So this week we're looking at editing, and how a film editor manipulates time within a film. We just finished watching Run Lola, Run, which pretty much uses every editing trick in the book in an attempt to get us on the edge of our seats while Lola runs her guts out to save Manni - slow motion, graphic matches, flashbacks, dissolves, jump cuts...you name it. Below you will find three film clips. They are all chase scenes, but each is from a different era. The first is from Buster Keaton's 1926 silent film The General. (Watch it on mute. Someone has dubbed Ozzie Osbourne over it.) The second is from the 1971 film The French Connection. And the third clip is from 2005's The Island directed my Michael Bay. Your task is the following: watch each clip, paying particular attention to the editors' use of editing techniques. (Have your study guide out for reference as you go.) Next participate in an online discussion over the next few days. Throughout the discussion, we will be answering the following questions:
How are the scenes different with regards to editing techniques and pacing?
How has chase scene editing changed over the decades?
Which scene is best edited?
What scenes use what techniques and for what effects?
Bonus Clips - Below you will find two additional clips. Both are from Gone in 60 Seconds. The first is from the original 1974 version; the second is from the 2000 remake. These can be a part of the discussion too, if you like.
After viewing the General chase scene, I'd have to say it is a bit boring because it has no dialogue but, what I noticed that distinguished it from the other chase scenes was the fact that train's were used instead of cars, which made it comedic in my opinion.
The General Chase scene was kind of boring. It had a lot of master shots and medium shots but it rarely ever had any eye level shots or close up shots.
Yeah, the General Chase was super boring. The pacing was sooo slow. I feel like they were pushing more for the acting and the comedic aspect, more so than the chase itself. I think more close up shots would have been beneficial in the scene as well.
You haven't seen the whole movie. For a silent movie, it is surprisingly exciting. No, not on the level of something more modern, but still...That remains maybe the first great ambitious action movie of all time.
for the general chase I thought it was quite amusing to see the people try to catch the runaways and they would always fail. It was really funny how the chasers were being completely outsmarted by the runaways and they could not catdch them.
The French Connection was hugely more entertaining than The general because it is far more advanced. The scene now includes a car and a train and is in an urban enviorment which adds a sense of realism. The editing also was done better switching from car to train.
Firstly, the chase scene in The General, while impressive and big-budget for its time, has consistent uses of pans and still shots. It is simply shown, with the camera just showing the action. As we move on to the French Connection, the camera seems much more involved in the action, as it seems to zoom with the car as it's driving. Also, there are more over-the-shoulder shots and quicker editing, to give you that frenetic fast-paced feel. I think that scene is the best-edited of the three. Finally, The Island has heavy use of special effects, and is really quickly cut, and the camera seems to fly through space with the characters. Here the camera seems most involved in the action.
for the French Connection I thought it was alot more intense and I liked that. I also like how determined the escapees to get away from their chasers very well done.
It seems like The French Connection and The Island use more close-up shots of the drivers or the road, but The General has wider shots that are farther back to take in more of the action. The main difference between the 2 older ones and The Island is that they used no special effects, with real cars and trains, while The Island probably had the actors in a studio with not much actually being shot on streets. The editing seems to get more frantic as time goes by, with those 3 movies as well as the 2 versions of Gone in 60 Seconds
The island was very different than the first two films. Over almost 100 years, the chase scene in films has definetly changed. The use of computer generated images and the much more violent, intense nature of the island would definetly make it my favorite chase scene of all three. After examining all the angle shots of the 3 clips, I think movies like the island use more interesting shots such as aerial shots while The general uses more still shots and looks a bit sped up
Gone in 60 seconds really amused me because of its fast paced action. You never knew what would happen next. It kind of reminded me of Grand Theft Auto and how crazily a person can drive. It was intense and it was a lot better than the train scene because of how much it brought you into the scene.
I agree that it was more intense but I think that it was too frantic. Throughout the whole scene you saw the guy doing the same thing over and over again and nothing was different about it so you could infer that we has going to hit another thing.
for the chase scene in The Island. I thought it was the best one. It was really cool how in the chase scene they were escaping with a jet type of figure. I also loved how much more realistic it was compared to the others.
The General Chase was an okay video. I found it to be very boring at times becase the same thing kept happening over and over again. Also they didn't change shots very much. There weren't any close up or any shots that showed you more of a personial veiw of what was happening. It was very basic and not really exciting like a typical chase scene.
After having seen the 2000 remake so many times before, I watched the original Gone in 60 Seconds and I'm not going to lie, I wasn't that into the original chase scene as I had been for the remake of it. The pacing of the remake seemed so much faster and the music had a huge part in that. I think that with only seeing the remake and never knowing that it was a remake, I expected so much more from the original than was given. I guess I expected it to be a phenomenal scene because they made a remake of it and the remake was good. But the chase scene was still good. The scenes have just changed so much because we've grown to expect something so high tech and something that is so dramatic that when I saw the original one, I didn't really like it as much as I thought I would.
i'm the exact opposite, i think the new chases scene was atrocious compared to the original. i mentioned this in another comment but the loss of realism in the remake took me out of the action and multiple times i found myself saying "oh come on" the original had cars performing stunts tat the cars could actually perform and focused on the chase not the actors. the remake focused on Nic Cage delivering horrible dialog. in the remake the stunts that cars did were ridiculous. half the turns and the backward driving scene would of left the cars spun round in a cloud of smoke or up a tree in a horrific crash.
I thought the French Connection chase was easily more exciting than The Island. Special effects do not always make a gripping action scene. Because of the quick, fast-paced cutting in The French Connection, you got the sense that there was something at stake. In The Island, it was all too colorful and Hollywood for me to really care about the chase. Nowadays they are so common in movies that to go back and look at one that actually had some thought put into it is impressive.
I agree that special effects don't necessarily make the movie. I feel like in French Connection, the chase had more to do with the plot, and in The Island it was more for fun. However, I don't think that the special effects and Hollywood-ness took away from The Island.
For the Jet Bike Chase scene, it was kind of cool watching them escape in that sick motorcycle looking jet vehicle. The part where the girl was about to fall off the building was exciting as well and that made the scene more intense.
I also enjoyed this clip. By using a jet bike, they made it way more creative than a normal vehicle. The jet bike crashed through buildings and flying trains which filled it with more action than the others.
Its obvious that as the these chase scenes get more recent, they become more advanced. i think all of these scenes are very entertaining in their own way. You always have to take into consideration when each scene was made. Someone today will easily call The General chase scene boring, but for the time, it was probably one of the most thirlling, and intense scenes that people have seen. ALthough i liked them all, The French Connections easily the best in terms of camera shots, camera angles, and editing. What seperates The French Connections secene from The Island scene is that The French Connection used no CGI. It was filmed for real, where as The Island is all CGI. Still, both scenes are fantastic.
I agree that you have to consider time. It's not The General's fault that they didn't have cranes and computers and digital editing back then. You have a point; it probably was very exciting back when it came out. I think that with us watching these 3 scenes, especially all at once, we forget the means that were available to film-making for the respective time periods.
I think that with the general chase scene, the fast motion kind of ruins it. I say this because since its going by so fast, you cant really comprehend whats going on. I could never figure out who was who because of all the jump cuts either. I think the island had the best scene because they were using more fututristic vehicles which made the scene that much better.
I was kind of surprised by the General Chase clip, I thought the editing was pretty good. The French Connection one dragged on forever. They had a lot of repeated camera angles that made me feel like I was watching the same thing over and over.
I agree with ya candace, French Connection had many repeated camera angles which made it seem quite boring. The Island's scene was better in the sense that the shots were different, fast paced and better edited overall. BOOOM!
I felt the same way about this clip. Most, if not all of it, was shot with the hand held camera shot and that made it so difficult for me to focus and try to figure out what's going on. I don't even think it would be that jumpy while being in the car. They did show a lot of the same thing too.
The Island was defiantly my favorite chase scene because the others I felt were a little boring. I felt like The French Connection dragged on too long and after a while all the parallel cuts, began to be the same thing over and over. You would see the guy driving and honking that annoying horn over and over again and nothing changed except what he ran into. But I felt like The General Chase had too many jump cuts though because it was always going back and forth. Overall, I think editing has drastically changed because back then you could tell that they didn't have the technology to do what they can today which is make the whole movie have special animations and editing. It's less doing more editing.
I really liked the Jet Bike Chase from the Island because I feel like there was a variety of different editing techniques used. It was also moved a lot faster than the other ones which I felt was more appropriate for the situation. There was a good amount of close-ups and reaction shots, which I felt fit well to help us better understand their emotions during the scene. I liked how there were high angle and low angle shots right after one another, because this gave a better perspective of depth. There was also a little bit of subjective viewpoint thrown in there which allowed the audience to see what the characters were seeing. I liked the General Chase, it was cute and all, but it was just to slow and boring for the most part. The fast pace of The Jet Bike Chase is what made me enjoy it so much. Also, the speed that the editor cut each shit to go to a different one, made the story more interesting. The French connection was also super cool, and the best edited of the three. The over the shoulder shots had a good effect on the overall view of the scene and was very fast paced. WOOHOO.
I know! I liked The Island too. The "fast-paced drum music" and the high speed cuts really made me feel the intensity of the chase. Then, when they broke through the window the slow motion really brought out my anticipation: will they fall to their deaths? will they save themselves? It was breath-taking.
i didnt really like the first film, the general because it didnt really have a lot of action in it. i felt they fast forward it a little bit just to make it seem for intense and action filled when really it wasnt. i really liked the island because of the whole scenery, very futuristic. it also had you very nervous at the end when the women was hanging from the insanely tall building, i kind of sat there like oh my god is she going to fall?? i really enjoy when action scenes make me intrigued to know what will happen. i liked the french connection scene because of the camera, it was very raw in a sense of it was never really focused on an object, it was always moving around or showing each man doing there own thing which made everything feel more real and fast pace.
The thing about The General is that I feel like it was shot like any other scene would be, except for the fact that there were no close up shots. There wasn't anything that special about it. The French Connection not only included more personal shots of the driver, but it also had shots of the road ahead of him, almost like subjective viewpoint, which brought me on the edge of my seat more than The General. Furthermore, in The French Connection, the parallel editing makes it more exciting because you aren't juts watching someone drive real fast, you're also watching the plot progress. In The Island, it was a lot more tech-savvy and so there was potential for more excitement than the other two, let alone the fact that it is in a futuristic setting. It had subjective viewpoint like The French Connection, and all the cuts from viewpoint to viewpoint made it seem a lot faster as well. The reason I say it had more potential excitement-wise is because there could be a lot more disaster in it-which there was. In The French Connection, the guys busted up his car quite a lot, and there were shootings on the train, but in The Island, there were trains in the skies and the jet-bike crashed into a building a couple dozen stories above ground.
The first chase scene was obiviously not as sofisticated as the other two, i agree with a lot of people in the sense that it was mostly still shots, with a couple follows and pans here and there. The worst part about it was the editing was so slow it gave it no dramatic effect. I thought the general chase was preety cool, because I have never seen a train chase before. The second chase scene was definatly more advanced, they knew how to show the effect of a high stakes chase scene by using over the shoulder shots and the occasional subjective viewpoint of the train speeding down the tracks. I couldnt really understand the significance of the driver under the train tracks but that is where most of the action took place. showing that he NEEDED to get on that train for whatever reason.
i think this is what made the earliest chase scene the best of the lot. The faraway long shots of the entire action were a lot better then looking over the shoulder and hearing bits of dialog that don't really need to be there. i can see what you mean by over the shoulder shots put you in the action but i think that in modern chases they are over done and their overuse takes away from the chase scene as a whole.
I watched the 1920s chase scene from The General, the 2005 chase scene from The Island, and the two chase scenes from Gone in 60 Seconds. I noticed that the 1920s scene did not use many editing techniques. There was fast motion to indicate hurried action and simultaneous cuts that cut between the first and second trains during the chase. The part where the guys from the second train were clearing the tracks of junk that the first guy threw off the train was most likely filmed in normal motion and gave me the sense that they were taking a long time and were not going to catch up to the other guy. Altogether, it was not very interesting to today's audience. But I suppose that since this film had been shown to a very new movie-going public, they were content with it. In the more modern chase scenes, there was more edit cuts. In the 1974 Gone in 60 Seconds, there were parallel cuts between the car thief and the plainclothes policemen. Then there are jump cuts between the police cars, the plainclothes car and the stolen car, giving the illusion of hurried searching. There were also parallel shots between the chase and the radio station which, I suppose was to establish the ordinary passage of time as opposed to the “thrill of the chase” passage of time. The jump cuts during the pile-up on the bridge created anticipation of what’s going to happen when the police cars drive up to that whole mess. In the most recent scenes from The Island and the Gone is 60 Seconds remake the editors fully utilized “fast-paced drum music” which really added to the effect of hurriedness. They did lots parallel edits between the chaser and chase-ee. The lack of cuts and “fast paced music” in the one scene of avoiding the police cars in the Gone remake gave the sense that time was passing more slowly, until the police car found him. The slow motion in The Island created uncertainty of whether they would fall to their deaths or whether they would save themselves on a ledge. In the Gone remake, there was a lot of slow motion used during collisions. Speaking of which, I felt that there were a lot of unnecessary collisions in the Gone remake. In the 1974 version, the only major collision was the pile-up on the bridge and it served a purpose, the thief wanted to slow down the police cars. In the remake, there were collisions every few minutes with no practical purpose. I think they inserted all those collisions to grab the audience’s attention because today, our attention span is shot and we do not have the patience to watch people chase each other for ten minutes.
In The General Chase, I felt they used a lot of fast motion and the pacing was very fast. In the French Connection, they used simultaneous shots, and I felt the pacing was at normal speed. In The Island, they used a lot of CGI and the pacing was fast.
I think chase scenes over the decade have changed from just being a fast forward silent chase to being a chase at normal speeds and having more shots involved.
In my opinion, I believe that Gone in 60 Seconds, the original not the remake, was the best because it felt like it was a real car chase, and it was very suspenseful.
If any of you guys like these chase scenes, then I highly recommend watching the chase scene from Bullitt, Terminator 2, and The Matrix Reloaded. All three of these scenes are excellent. If you like The French Connection, you definitely will love Bullitt. It was very entertaining for the 1960s, and in terms of overall best chase scenes, it doesn't get much better than Bullitt. Terminator 2's chase scene is very exciting and I think everyone in this class will like it. The editing is great, and is much more fast paced then what your probably used to. Plus you gotta love Arnold. If you liked the scene from The Island, then you will for sure like the chase scene from The Matrix Reloaded. There's so much going on, and it's way over the top. All three of these scenes are very entertaining, and I promise you love at least one of the 3, if not all 3. Does anyone else have any good chase scenes recommendations?
i think the big difference in chase scenes is the focus on realism. in the chase scene from the 30's all of the stunts featured or humanly possible and an average person could probably do most of them if they really had to. the chase scene with the car and the train from the seventy's is also this way. sure there is a bit more skill behind the driving and shooting people but again for the most part humanly possible. however in the most recent chase even ignoring the flying bikes there is no way that an average person would be able to just get on a bike and pull the maneuvers that the main character was able to achieve. i think this comes from the invention of CGI. Bad film makers use it as a crutch to make a poor idea watchable and takes away from movies in a big way. this loss of realism is shown in a big way in gone in 60 seconds and its remake. the original had cars all making maneuvers that the cars could do and the two cars were evenly matched in terms of what they could do. in the remake the cars were making turns that are simply impossible to make and doing things that would destroy the cars from the inside. also the cars are unevenly matched. the modern BMW 540 that the police were driving would run circles around the Shelby gt500 from the 60's regardless of the skill of the driver.
The older the scene in this case seems like slower pacing. Meaning The Island is a lot more fast paced than The General Chase. I feel like cinematography plays a bigger role in the pacing of the film than editing does in The Island. But for The General Connection if editing wasn't done correctly then the pacing would be extremely slow. If the editing wasn't done properly in The Signal then the cinematography wouldn't have had as much effect. It seemed that the editing compliments the cinematography. The faster they cut from shot to shot, the faster the pacing is. This how editing has changed over the years. By cutting away fast and making each shot very short it adds suspense and fast pacing to the chase. The General Connection doesn't come close to how suspenseful The Island is. I think the signal was edited the best out of all of them. it has a very fast paced and suspenseful feeling. I did not like all of the visual effects in The Signal. Even though it is a Sci-Fi. I feel Sci-Fi films today shouldn't use as many visual effects but should use sets and props. Star Wars did an amazing job of this. So few films use visual effects correctly today. It didn’t seem they used visual effects in other chases besides The Island.
The French Connection: I found it to be exciting in the beginning because I really wanted to find out why the guy on the train was running away from the guy in the car. After awhile it began to become boring because it didn't give meany information on the questions i had. Also it didn't change much. It just kept going from a shot of the train to a shot of the car and became tedious after awhile. The Jet Bike Chase: I thought it was cool how it was really futuristic and it wasn't just a regular car. I also enjoyed the how they didn't really know how to drive it causing them to crash into a building. I liked that part because i liked how it wasn't just like, oh yeah we stole this jet bike thing and how were super awesome at driving it and we're going to get away. It showed that they weren't really confident and showed that they made it more realistic. I did not enjoy the ending though. Gone in 60 Seconds(Org.): I enjoyed that it wasn't just one car chasing another car and that it was a series of cars. I also liked that it showed how the chase wasn't just affecting the people driving but the other people/cars they were hitting. Also the part where even the radio station was beginning to report on the situation. Gone in 60 Seconds: I thought that it was good how they used more than one camera angle to show how they weren't just driving forward the whole time but also backwards. I also liked the parts were you would think something was about to happen but at the last moment something else happened. It kept me guessing.
Between the three short clips I saw of the movies, I believe The Island was the scene that was best edited. I believe that all the scenes could be recognized from their decade by the editing techniques and effects. The General Chase had very few editing techniques and when they and when the editing techniques were used they were minimal and had to recognize. I also thought The General Chase had a disadvantage because sound is a big part of a chase scene. The French Connection used a lot of editing techniques like jump cuts and parallel editing. The French Connection was a great chase scene but it just needed more things if it was going to last as long as it did. The Island had a huge amount of editing techniques including fast motion and jump cuts. The Island had the most interesting chase scene and it drew me in throughout the whole clip.
The chase scene from the Island seemed like a typical Michael Bay movie. It was fast paced with lots of action and explosions. The editing cuts were very fast, but easy to follow. The action seemed cool and thrilling. The chase from The General had much longer editing cuts, but I didn't dislike it. The people moved very fast as if the camera was in fast motion the whole time. This made the people funny when they moved.
After viewing the General chase scene, I'd have to say it is a bit boring because it has no dialogue but, what I noticed that distinguished it from the other chase scenes was the fact that train's were used instead of cars, which made it comedic in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteI also loved how they used trains instead of cars. Normally, chase scenes are always with cars but using trains made it more unique and funny.
DeleteI thought it was too fast. And the music was kind of distracting too
DeleteThe General Chase scene was kind of boring. It had a lot of master shots and medium shots but it rarely ever had any eye level shots or close up shots.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the General Chase was super boring. The pacing was sooo slow. I feel like they were pushing more for the acting and the comedic aspect, more so than the chase itself. I think more close up shots would have been beneficial in the scene as well.
DeleteYou haven't seen the whole movie. For a silent movie, it is surprisingly exciting. No, not on the level of something more modern, but still...That remains maybe the first great ambitious action movie of all time.
Deletefor the general chase I thought it was quite amusing to see the people try to catch the runaways and they would always fail. It was really funny how the chasers were being completely outsmarted by the runaways and they could not catdch them.
ReplyDeleteThe French Connection was hugely more entertaining than The general because it is far more advanced. The scene now includes a car and a train and is in an urban enviorment which adds a sense of realism. The editing also was done better switching from car to train.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, the chase scene in The General, while impressive and big-budget for its time, has consistent uses of pans and still shots. It is simply shown, with the camera just showing the action. As we move on to the French Connection, the camera seems much more involved in the action, as it seems to zoom with the car as it's driving. Also, there are more over-the-shoulder shots and quicker editing, to give you that frenetic fast-paced feel. I think that scene is the best-edited of the three. Finally, The Island has heavy use of special effects, and is really quickly cut, and the camera seems to fly through space with the characters. Here the camera seems most involved in the action.
ReplyDeletefor the French Connection I thought it was alot more intense and I liked that. I also like how determined the escapees to get away from their chasers very well done.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like The French Connection and The Island use more close-up shots of the drivers or the road, but The General has wider shots that are farther back to take in more of the action. The main difference between the 2 older ones and The Island is that they used no special effects, with real cars and trains, while The Island probably had the actors in a studio with not much actually being shot on streets. The editing seems to get more frantic as time goes by, with those 3 movies as well as the 2 versions of Gone in 60 Seconds
ReplyDeleteThe island was very different than the first two films. Over almost 100 years, the chase scene in films has definetly changed. The use of computer generated images and the much more violent, intense nature of the island would definetly make it my favorite chase scene of all three. After examining all the angle shots of the 3 clips, I think movies like the island use more interesting shots such as aerial shots while The general uses more still shots and looks a bit sped up
ReplyDeleteGone in 60 seconds really amused me because of its fast paced action. You never knew what would happen next. It kind of reminded me of Grand Theft Auto and how crazily a person can drive. It was intense and it was a lot better than the train scene because of how much it brought you into the scene.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it was more intense but I think that it was too frantic. Throughout the whole scene you saw the guy doing the same thing over and over again and nothing was different about it so you could infer that we has going to hit another thing.
Deletefor the chase scene in The Island. I thought it was the best one. It was really cool how in the chase scene they were escaping with a jet type of figure. I also loved how much more realistic it was compared to the others.
ReplyDeleteThe General Chase was an okay video. I found it to be very boring at times becase the same thing kept happening over and over again. Also they didn't change shots very much. There weren't any close up or any shots that showed you more of a personial veiw of what was happening. It was very basic and not really exciting like a typical chase scene.
ReplyDeleteAfter having seen the 2000 remake so many times before, I watched the original Gone in 60 Seconds and I'm not going to lie, I wasn't that into the original chase scene as I had been for the remake of it. The pacing of the remake seemed so much faster and the music had a huge part in that. I think that with only seeing the remake and never knowing that it was a remake, I expected so much more from the original than was given. I guess I expected it to be a phenomenal scene because they made a remake of it and the remake was good. But the chase scene was still good. The scenes have just changed so much because we've grown to expect something so high tech and something that is so dramatic that when I saw the original one, I didn't really like it as much as I thought I would.
ReplyDeletei'm the exact opposite, i think the new chases scene was atrocious compared to the original. i mentioned this in another comment but the loss of realism in the remake took me out of the action and multiple times i found myself saying "oh come on" the original had cars performing stunts tat the cars could actually perform and focused on the chase not the actors. the remake focused on Nic Cage delivering horrible dialog. in the remake the stunts that cars did were ridiculous. half the turns and the backward driving scene would of left the cars spun round in a cloud of smoke or up a tree in a horrific crash.
DeleteI thought the French Connection chase was easily more exciting than The Island. Special effects do not always make a gripping action scene. Because of the quick, fast-paced cutting in The French Connection, you got the sense that there was something at stake. In The Island, it was all too colorful and Hollywood for me to really care about the chase. Nowadays they are so common in movies that to go back and look at one that actually had some thought put into it is impressive.
ReplyDeleteI agree that special effects don't necessarily make the movie. I feel like in French Connection, the chase had more to do with the plot, and in The Island it was more for fun. However, I don't think that the special effects and Hollywood-ness took away from The Island.
DeleteFor the Jet Bike Chase scene, it was kind of cool watching them escape in that sick motorcycle looking jet vehicle. The part where the girl was about to fall off the building was exciting as well and that made the scene more intense.
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed this clip. By using a jet bike, they made it way more creative than a normal vehicle. The jet bike crashed through buildings and flying trains which filled it with more action than the others.
DeleteIts obvious that as the these chase scenes get more recent, they become more advanced. i think all of these scenes are very entertaining in their own way. You always have to take into consideration when each scene was made. Someone today will easily call The General chase scene boring, but for the time, it was probably one of the most thirlling, and intense scenes that people have seen. ALthough i liked them all, The French Connections easily the best in terms of camera shots, camera angles, and editing. What seperates The French Connections secene from The Island scene is that The French Connection used no CGI. It was filmed for real, where as The Island is all CGI. Still, both scenes are fantastic.
ReplyDeleteI agree that you have to consider time. It's not The General's fault that they didn't have cranes and computers and digital editing back then. You have a point; it probably was very exciting back when it came out. I think that with us watching these 3 scenes, especially all at once, we forget the means that were available to film-making for the respective time periods.
DeleteI think that with the general chase scene, the fast motion kind of ruins it. I say this because since its going by so fast, you cant really comprehend whats going on. I could never figure out who was who because of all the jump cuts either. I think the island had the best scene because they were using more fututristic vehicles which made the scene that much better.
ReplyDeleteI was kind of surprised by the General Chase clip, I thought the editing was pretty good. The French Connection one dragged on forever. They had a lot of repeated camera angles that made me feel like I was watching the same thing over and over.
ReplyDeleteI agree with ya candace, French Connection had many repeated camera angles which made it seem quite boring. The Island's scene was better in the sense that the shots were different, fast paced and better edited overall. BOOOM!
DeleteI felt the same way about this clip. Most, if not all of it, was shot with the hand held camera shot and that made it so difficult for me to focus and try to figure out what's going on. I don't even think it would be that jumpy while being in the car. They did show a lot of the same thing too.
DeleteThe Island was defiantly my favorite chase scene because the others I felt were a little boring. I felt like The French Connection dragged on too long and after a while all the parallel cuts, began to be the same thing over and over. You would see the guy driving and honking that annoying horn over and over again and nothing changed except what he ran into. But I felt like The General Chase had too many jump cuts though because it was always going back and forth. Overall, I think editing has drastically changed because back then you could tell that they didn't have the technology to do what they can today which is make the whole movie have special animations and editing. It's less doing more editing.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the Jet Bike Chase from the Island because I feel like there was a variety of different editing techniques used. It was also moved a lot faster than the other ones which I felt was more appropriate for the situation. There was a good amount of close-ups and reaction shots, which I felt fit well to help us better understand their emotions during the scene. I liked how there were high angle and low angle shots right after one another, because this gave a better perspective of depth. There was also a little bit of subjective viewpoint thrown in there which allowed the audience to see what the characters were seeing. I liked the General Chase, it was cute and all, but it was just to slow and boring for the most part. The fast pace of The Jet Bike Chase is what made me enjoy it so much. Also, the speed that the editor cut each shit to go to a different one, made the story more interesting. The French connection was also super cool, and the best edited of the three. The over the shoulder shots had a good effect on the overall view of the scene and was very fast paced. WOOHOO.
ReplyDeleteI know! I liked The Island too. The "fast-paced drum music" and the high speed cuts really made me feel the intensity of the chase. Then, when they broke through the window the slow motion really brought out my anticipation: will they fall to their deaths? will they save themselves? It was breath-taking.
Deletei didnt really like the first film, the general because it didnt really have a lot of action in it. i felt they fast forward it a little bit just to make it seem for intense and action filled when really it wasnt. i really liked the island because of the whole scenery, very futuristic. it also had you very nervous at the end when the women was hanging from the insanely tall building, i kind of sat there like oh my god is she going to fall?? i really enjoy when action scenes make me intrigued to know what will happen. i liked the french connection scene because of the camera, it was very raw in a sense of it was never really focused on an object, it was always moving around or showing each man doing there own thing which made everything feel more real and fast pace.
ReplyDeleteThe thing about The General is that I feel like it was shot like any other scene would be, except for the fact that there were no close up shots. There wasn't anything that special about it. The French Connection not only included more personal shots of the driver, but it also had shots of the road ahead of him, almost like subjective viewpoint, which brought me on the edge of my seat more than The General. Furthermore, in The French Connection, the parallel editing makes it more exciting because you aren't juts watching someone drive real fast, you're also watching the plot progress.
ReplyDeleteIn The Island, it was a lot more tech-savvy and so there was potential for more excitement than the other two, let alone the fact that it is in a futuristic setting. It had subjective viewpoint like The French Connection, and all the cuts from viewpoint to viewpoint made it seem a lot faster as well. The reason I say it had more potential excitement-wise is because there could be a lot more disaster in it-which there was. In The French Connection, the guys busted up his car quite a lot, and there were shootings on the train, but in The Island, there were trains in the skies and the jet-bike crashed into a building a couple dozen stories above ground.
The first chase scene was obiviously not as sofisticated as the other two, i agree with a lot of people in the sense that it was mostly still shots, with a couple follows and pans here and there. The worst part about it was the editing was so slow it gave it no dramatic effect. I thought the general chase was preety cool, because I have never seen a train chase before. The second chase scene was definatly more advanced, they knew how to show the effect of a high stakes chase scene by using over the shoulder shots and the occasional subjective viewpoint of the train speeding down the tracks. I couldnt really understand the significance of the driver under the train tracks but that is where most of the action took place. showing that he NEEDED to get on that train for whatever reason.
ReplyDeletei think this is what made the earliest chase scene the best of the lot. The faraway long shots of the entire action were a lot better then looking over the shoulder and hearing bits of dialog that don't really need to be there. i can see what you mean by over the shoulder shots put you in the action but i think that in modern chases they are over done and their overuse takes away from the chase scene as a whole.
DeleteI watched the 1920s chase scene from The General, the 2005 chase scene from The Island, and the two chase scenes from Gone in 60 Seconds.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that the 1920s scene did not use many editing techniques. There was fast motion to indicate hurried action and simultaneous cuts that cut between the first and second trains during the chase. The part where the guys from the second train were clearing the tracks of junk that the first guy threw off the train was most likely filmed in normal motion and gave me the sense that they were taking a long time and were not going to catch up to the other guy. Altogether, it was not very interesting to today's audience. But I suppose that since this film had been shown to a very new movie-going public, they were content with it.
In the more modern chase scenes, there was more edit cuts. In the 1974 Gone in 60 Seconds, there were parallel cuts between the car thief and the plainclothes policemen. Then there are jump cuts between the police cars, the plainclothes car and the stolen car, giving the illusion of hurried searching. There were also parallel shots between the chase and the radio station which, I suppose was to establish the ordinary passage of time as opposed to the “thrill of the chase” passage of time. The jump cuts during the pile-up on the bridge created anticipation of what’s going to happen when the police cars drive up to that whole mess.
In the most recent scenes from The Island and the Gone is 60 Seconds remake the editors fully utilized “fast-paced drum music” which really added to the effect of hurriedness. They did lots parallel edits between the chaser and chase-ee. The lack of cuts and “fast paced music” in the one scene of avoiding the police cars in the Gone remake gave the sense that time was passing more slowly, until the police car found him. The slow motion in The Island created uncertainty of whether they would fall to their deaths or whether they would save themselves on a ledge. In the Gone remake, there was a lot of slow motion used during collisions. Speaking of which, I felt that there were a lot of unnecessary collisions in the Gone remake. In the 1974 version, the only major collision was the pile-up on the bridge and it served a purpose, the thief wanted to slow down the police cars. In the remake, there were collisions every few minutes with no practical purpose. I think they inserted all those collisions to grab the audience’s attention because today, our attention span is shot and we do not have the patience to watch people chase each other for ten minutes.
In The General Chase, I felt they used a lot of fast motion and the pacing was very fast. In the French Connection, they used simultaneous shots, and I felt the pacing was at normal speed. In The Island, they used a lot of CGI and the pacing was fast.
ReplyDeleteI think chase scenes over the decade have changed from just being a fast forward silent chase to being a chase at normal speeds and having more shots involved.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, I believe that Gone in 60 Seconds, the original not the remake, was the best because it felt like it was a real car chase, and it was very suspenseful.
ReplyDeleteIf any of you guys like these chase scenes, then I highly recommend watching the chase scene from Bullitt, Terminator 2, and The Matrix Reloaded. All three of these scenes are excellent. If you like The French Connection, you definitely will love Bullitt. It was very entertaining for the 1960s, and in terms of overall best chase scenes, it doesn't get much better than Bullitt. Terminator 2's chase scene is very exciting and I think everyone in this class will like it. The editing is great, and is much more fast paced then what your probably used to. Plus you gotta love Arnold. If you liked the scene from The Island, then you will for sure like the chase scene from The Matrix Reloaded. There's so much going on, and it's way over the top. All three of these scenes are very entertaining, and I promise you love at least one of the 3, if not all 3. Does anyone else have any good chase scenes recommendations?
ReplyDeletei think the big difference in chase scenes is the focus on realism. in the chase scene from the 30's all of the stunts featured or humanly possible and an average person could probably do most of them if they really had to. the chase scene with the car and the train from the seventy's is also this way. sure there is a bit more skill behind the driving and shooting people but again for the most part humanly possible. however in the most recent chase even ignoring the flying bikes there is no way that an average person would be able to just get on a bike and pull the maneuvers that the main character was able to achieve. i think this comes from the invention of CGI. Bad film makers use it as a crutch to make a poor idea watchable and takes away from movies in a big way. this loss of realism is shown in a big way in gone in 60 seconds and its remake. the original had cars all making maneuvers that the cars could do and the two cars were evenly matched in terms of what they could do. in the remake the cars were making turns that are simply impossible to make and doing things that would destroy the cars from the inside. also the cars are unevenly matched. the modern BMW 540 that the police were driving would run circles around the Shelby gt500 from the 60's regardless of the skill of the driver.
ReplyDeleteThe older the scene in this case seems like slower pacing. Meaning The Island is a lot more fast paced than The General Chase. I feel like cinematography plays a bigger role in the pacing of the film than editing does in The Island. But for The General Connection if editing wasn't done correctly then the pacing would be extremely slow. If the editing wasn't done properly in The Signal then the cinematography wouldn't have had as much effect. It seemed that the editing compliments the cinematography. The faster they cut from shot to shot, the faster the pacing is. This how editing has changed over the years. By cutting away fast and making each shot very short it adds suspense and fast pacing to the chase. The General Connection doesn't come close to how suspenseful The Island is. I think the signal was edited the best out of all of them. it has a very fast paced and suspenseful feeling. I did not like all of the visual effects in The Signal. Even though it is a Sci-Fi. I feel Sci-Fi films today shouldn't use as many visual effects but should use sets and props. Star Wars did an amazing job of this. So few films use visual effects correctly today. It didn’t seem they used visual effects in other chases besides The Island.
ReplyDeleteThe French Connection: I found it to be exciting in the beginning because I really wanted to find out why the guy on the train was running away from the guy in the car. After awhile it began to become boring because it didn't give meany information on the questions i had. Also it didn't change much. It just kept going from a shot of the train to a shot of the car and became tedious after awhile.
ReplyDeleteThe Jet Bike Chase: I thought it was cool how it was really futuristic and it wasn't just a regular car. I also enjoyed the how they didn't really know how to drive it causing them to crash into a building. I liked that part because i liked how it wasn't just like, oh yeah we stole this jet bike thing and how were super awesome at driving it and we're going to get away. It showed that they weren't really confident and showed that they made it more realistic. I did not enjoy the ending though.
Gone in 60 Seconds(Org.): I enjoyed that it wasn't just one car chasing another car and that it was a series of cars. I also liked that it showed how the chase wasn't just affecting the people driving but the other people/cars they were hitting. Also the part where even the radio station was beginning to report on the situation.
Gone in 60 Seconds: I thought that it was good how they used more than one camera angle to show how they weren't just driving forward the whole time but also backwards. I also liked the parts were you would think something was about to happen but at the last moment something else happened. It kept me guessing.
Between the three short clips I saw of the movies, I believe The Island was the scene that was best edited. I believe that all the scenes could be recognized from their decade by the editing techniques and effects. The General Chase had very few editing techniques and when they and when the editing techniques were used they were minimal and had to recognize. I also thought The General Chase had a disadvantage because sound is a big part of a chase scene. The French Connection used a lot of editing techniques like jump cuts and parallel editing. The French Connection was a great chase scene but it just needed more things if it was going to last as long as it did. The Island had a huge amount of editing techniques including fast motion and jump cuts. The Island had the most interesting chase scene and it drew me in throughout the whole clip.
ReplyDeleteThe chase scene from the Island seemed like a typical Michael Bay movie. It was fast paced with lots of action and explosions. The editing cuts were very fast, but easy to follow. The action seemed cool and thrilling. The chase from The General had much longer editing cuts, but I didn't dislike it. The people moved very fast as if the camera was in fast motion the whole time. This made the people funny when they moved.
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