the reaction to 'chaos cinema'
February 12, 2016 9:40 AM   Subscribe

How Video Games Are Changing The Action Movie - "It’s evidence in the case that videogames have started showing a strong influence on cinematography beyond goofier incarnations such as CGI, tie-ins, or critically derided adaptations. Instead, the movies leading this charge across mediums are rooted in physicality and often adored by cineastes."
posted by the man of twists and turns (25 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
I think the author grasps a trend fairly clearly, but I'm not convinced it has anything to do with videogames. He cites a number of martial arts films, which usually prioritize clarity so the stunts are more impressive (see Ong Bak, where the editing actually repeats certain stunts from two or more angles). He also cites a film that was made by a director who is obsessed with avoiding coverage filmmaking (Bong Joon-Ho), as well as a director who is, frankly, just GOOD (Alfonso Cuaron). I really, really doubt either of the above directors were inspired by Tomb Raider.

The "you can't see shit for the blur" filmmaking that reached its fearsome apex with films like The Bourne Ultimatum is receding just because it was a trend, and because frankly it sucks.
posted by selfnoise at 9:50 AM on February 12, 2016 [11 favorites]


I'm not so sure the author actually understands how films are made.
" The action scenes make use of some quick cuts, but the camera usually remains focused on a single character at a time. When the camera does cut, it’s often to follow the character’s movements or gaze, making the editing less obvious. "
None of these films are shot with a single camera set-up.
And the long tracking shot? Has this guy not heard of the Steadi-cam?
And for those who like old films--tracking shot from 1964 Soy Cuba.
posted by Ideefixe at 10:03 AM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


Spectre‘s opening shot should also be familiar to anyone who’s played a third-person videogame

Or anyone who's seen "Touch of Evil" (1958)
posted by Petersondub at 10:06 AM on February 12, 2016 [15 favorites]


I would say that Edge of Tomorrow purposefully aped the narrative conventions of video games, with characters reaching certain save points and then continuing the story from there when they get killed and respawned. Rather cleverly, I think.
posted by maxsparber at 10:08 AM on February 12, 2016 [9 favorites]


You know what I do think would be an interesting argument in favor of this thesis(but isn't in the article)?

I think films carried a burden of needing to be the "cutting-edge" entertainment for a while, and maybe games are helping to alleviate that. Which might allow for a return to classical filmmaking for some people.

ANOTHER factor is the assault of super-hero films... none of these are really shot in an inspiring way (unless I've missed one) but they do linger on the hero, because that's how super heroes work. You need to see them: they're sort of like the opposite of a ninja. Even Batman needs to be front and center most of the time.

Spectre‘s opening shot should also be familiar to anyone who’s played a third-person videogame

Or anyone who's seen "Touch of Evil" (1958)


LOL!
posted by selfnoise at 10:08 AM on February 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


If anything, it seems to me like video games have become more movie-like.
posted by AndrewInDC at 10:17 AM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


If movies had really become more video-game like, characters would be jumping all the damn time to get out of predicaments. Also, Legolas should’ve ‘needed food badly’ a lot more.
posted by blueberry at 10:35 AM on February 12, 2016 [11 favorites]


it was a trend, and because frankly it sucks.

I think this is unfair. The "chaos cinema" approach is just a tool, and like any tool it can be used for good or ill. I think it gets a bad rap these days because it became so over-exposed in the last decade.

When it first started coming into vogue in the late 90s/early 2000s it was fresh and exciting. Saving Private Ryan used it to great effect to evoke the chaos, terror, and confusion of the Normandy landing. That's it's strength: done right it can make an action scene seem intensely visceral and real, because these kind of situations in real life are confusing and chaotic. The early Bourne fights felt like real fights and very different than older action movies fights. It was appropriate for The Dark Knight, at least in the opening car lot scene the article references, because it captures how an encounter with Batman would feel to criminals: you're being attacked with incredible speed and ferocity by an opponent you almost don't even see at all until you're down.

What happened, as with any technique, was that it became over-used and thus familiar and boring, and a crutch for weaker directors could lean on to cover up poorly-done action scenes. Now we see the inevitable backlash and return to more traditional styles of action scenes.
posted by Sangermaine at 10:50 AM on February 12, 2016 [5 favorites]


This weekend I watched Avengers: Age of Ultron and Mad Max: Fury Road on cable for the first time, basically back to back. My initial impression was that the ensemble action scenes in The Avengers were shot like a video game while Mad Max's were shot like a movie. However, I lack the cinematic vocabulary to really flesh out what it was that I was really seeing that made me say that. This article might be a good starting point, I think I'll need to do a little more reading beyond this article to form a better informed viewpoint.
posted by mhum at 10:50 AM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


I also wanted to add that I agree with the posters above: this article just references a number of films and directors without providing any evidence or even reason to think they've been influenced by video games in any way.
posted by Sangermaine at 10:52 AM on February 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


Keith Arem, one of the guys behind the Call of Duty video games, has a movie coming out soon that he wrote and directed. (and which stars some folks who've done voice work for video games). The Phoenix Incident. It played last night at the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival.
posted by rmd1023 at 10:52 AM on February 12, 2016


Other than Crank and Scott Pilgrim (duh), I think the rest is mostly feedback - games have been inspired by movies since the start, and for some 15 years tech was good enough to put game designers in a directors' chair with convincing results. Adding to that, development in CGI allows movie directors to do more spectacle (just like videogames) without having concerns for cost and safety, resulting in movies that seem inspired by videogames.
posted by lmfsilva at 11:18 AM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


Artists have been moving back and forth from video game and movie projects for at least the last 10 years. It should be no surprise then that there's cross-pollination going on.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 11:29 AM on February 12, 2016


And for those who like old films--tracking shot from 1964 Soy Cuba.

What a shot - how did they get that in 1964?
posted by gottabefunky at 11:29 AM on February 12, 2016


Every Frame a Painting has, to my mind, a couple more insightful bits of analysis on similar topics: see action comedy, Speilberg oner, What is Bayhem, and Snowpiercer Left/Right.

I'm not seeing the video game influence in all the examples cited here either, and wonder how much influence is flowing in the other direction. Asian action films have for a long time had a different visual style than American/western films, and that style has gradually found its way westward and into western movies and video games. There may be an interesting back and forth of influence between games and film to trace, but this article seems to miss some of the real historical reporting that's needed to make a compelling story of it.
posted by cubby at 11:32 AM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


The editing of Mad Max: Fury Road: "One of the many reasons MAD MAX: FURY ROAD is so successful as an action film is the editing style. By using “Eye Trace” and “Crosshair Framing” techniques during the shooting, the editor could keep the important visual information vital in one spot…the Center of the Frame. Because almost every shot was center framed, comprehending the action requires no hunting of each new shot for the point of interest. The viewer doesn’t need 3 or 4 frames to figure out where to look."
posted by TheophileEscargot at 12:04 PM on February 12, 2016 [6 favorites]


Hey! I worked on The Phoenix Incident. (Found footage feature film)
posted by Ideefixe at 12:10 PM on February 12, 2016




The action in Fury Road is beautifully clear compared with most contemporary action. Likewise The Force Awakens. More of that please.
posted by Artw at 12:19 PM on February 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


Arg. It's frustrating to see a critic with a decent sense of video game cinematographic history but no sense of movie cinematographic history make an argument about cinematography in movies following video games.

A better argument for places where video game camera techniques influence movies? Things like the X-wing attack on the Death Star in the new Star Wars, where it's pretty clearly designed just like a video game level, to the extent that you can almost feel the button sequences to strafe and fire.

And it's worth noting that video game camera work has largely devolved from the first Resident Evil, in large part because the experience of playing is different than the experience of watching, and the forced oblique camera angles that make the first RE so damn spooky also make controlling the character a pain in the ass at multiple points ("Oh, wait, I have to press down to get to that door to the left?").

If I had to lay a hunch, I'd say that some of the move back to long takes is due to improvements in non-linear editing being able to make scene transitions more seamless, as well as a reaction against the terrible overuse in things like GI Joe (which breaks all sorts of axes rules and the action sequences become totally incoherent because of it).
posted by klangklangston at 12:20 PM on February 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


@Cool Papa Bell: sorry to grind my axe here, but that's a form of cultural appropriation. And it's a good thing!

Well, when done right, that is.

For an example of it being done so glaringly badly that it just feels off: 2010's Alice in Wonderland. Stages, levels, end-bosses and all.
posted by MacD at 4:06 PM on February 12, 2016


Hardcore Henry (2016) brings first-person-shooter tropes as far into the foreground as you could possibly hope.
posted by naturetron at 5:24 PM on February 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


It's the ultimate FPS movie, but isn't it also kind of the ultimate GoPro movie?
posted by Artw at 5:39 PM on February 12, 2016


If I had to lay a hunch, I'd say that some of the move back to long takes is due to improvements in non-linear editing being able to make scene transitions more seamless, as well as a reaction against the terrible overuse in things like GI Joe (which breaks all sorts of axes rules and the action sequences become totally incoherent because of it).

Yeah, I think nonlinear editing and digital transitions are part of it (in other words: cheating!) but newer camera technology comes into play, too. With smaller, lighter digital cameras, it's become easier than it ever was before to get crazy Steadicam shots, moving the newly mobile camera in ways and into places that a 35mm cam was just too bulky for. There's a reason why nobody aped that long-take gunfight in Hard Boiled immediately after it came out — it was just too daunting a prospect for anyone but John Woo, and a rough-and-ready Hong Kong film crew, to take on.

But no, I don't think the increase in long takes in action movies necessarily has anything to do with videogames. If you really want to consider the behind-the-protagonist's-head perspective, you'd have to look at the films of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes, who have been bringing long takes employing that camera angle back in vogue, hardcore, since 1996. And while I'm not sure whether directors like Alfonso Cuaron and Sam Mendes have played much Halo or Call of Duty, I'm pretty fucking sure they've been watching the Dardennes. (They are two-time Palme d'Or winners at Cannes.) I'm not sure where it came from in the Dardennes' films, but they got their start as documentarians, so maybe following a protagonist around has something in common with the "run-and-gun" style of documentary shooting.
posted by Mothlight at 9:59 PM on February 12, 2016


I've noticed movie style drinking from videogame sources as far as Blade (1998), where the last fight is on a pedestal, with the virtual cameras whirling around the two fighters, and it just looks like Tekken. Makes you reach for the gamepads, particularly is, like many of my peers at the time, your DVD player is your PlayStation.

An example from a more hallowed director is in Minority Report (2002), where some of the action sequences (the car factory, the jumping from car to car) are just filmed platformer games, unabashedly so, and I know I'm talking about Spielberg, but just look at this.

Here I was going to add the reasons I think the long take is now more prevalent but Mothlight said it earlier and better.
posted by kandinski at 10:31 PM on February 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


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