Monday, February 25, 2008

Great Animation and Bad Shot Flow in Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Kevin writes:

I remember seeing Who Framed Roger Rabbit and being excited by the Daffy/Donald piano duel ... I was excited because it featured the early, lunatic version of Daffy (before he became an annoying jerk) blowing poor Donald off the screen (well, at least figuratively, since Donald is the one who uses the cannon) ...

... I loved the sequence, but I recall have the thought at the time, “I wish I could see that again in slow motion, because I missed most of it.” Frankly, that is not a thought anyone in the audience should be having about the action on the screen. I felt like I was just catching glimpses of wonderful animation, despite having a good seat in the theater and trying hard to soak it all in. I still had to strain to follow the action when I watched it later on videotape, despite seeing it on a much smaller screen compared to a theater, and despite being able to replay it repeatedly.

In retrospect, it’s easy to see why this sequence was so frustrating. Just about every rule of good camera work, shot composition, staging, and hooking up shots was violated repeatedly. The result is that the sequence simply doesn’t read. I have to guess that not enough care was taken in setting up and shooting the live-action plates, and once that was done the animators were stuck and had to animate their scenes without regard for how each shot would work as part of the whole. ...

Read the whole post via the link at the top.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good lord, you're being kind. It's not this sequence, it's practically the entire film! If only it had a story or interesting characters, I might not have minded the lazy film making so much.

Site Meter