{"id":4163,"date":"2008-01-08T14:02:30","date_gmt":"2008-01-08T22:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2008\/01\/08\/good-action-is-geography\/"},"modified":"2019-12-23T09:14:37","modified_gmt":"2019-12-23T17:14:37","slug":"good-action-is-geography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2008\/01\/08\/good-action-is-geography\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Action is Geography"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:5656,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.vanityfair.com\\\/culture\\\/features\\\/2008\\\/02\\\/indianajones200802?currentPage=1&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>Vanity Fair has a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/culture\/features\/2008\/02\/indianajones200802?currentPage=1\" title=\"Vanity Fair: Keys to the Kingdom\">huge article looking at the new Indiana Jones movie<\/a>, and midway through, there are some quotes from Spielberg that sent two thoughts running through my brain. The first was that what he was saying was making me more excited about this latest sequel than I already was. The second was how desperately I wished more directors would think like Spielberg does here (don&#8217;t worry, there aren&#8217;t any movie spoilers):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  Rather than update the franchise to match current styles, Lucas and Spielberg decided to stay true to the prior films\u2019 look, tone, and pace. During pre-production, Spielberg watched the first three Indiana Jones movies at an Amblin screening room with Janusz Kaminski, who has shot the director\u2019s last 10 films. He replaces Douglas Slocombe, who shot the first three Indy movies (and is now retired at age 94), as the man mainly responsible for the film\u2019s look. \u201cI needed to show them to Janusz,\u201d Spielberg says, \u201cbecause I didn\u2019t want Janusz to modernize and bring us into the 21st century. I still wanted the film to have a lighting style not dissimilar to the work Doug Slocombe had achieved, which meant that both Janusz and I had to swallow our pride. Janusz had to approximate another cinematographer\u2019s look, and I had to approximate this younger director\u2019s look that I thought I had moved away from after almost two decades.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That much already had me nodding and thinking good things, and then he went on&#8230;.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  Spielberg promises no tricky editing for the new one, saying, \u201cI go for geography. I want the audience to know not only which side the good guy\u2019s on and the bad guy\u2019s on, but which side of the screen they\u2019re in, and I want the audience to be able to edit as quickly as they want in a shot that I am loath to cut away from. And that\u2019s been my style with all four of these Indiana Jones pictures. Quick-cutting is very effective in some movies, like the Bourne pictures, but you sacrifice geography when you go for quick-cutting. Which is fine, because audiences get a huge adrenaline rush from a cut every second and a half on The Bourne Ultimatum, and there\u2019s just enough geography for the audience never to be lost, especially in the last Bourne film, which I thought was the best of the three. But, by the same token, Indy is a little more old-fashioned than the modern-day action adventure.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>  The script, Spielberg says, can provide the blockbuster pace. \u201cPart of the speed is the story,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you build a fast engine, you don\u2019t need fast cutting, because the story\u2019s being told fluidly, and the pages are just turning very quickly. You first of all need a script that\u2019s written in the express lane, and if it\u2019s not, there\u2019s nothing you can do in the editing room to make it move faster. You need room for character, you need room for relationships, for personal conflict, you need room for comedy, but that all has to happen on a moving sidewalk.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Not just yes, but <em>hell yes<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>I was skeptical when I first started hearing about Indy 4, but the more little bits leak out (though I am endeavoring to stay spoiler free), the more I&#8217;m looking forward to seeing this one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you build a fast engine, you don\u2019t need fast cutting, because the story\u2019s being told fluidly, and the pages are just turning very quickly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2037],"tags":[23,3394],"class_list":["post-4163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tv-and-films","tag-film","tag-indiana-jones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}