Stray Thought
I find animals in movies distracting. Whenever I see one, I can't help but think "that animal doesn't know it's in a movie." Suddenly the fictional story is being intruded upon by documentary action. (Even if the animal is trained, it's not thinking about how this will look in the finished product).
posted by LAGuy @ 12:12 AM
3 Comments:
Don't follow- trained animals performing tricks are acting as much as the two-leggers. Yes they have no intellectual ability to recognize they are in a movie (though I think Cheetah did), but they are running through their trained movements the same way as actors.
Also do you have the same problem with small children in movies?
(I understand its a quirk, I get really anxious when people show up in bathrobes and housecoats- c'mon get dressed or get naked already)
Animals don't have that effect on me, but stunts do. When I watched "Buffy" and "Angel" on DVD, there were bonus features that deconstructed the stunts. I had never noticed how all stunts are done the same way -- close-up on the real actor, a shot from further away (or from behind) where the stunt double takes the fall, and then just as the impact happens, another cut returns to the real actor.
Now, every time there's a stunt -- even a minor one like a pratfall in a sitcom -- in any television show, I always watch to see what the real actor does and doesn't do.
FYI: Evangeline Lilly really does climb trees. Very well.
I'm reminded of a complaint of David Mamet. Piano playing on screen where you clearly see the actor doing the playing. He claims this is distracting--you're not thinking about the character, you're thinking about how the actor learned how to play the piece.
Mamet has some odd ideas, but I agree. Older styles of shooting a pianist--not showing the fingers or cutting to a closeup of someone else's fingers--are actually less distracting.
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