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Ever since they could fit cameras on wheels,
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film makers have been moving them around in every kind of way you could think up,
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and even some you probably couldn't.
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But more than just visual spice, a good camera move can move the story, too.
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So to take a closer look,
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these are five brilliant little moments in camera movement.
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(Music)
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In one way or another, we're all reading films.
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We extract information and ideas and clues about the plot, the characters,
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the people, to construct a mental representation of the story in our heads.
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And sometimes that's just about as simple and straightforward as reading actual
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words on screen, or listening to the words coming out of a character's mouth.
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A little more complex, but nothing a basic primate can't handle, we watch action and
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figure out what it is.
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Beyond that, we make inferences as to things that are hinted at,
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guess at character motivation, put two and two together to figure out the killer.
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And we've talked before about how edits can say things themselves,
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how there can be information embedded in a cut, but the camera has a voice, too.
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Most of the time, that voice is quiet, a whisper we've learned to ignore.
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It says, look at this and this, this is important over here, so we look and
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we read the this, and we ignore the look at and go on about our day.
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If you only ever move the camera for a motivated reason, as commercial cinema
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usually does, for a reason that comes from the story, the characters, the plot,
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it will disappear behind its motivations, its artifice will become invisible.
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Maybe it's a physical reason, a character walks, so you need to follow them.
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Or maybe it's a narrative reason,
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you turn the camera to reveal some extra information that we need to know.
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But, you don't just move the camera of its own accord, until you do.
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Sometimes, a film maker moves the camera in a completely unexpected, unmotivated,
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unexplained way.
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It's not following a character, it's not just showing you something important.
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It's almost as if the important thing is the movement itself,
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as if there's information embedded in the move.
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The camera separates itself from the story and the character and
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speaks up loud enough that we begin to hear it on its own, as its own voice,
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with things to say about the story that might not be coming from anywhere else.
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And it can be really, really powerful.
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Our first unmotivated camera movement, and
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probably our most familiar is the slow push-in, this move happens all the time.
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We even talked at some length about it back in our original
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Brilliant Moments Breakdown, but
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the slow push in is a perfect first example of the camera's voice being heard.
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It's not reframing, just creeping slightly closer, it doesn't just say look, it says
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look harder, there's something below the surface, there's more then meets the eye.
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It knows how we would read a shot statically and
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then asks us to consider it with just a little more importance.
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And for a brilliant example, check out this twofer from the beginning of
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The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
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(Music)
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- About the wife confederacies, Jefferson Davis, yeah.
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I didn't know you didn't, he did his duty by her.
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- Okay.
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- Well, I got him freaking killed.
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- (Laugh) - No, I get it, I get it, I get it.
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- The President of the Confederacy concenrned his wife's needs and
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satisfied them.
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- At this point in the film we've seen nothing more than a brief biography of
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Jesse James.
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We don't even done who Casey Affleck's character is, and yet, without even
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a word, we know everything about what's happening here because of how it's shot.
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Here, try it one more time with the push-in removed.
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- He did his duty by her.
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- Well I got him freaking killed.
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- (Laugh) - No, I get it, I get it, I get it.
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- Less meaningful, right?
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This push end says something important is stewing inside this man's head.
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While this one says, narrow your focus, this is more than a group of men,
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look closer at the one in the middle.
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But put them together and they become more than the sum of their parts,
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the dual push-ins connect the meaning just as they're connected in motion.
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And what comes out of that alchemy is a sense that there's a special moment
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happening between the man with the gaze and the object of his gaze.
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Some kind of special longing, or interest,
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or desire that Casey Affleck feels towards the man in the middle of this frame,
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all without a word of exposition, just simple camera talk.
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Less common than the creep in is the creep out.
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On one hand, graphically, it tends to cause a figure to grow smaller compared to
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the world around them as if it is swallowing them up inside it's vastness.
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And if we were to anthropomorphize the camera a little bit here,
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it's also like it's abandoning the character and us with it,
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we back away as if protecting ourselves from their pain or giving up hope.
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Most recently, we were totally stunned by a moment in 20th Century Women that
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employed this to incredible effect.
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Now, this film is still very much in theaters, as of our recordings, so
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we can't exactly play the entire scene here, but, if we all put our imagination
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caps on and turn to the script, I bet we can conjure up an image of it.
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Jamie, frustrated with life struggling to be a teenager and starting to butt heads
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with his mother, goes to their boarder Abbie in a moment of (Bleep) it all,
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and asks her to take him to a punk club.
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And the next scene is simple, short, just one shot.
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Dressed up now, they hurry out passing his mother, Dorothea,
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on the stairway as she works in the hall, she asked them where they're going, and
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he just says out with Abbie, and then leaves.
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But what's simple on the surface is given immense depth by the camera.
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As Dorothea stops them, asks after her son,
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the camera pushes in with the very same creep from our last example.
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But, when Jamie blows her off, just says, out with Abbie, it turns around.
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Creeps back out instead as Dorothea is rebuffed,
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it inches away, abandoning her just like Jamie does.
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It turns what might be, even now, everyday scene on the surface,
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into a micro drama of significant depth.
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A mother desperately trying to connect with her growing son, the son neither
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recognizing, nor much caring, off on his own way with hardly a look.
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It is a missed connection, an unrequited request for intimacy.
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And it's the camera that clues us into the emotional weight of it,
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lingering just a little too long on Dorothea, alone in the stairwell,
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backing away quietly in her longing and defeat.
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Okay, back to some actual footage.
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For our number three,
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we're looking at a brilliant little moment when the camera actually turns away.
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When it averts its eyes, specifically chooses to spare us from seeing something
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we're led to believe is coming.
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And we know what you're thinking.
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Reservoir Dogs, either because you remember the ear scene, or because we're
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straight up showing you footage from it right now, because we're trying to make up
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for the whole number two where you had to look at actual words, God forbid.
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And that shot is incredible, really, truly genius.
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But for our number three, we're looking at the moment it takes its inspiration from,
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from a little Hitchcock film called Marnie.
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By this point in the film, Marnie has been blackmailed by a man named Mark Rutland
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into marrying him after she was caught stealing from his company.
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On their honeymoon cruise, she declares her discomfort with men and
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refusal to be touched by them.
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Mark is chill about this for like all of a couple days before deciding he's had
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enough and forcing himself upon her, then we get this
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(Music)
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Doesn't that just hit you like a sledgehammer?
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The film sets us up for horror with incredibly confrontational and
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direct shots.
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It is fear, and anger, and violence pointed right at us,
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it is about to happen to us, we know it's coming, and then we turn.
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The camera move is resigned, it's like it leaves no hope for
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escape, it closes the door on an alternate ending, completely out of our control.
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It is a afraid, deciding for
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us that the trauma is too much to view turning us away as if in a flinch.
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And it is coping, looking out the window at something peaceful and
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distracting, waiting for the horror to pass, just as Marnie might in that moment.
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Sure, the camera move spares us the graphic violence, but
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it is all the more emotionally brutal for
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its movement here, imagine if Hitchcock had just cut and eclipsed the act.
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No turn, just a simple jump to the next scene.
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(Music)
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We would be left wanting, waiting, expecting but not resigning, fearing,
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or coping.
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So much of the conversation would be lost by cutting out this simple pan,
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because that much of the conversation was happening within it.
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Next up at number four, we have a moment of the distracted camera.
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The kino eye that loses focus on the main plot, the main character,
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the main action, and decides to wonder away.
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The view point that has a mind of its own.
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There's no reason for it in a motivational sense.
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No characters look or movement or reveal.
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It's as if it's lost interest in the story for
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a moment to explore another part of the world.
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Children of Men is an awesome modern example of this that's
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smartly analyzed in video essays elsewhere.
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But for our fourth brilliant moment, we're looking at the master of the wandering
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camera, Antonioni for a moment in The Passenger.
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- (Sound) All right,
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I don't care.
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- This moment is so particularly special, because it's as if the camera is speaking
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how it normally does, whispering to us, look at this.
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But then it points at what to look at, and there's hardly anything there.
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And in the absence of an object, we suddenly notice the looking mechanism.
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There's a vacuum within which the turn can be felt,
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it breaches our normal expectations.
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Acts us to interpret it on its own merits, and personally, we find it terribly
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moving, lonely, empty, detached, similar to the creep out but not quite the same.
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The camera is saying, this man's plight isn't important.
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Perhaps it is an answer to his yells, and the answer is nothing.
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Or perhaps the camera has the same motivation as it does
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just a minute prior when, as he's spinning his wheels,
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it gets distracted by the beauty of the sand carried on the wind.
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It's sad, poetic even, but also whimsical and curious.
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Antonioni spoke of the film in an interview stating that he, quote,
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no longer wanted to employ the subjective camera.
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In other words, the camera that represents the viewpoint of the character.
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Indeed, searching, wandering, drifting, exploring like
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this the camera becomes its own character and speaks with its own voice.
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And finally, at number five, we're looking at the camera yelling.
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Loud, noisy, noticeable, saying (Bleep), something just happened.
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It could be from a fast dolly rushing in, or a quick unexpected Dutch tilt, but
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for our number five,
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we're actually looking at a brilliant little short film called The Candidate.
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Burton, a Patrick Bateman type with a whole bag of chips on his shoulder,
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is approached by a mysterious man from an even more mysterious society
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with a compelling pitch.
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The organization works to rid the world of their mutual
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enemies by collectively wishing their demise upon them.
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The secret is that their enemies have to know that there
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are thousands of strangers out there wishing them ill and
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in at least some small way kind of believe it might work.
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Skeptical at first but increasingly interested we get this.
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- They promised him that regularly every day they would be wishing for his death.
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Until he could no longer stop the mystic
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juggernaut that would make the wish come true.
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- Okay, that's a little bit silly.
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- The man died of a heart attack two months later.
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- Whoa, wasn't that wild?
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Didn't you just feel that?
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Don't you just know that something big happened there?
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In Crossing the Line, the whole scene changes visually.
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Their closeups flip from screen right and screen left, to screen left and
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screen right.
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And since everything has changed visually,
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naturally we must conclude that everything has changed elsewhere to.
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And the trick is that if you take the camera out of it,
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that particular event would seem rather minor.
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But the camera move suddenly sliding all the way across the line of action is like
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a big neon sign pointing at that little moment saying, look here dummies,
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there's something important happening here.
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And that sign, that camera move, that's the narrator, the director piping up and
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giving you a big clue.
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We don't wanna give it all away.
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You'll have to watch the whole short to really see the brilliance of it.
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But give it a watch and listen to what the camera is telling you because sometimes it
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says the things that the characters aren't.
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So, what do you think?
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Have any thoughts on our picks?
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Any other brilliant camera movements worth taking a look at?
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Let us know in the comments below and be sure to subscribe for
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more Cinefix Movie Lists.
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(Music)