What's new
By:

What's The Last Movie You’ve Seen?

The Only Son (1936) Probably my favorite old Japanese movie. I actually prefer this over Ozu's more noted masterpiece "Tokyo Story"
 
U will literally never see an american made film which uses the camera like The Only Son. The Camera pretty much never moves.. Plus just the eye level of the standard camera is set in a way that its like from a seated postion and your looking up at the people standing..
 
In american cinematography these low angle shots are used more to show mystery or horror..
Reservoir-Dogs-1992-e1502881330999.png
 
Wes Mantooth said:
I think power and fear much more accurate.
Click to expand...

I mean, do you know what the Hitchcock term McGuffin is? they often use those type of low angle shots to build to the mystery of the object, like when Vincent Vega is inspecting the contents of the briefcase...
maxresdefault.jpg

^literally the first image on google when u search McGuffin...

Also in Psycho look how Hitchcock uses the low angle shots on and inside the house behind the hotel.. there's a mystery/suspense building element..

Image21.jpg

Here is Kubrick using a low angle shot not to demonstrate power or fear, but more as a suspense building element, to demonstrate how vulnerable young danny is.

The real reason you do it is to basically eliminate depth, makes it seem like you have more of a 2 dimensional space and this draws more attention to the lines the weights and the tones.


In the old Japanese masters movies, they used those angles to sort of simulate eye level if you were kneeling in their house as you would traditionally (and because of what I wrote in the sentence directly above)
 
One of my favorite low angle vs. high angle uses is in White Men Can't Jump. The initial shooting contest hustle scene 8 of the first 9 shots are made and shot at a low angle to show confidence and what looks to be a close and easy shot.

upload_2020-5-1_1-6-19.png

But the last shot is done at a high angle to show weakness in confidence and to shot how far away the shot seems to now be once the hustle has been done.
upload_2020-5-1_1-7-52.png




Great use of cinematography in that scene.
 
Darkwing Duck said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-angle_shot
Click to expand...
Bro thAT wikipedia explanation is literally 10x ******** than the one I gave above discussing lines, weights and tones... People not discussing composition is like a big red-flag that its consumers speaking and not producers..

Have you ever seen Tokyo Story(1953)? It's considered by many critics to be the greatest film ever made, It's top10 on all the big lists..

Consistently the low angle shots are not what you guys are describing...

Plus like what about Low Angle shots with no people in them? then your guys explanation does n't even apply, right? Its not a thorough explanation after-all...

late-spring-1949-003-forest-hill.jpg


this is some shot to establish dominance?, to make the tree over the mountain look more imposing? thats obviously not the purpose of this shot, this is flashed after the father and daughter have a big fight and illustrates the fragility and defiance of the daughter...



In garbage *** movies, like lets say the Jason Bourne action movies, where the camera is constantly jittering and moving and the average length of the scene is 2 seconds... yes the low-angle shots are gonna be used to do exactly what y'all are trying to pigeon-hole here... But thats just one application (and a *****yone at that)..


Those bourne movies where the scene lenght is 2.5 seconds and then 2 seconds is a perfect counterpoint to what im talking about with Yasujirō Ozu's films... In a movie like that where they are butchering the whole thing down to try and get it to a managable 120 minutes for their no-attention-span-having audience.

In actual films, ones made for storytelling purposes and not mass consumption, you'll see more creative uses, like Ozu, who's average length of scene has gotta be closer to 10 seconds.. In lots of films thse angles are used as 'establishing shots' in Ozu's films thats not really how it is, there's something more poetic and patterened about it..combined with the lack of camera movement, there's clearly a pacing element involved..


Watch a Tokyo Story... These Low angle shots are used poetically in a chain of scenes to grasp their effect... Listen to the conversation before this shot is flashed... You'll see clearly in that moment that these angles arent just used for what you're saying they are...

tokyo-story-1953-003-view-over-stone-japanese-form.jpg


just cause your accustomed to something doesnt mean thats how it is... hollywood certainly is out to force feed the masses ****** example after ****** example so its easy to see how this sorta mistake is widespread.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page
Back
Top