Anyone else disturbed by jump cuts that go slightly backwards in time?

J

Jordan_S

Veteran
I happen to have watched two films recently that do this: 25th Hour and Wolf of Wall Street. Yeah, I'm a bit behind in my movie-watching.

For example: a hug. We see two men begin to hug from one view. Cut to another view where they're about to hug. We then see the hug again.

OK, I get it, the hug was significant. But is that really the best way to convey that?

I find this particular type of jump cut draws unnecessary attention to itself and it seems rather studied and a sign of self-consciousness. It detracted from my experience of both movies.

I suppose the argument could be made that Breathless, in first introducing jump cuts (ahead in time) was also jarring to its viewers. However, this type of jump that is now commonplace has a clear purpose, eg. passage of time, impatience, etc.

But perhaps I'm missing how backwards jump cuts work. Or maybe I just prefer concise storytelling...
 
I'm with you on it. It brings unnecessary attention to the camera, self-conscious, as you say. That "rewind" cut is pretty senseless to me. It reminds me of action films of the early 90s where they blew something up and, I guess, because they had 10 cameras at it they had to treat the audience to the same shot over and over from each of them. Thanks but no thanks.

Even in Terrance Mallick's "To the Wonder" where and he's really letting the camera explore in non-linear ways that are very beautiful, there are jump cuts that don't make sense for me. The couple explores a courtyard, cut to say 10 seconds ahead same FOV, nearly the same angle. I'd rather a cut away to something, close in on her back, then to that shot, which he does too.

I have no business criticizing Mallick but I think, more often then not, even by the greats that jump cuts distract more than enhance the cut.
 
I also prefer concise story telling as well as conveying actual scenes and not the "impression" of a scene. I don't like shaky cam, or jarring cut all over the place scenes like in Transformers. I love the fight scenes in Kick Ass which show every glorious detail of the action in a manner the audience can actually follow.
 
The Wolf of Wall Street had intentional continuity errors and awkward editing during the drug-influenced scenes.
 
Yeah I'm glad we've moved on from quadruple-cutting a car explosion to going circles around it in hyperslowmotion.
At least slow-mo has flow.
 
Jordan_S said:
I could be wrong but I recall it happening during other times as well.

This happened (00:19-00:20) a lot also:

Click to expand...

Scorsese has never been a stickler for continuity. He's been quoted as saying if he has a choice between a better performance, and continuity, he'll choose the better performance every time.
 
Batutta said:
Scorsese has never been a stickler for continuity. He's been quoted as saying if he has a choice between a better performance, and continuity, he'll choose the better performance every time.
Click to expand...

Very strange, because I love Scorsese. There are almost always options that can avoid a continuity error while cutting to one performance over another. It's very distracting, like a tap on the shoulder in the theater, and they're all over the place. This is in addition to the fore-mentioned rewind jump cuts.
 
Jordan_S said:
Very strange, because I love Scorsese. There are almost always options that can avoid a continuity error while cutting to one performance over another. It's very distracting, like a tap on the shoulder in the theater, and they're all over the place. This is in addition to the fore-mentioned rewind jump cuts.
Click to expand...

Not always true about continuity. Sometimes, you do have to choose one thing over the other. It works for him. He's a director known for getting great performances and perhaps this is one reason, because he protects them in the editing room. I think most viewers are unaware of it consciously, and it probably adds an uncomfortable energy to a scene if that's what you're going for.
 
Batutta said:
This guy is trying to re-invent the language of cinema without cuts. I can't entirely grasp exactly what he's trying to do but I found it fascinating, even if his success would put me out of a job.

http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/movies-tomorrow-will-play-mind-79245/
Click to expand...

Hard to say without seeing it put into practice. I do tend to cringe when I read things like "the film industry rests on a narrow selection of possibilities that got discovered early on and then got canonized by the force of inertia and entrenched by filmmaking technology and habit," when someone's trying to push a new way of doing something, especially from someone who doesn't actually work in the medium.
 
I was watching a movie via online service a few months ago. Had brand-name actors, but was pretty bad and I had to turn it off after a while. So two people come to a stop curbside in their SUV on a darkened street. The passenger gets out and walks several yards to meet his shadowy "contact" and they begin conversing face to face. After the two are talking for at least a few seconds, there is a cutaway of the driver watching the two through the windshield. However, the passenger is not yet talking to the contact - he is still a few feet away walking towards him! Obviously not intentional, just sloppy editing. It was so jarring to me that I had to rewind to make sure I saw what I thought I saw. Laughable moment.

Jeff
 
David Jimerson said:
Hard to say without seeing it put into practice. I do tend to cringe when I read things like "the film industry rests on a narrow selection of possibilities that got discovered early on and then got canonized by the force of inertia and entrenched by filmmaking technology and habit," when someone's trying to push a new way of doing something, especially from someone who doesn't actually work in the medium.
Click to expand...

Also, is there proof that editing distances the audience from a film? In Blink of An Eye Walter Murch came to the conclusion that editing works because human vision is dependent on it. When you shift your eyes from one point to another, you don't see a blur as your eyeballs move around. Your eyes flick rapidly from one stable image to the next and edits out the movement in between. Editing is not disorienting or strange for an audience because we do it all day.
 
Batutta said:
Also, is there proof that editing distances the audience from a film? In Blink of An Eye Walter Murch came to the conclusion that editing works because human vision is dependent on it. When you shift your eyes from one point to another, you don't see a blur as your eyeballs move around. Your eyes flick rapidly from one stable image to the next and edits out the movement in between. Editing is not disorienting or strange for an audience because we do it all day.
Click to expand...

Well, if you're bringing up Transformers to make your case, you might not be on totally solid ground.

I'm all for new brushes in the jar, and would like to see exactly how this works, but it IS bristling (no pun intended) when someone comes along and tries to say it's been done "wrong" all this time.
 
David Jimerson said:
Well, if you're bringing up Transformers to make your case, you might not be on totally solid ground.

I'm all for new brushes in the jar, and would like to see exactly how this works, but it IS bristling (no pun intended) when someone comes along and tries to say it's been done "wrong" all this time.
Click to expand...

I think his research will be more applicable to virtual entertainments, and whatever new storytelling forms emerge from that technology, not traditional narrative filmmaking projected on a screen.
 
The science may be there, but it doesn't always translate. Take the high frame rate 3-D stuff. On paper there's a good case for it, but in practice it didn't work well for the majority of viewers.
"In theory, practice and theory are the same, but in practice they are not."
 
Batutta said:
This guy is trying to re-invent the language of cinema without cuts. http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/movies-tomorrow-will-play-mind-79245/
Click to expand...
Fascinating article, I love all things neuroscience. It even sounds a bit like a Radiolab episode.

David Jimerson said:
Hard to say without seeing it put into practice. I do tend to cringe when I read things like "the film industry rests on a narrow selection of possibilities that got discovered early on and then got canonized by the force of inertia and entrenched by filmmaking technology and habit," when someone's trying to push a new way of doing something, especially from someone who doesn't actually work in the medium.
Click to expand...

But at least he's trying to imagine new ways. And he's suggesting new ways, not "pushing" them. New brushes in the jar? What about using a putty knife, or slinging and dripping the "paint/film"?
And why would he have to be in the film business to suggest? He's in the brain business- the ultimate audience demographic. :happy:

It's true that the canon of possibilities is incredibly narrow, when there's theoretically a near-infinite number of ways to tell a story.
Action, reaction, reverse, POV, WS/MS/CU, match cut on action, etc. for 100+ years? Still? No other ways???
It's always been up to the avant-garde to come up with radically different approaches, though they tend to be non-narrative.

"In principle, filmmakers could manipulate individual elements onscreen to bring them in and out of the viewer’s conscious perception, with no need for cuts. “Parts of an image that are continuously present on the screen can be suppressed from the perceiver’s mind and then brought out at will, just like a magician’s rabbit pulled out of the hat,” Gepshtein anticipates. “In effect, one scene may emerge in the middle of the other without cuts, and without the artificial tools of image morphing or dissolves.”
Click to expand...

I'd love to see something radically different like this. Makes me think of a foreign (Spain?) film I saw 15 or so years ago- theatrical like a play in ways. Scrims in the fore, mid and background with "sets" painted on them, and lights faded between the scrims and characters in each plane. A novel approach for film.

And the neuroscientist's observations on eyes and vision is nothing new. Don't forget there was some resistance early on to the Steadicam, claims that editing was a more genuine way of storytelling and revealing new elements (canonized by Eisenstein's theory of montage. And the power of Batutta too, of course :)).

A "natural" (as in most human-like) way of filmmaking would use a 50mm lens, rapid swish pans (minus the blur) left and right, tilts up and down, variations in depth of field and plane of focus, and moving the camera through space (stable or rough- hiking on a mountain trail is no smooth experience for your eyes).

But as for the original post... just milking moments in the hope of making them even more powerful than they already are (not).
 
GroveChuck, I didn't actually say much of what you apparently think I did.

And I think the article makes clear he sees himself as doing more than just suggesting.
 
David Jimerson said:
Hard to say without seeing it put into practice. I do tend to cringe when I read things like "the film industry rests on a narrow selection of possibilities that got discovered early on and then got canonized by the force of inertia and entrenched by filmmaking technology and habit," when someone's trying to push a new way of doing something, especially from someone who doesn't actually work in the medium.
Click to expand...

I guess an analogue to inventing a new language for cinema would be Esperanto or Klingon. Sure, there's many people who have learnt them but do we need a new made up language or just new things to say with the existing one? The purpose of language is to express ideas. The language need only change or evolve when it encounters an idea it can't translate; or to enable a shorthand, bonding and identification of an 'insider' within a group (slang/jargon/genre). It is not to say there is no value in experimentation or that you can't play with it but when something new is created as pure experiment or for pure unmotivated stylism then only the film geek will be at all interested in the same way only a star trek geek will embrace klingon. Esperanto was at least created with a purpose, to create an easy to learn 'trade' language to provide easier international communication but ultimately failed in its goal since it was still only taken up by language geeks.
 
The article was not very satisfying. To say that there is science to guide someone's visual attention but nobody is doing this yet, without explaining what it is or how it would work, only that when folks get on to this it's going to be great is just less than useful.

Cinematographers with directors guide visual attention all the time through the use of line and composition and color and contrast and perspective and focus. It's happening now! Or maybe I don't get it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top