Sunday, April 15, 2012
Watch 8 Minutes of Rare On-Set Footage from ‘Jurassic Park’
Film: You’re probably aware of my love for behind the scenes documentaries which offer real fly on the wall footage from film sets. The new featurettes that come packaged with DVDs and Blu-rays are usually too-polished to offer any interesting footage of the director in action.
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What was unusual about this particular footage was the fact that it was in no way staged and the real directing relationship was shown between the director and the actors. I don't normally see that relationship because in some ways, the design aspect doesn't always get involved. Actual directing moments are so interesting because it is the literal translation of idea into action, which is a foreign concept for a designer or for someone who is technically building a show. The most impressive part was the how young the little boy was and yet he took the direction well and was serious about his job. The only people that I have worked with are either my age or a little older or younger, give or take. I have never worked with an adult actor or child actor so I have no idea what that is like. There is something to be said about maturity level and experience level. From what I have seen at CMU the actors are extremely professional and put together when they come in to work. However I'm still curious as to how that changes when we move into a professional environment, or a film environment for that matter.
A couple things were very intriguing about this video. 1. How Mr. Spielberg had complete control over the smallest nuance of these relatively mundane shots. He really cared how that one smug guy leaned into the car window 2. I’m really surprised that it seemed that he was making all this up as he went. For the amount of detail he wanted, you would have thought he pre-planned each shot and directed from a storyboard but no, it looked like he was freewheeling. I wonder if he always works like that. I don’t see how that would be possible. I feel bad for the continuity person. Always writing down, “Ok, what are we doing now?” My final critique of Spielberg is this: What was he wearing?! Looks like he just came from the outfield bleachers of a Baltimore Orioles game, not dressed as one of the greatest directors of our generation. I will need to talk to his publicist.
I guess I have to preface this by saying, “I don’t really have any experience watching a movie director work or really have a strong grasp of how they convey exactly what they want done,” but, to me, Spielberg seemed really in the moment figuring things out on the spot. I am not trying to say he was unprepared because I don't think he was. It seemed like he was figuring it out one shot at a time. It was also really interesting to me that he was on the camera in my mind the director would be watching the camera man telling him what he wants done not running the camera himself.
Being able to see even this short clip behind the scenes of one of Spielberg's films is a really nice different insight into how he (and maybe other filmmakers) work. Walking through the scenes part by part with the actors, and talking about what's going to be happen, controlling seemingly every little nuance. Even from just watching this short clip, it's clear that he is a hell of a presence on set, and he makes himself involved in a bunch of the aspects of well... everything. While what he was wearing was a little strange, it's great to get a little insight into how one of the biggest names in film worked.
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