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To put my money where my mouth is...
For my Fast and the Furious friends... I recently had someone ask me for my password for my vid site so she could see Stripped, and she wrote back about the vid (yay, feedback!), and mentioned my favorite sequence in the vid: the part where Vince has the shotgun on Brian, and Dom steps out of the shadows in that v-neck t-shirt. I wrote back to her with this:
I'd been watching a lot of my old Miami Vice tapes for research purposes (no, really!) and it was such a shock to discover that Rob Cohen directed two of the arguably best episodes of the first season, and one of the best of the second season: Evan and Made for Each Other in first, Definitely Miami in second (the one with Ted Nugent). You can see a lot of the nascent visual stylist he became -- whatever else you can say about Cohen, the man knows how to make the most of his visuals. He's clearly got a DP's eye, and I think that despite my overall feelings about F&F, the thing I responded to even before I felt this way about it as a fandom was: knocked out by its exceptional visuals and stunning set/blocking styles. In watching Evan, especially, there is a scene where Sonny Crockett is confessing his sin and connection to the title character, played by William Russ, and letting out all the built-up pain from years of keeping it inside, when he tells his partner Rico about it all. It's set outside at night, at an abandoned neon-lit gas station, but the blocking, shot styles, focal lengths, and dialogue are all there to match both the garage confessional in F&F and that scene where Dom confronts Brian.
I really admire what Cohen did with what's essentially a moronic movie. Using subtle cues such as the lighting and the staging, he clues us in to his characters and their roles, their status, within the film, even as it's shifting in places. What do you think?
That scene, in the darkness, is my favorite in the
whole movie (which is saying a lot, because I love nearly everything
in it, no matter how stupid). I felt like it defined Dom's character
-- stepping from the dark into the light, because of ... Brian.
Mysterious and cool, but potentially volatile... I just adore that
scene. The director did three of my favorite Miami Vice episodes when
he first started out, and I could see in those scenes the things he
picked up from Michael Mann, about how things like shading and shadows
and color and light can define a character without the audience
necessarily even seeing it. In some respects I almost built the vid
around that scene, and the one in the garage where Dom confesses his
sins.
I'd been watching a lot of my old Miami Vice tapes for research purposes (no, really!) and it was such a shock to discover that Rob Cohen directed two of the arguably best episodes of the first season, and one of the best of the second season: Evan and Made for Each Other in first, Definitely Miami in second (the one with Ted Nugent). You can see a lot of the nascent visual stylist he became -- whatever else you can say about Cohen, the man knows how to make the most of his visuals. He's clearly got a DP's eye, and I think that despite my overall feelings about F&F, the thing I responded to even before I felt this way about it as a fandom was: knocked out by its exceptional visuals and stunning set/blocking styles. In watching Evan, especially, there is a scene where Sonny Crockett is confessing his sin and connection to the title character, played by William Russ, and letting out all the built-up pain from years of keeping it inside, when he tells his partner Rico about it all. It's set outside at night, at an abandoned neon-lit gas station, but the blocking, shot styles, focal lengths, and dialogue are all there to match both the garage confessional in F&F and that scene where Dom confronts Brian.
I really admire what Cohen did with what's essentially a moronic movie. Using subtle cues such as the lighting and the staging, he clues us in to his characters and their roles, their status, within the film, even as it's shifting in places. What do you think?