{"id":7057,"date":"2015-04-16T12:02:22","date_gmt":"2015-04-16T19:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/?p=7057"},"modified":"2015-04-16T12:02:22","modified_gmt":"2015-04-16T19:02:22","slug":"a-sense-of-scale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/16\/a-sense-of-scale\/","title":{"rendered":"a sense of scale"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oh no, you fuckers do not get to make me care about Star Wars<\/i> again<\/a>. You have no<\/em> right.<\/p>\n

But I am going to say a thing nonetheless, about storytelling with cinematography.<\/p>\n

J.J. Abrams was always<\/em> the wrong choice for Star Trek<\/i>. Always<\/em>. He never got it, and really, said so, in that infamous Daily Show<\/i> clip everyone’s seen, and that failure to get it reverberated throughout his choices.<\/p>\n

But I hoped, just hoped, that he might be a good choice for Star Wars<\/b>. And that opening trailer shot says a lot<\/em> about him getting it<\/em>. At least some of it.<\/p>\n

See, the first, opening shot in the original Star Wars<\/i>? The Star Destroyer sequence? That’s about scale<\/em>. It’s about setting a very, very large scope, without ever saying HAY LOOK HOW HUGE THIS IS. It’s about dropping you in there and just letting it happen… in a way you don’t expect. There’s that little misdirection with the kind of a little ship that was in SF films before Star Wars<\/i>… and then things change<\/em>, and you know the scales have moved.<\/p>\n

And that’s exactly<\/eM> what this trailer does. Right out the gate. A little landspeeder going across a desert; a little ship, crashed, like you’ve seen before…<\/p>\n

…and then things change<\/em>, and the scales are moved. It does so more successfully than either of the prequel films I saw managed at any point<\/em>. The prequels mostly just looked busy and overly-concerned with minutia and, as a result, kind of… small.<\/p>\n

There is more sense of largeness<\/em> in this one shot<\/em> opening the trailer than both<\/em> of the prequel films I saw managed to achieve, combined.<\/p>\n

And unlike<\/em> with Star Trek<\/i>‘s early promotional shots, this isn’t about just duplicating previous material effectively. Those looked good too – but they were duplications, re-creations. The same shots, staged with new actors.<\/p>\n

This isn’t that. This isn’t just repeating but bigger. This is showing how to parallel<\/eM>, without duplicating<\/em>.<\/p>\n

You can’t take very much from a teaser-trailer. People have noted that Phantom Menace<\/i>‘s teaser trailers looked pretty good too. But for J.J. Abrams to get this<\/em> right, so very<\/em> effectively… maybe there’s hope it won’t be the only thing he gets right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oh no, you fuckers do not get to make me care about Star Wars again. You have no right. But I am going to say a thing nonetheless, about storytelling with cinematography. J.J. Abrams was always the wrong choice for Star Trek. Always. He never got it, and really, said so, in that infamous Daily [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-peoples-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}