look like as a silent film, this is it! And if you are looking to see how others have learned lessons from the directing (and cinematography and editing) skills of Mr. Steven Soderbergh, look no further than that little TV show Breaking Bad. For my money, Vince Gilligan and his colleagues must have spent a fair amount of time watching various examples of Soderbergh’s work to find inspiration for Breaking Bad from the tone, pace, atmosphere, and other elements of style in a number of his best movies.
Posts Tagged ‘Vince Gilligan’
Soderbergh Raids the Ark
Posted in Chapter 1, tagged Breaking Bad, Douglas Slocombe, Extension 765, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Steven Soderbergh, Steven Spielberg, The Fearless Vampire Killers, Vince Gilligan, Visual Literacy on April 17, 2015| 1 Comment »
The Truth is Somewhere Somehow
Posted in Chapter 7, tagged Breaking Bad, Chris Carter, Darin Morgan, David Duchovny, Emma Peel, Film Foundation, Gillian Anderson, Google Doodle Roswell, John Steed, Tara King The Avengers, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Story of Movies, Vince Gilligan, X-Files on July 31, 2013| 1 Comment »
Truth in Fiction, Part 2: A short while back, Google celebrated the major media event of the alleged Roswell UFO sightings with one of their undoubtedly best Doodles: here it is. It’s a movie, it’s a game, it’s also quite subtly mesmerizing.
Contemplating the beyond, whether through sci-fi or speculative fiction or fantastical worlds, remains one of the most widespread areas of mainstream storytelling, but it continues to be one of the sparsest domains of exploration for reading in schools. Or media literacy. A few years ago, a superb series of media literacy materials for middle schools called The Story of Movies was created through a partnership between the Film Foundation, TCM, and IBM. Of the three films for which they created useful study guides, one was for the science fiction classic The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Meanwhile, one of the great Roswell-related events in American popular culture is presently celebrating a twenty-year anniversary: The X-Files. The appearance at this year’s San Diego Comic Con of some of its principal figures, including creator Chris Carter, writer Vince Gilligan (of Breaking Bad), and actors David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, provided an interesting forum for discussion of how a groundbreaking program can lead to new avenues of storytelling and media creation, and how shifts in cultural viewpoints can reflect the historical view of a movie or show. Of particular note are the degree to which the alchemy of a leading duo was invigorated through The X-Files (in the tradition of the John Steed – Emma Peel Avengers, or Tara King too!), the questioning of authority embedded in the series evaporated within the following decade (particularly in the wake of 9/11; and which now returns with a vengeance), and, perhaps most importantly, the development of an intricately woven backstory and arcing universe of mythology now commonly feeds narratives of episodic series. For use with Chapter 7 of Moving Images, a superb piece for screenwriting study is the award-winning episode Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose, written by Chris Carter and Darin Morgan.
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