my filmmaking takeaway from DISCLOSURE DAY was blast a space with light and let actors perform. so much of Spielberg's efficiency comes from deep depth of field. you can get 4 shots like this out of one when you're not worried about focus. now we light less, shoot shallow,... and cut it up.show more

i love shallow depth of field when it's right for the scene. when Spielberg has to rack focus movement he does it to create three different beautiful compositions out of one take.

Spielberg and Zemeckis does this so well in BTTF when Marty & George go back and forth over the plan in his backyard just moving from front to back its one of the best scenes Agree, just let the actors perform

Also in Doc’s house by the fireplace. It punches into the clock tower flyer, an ECU of Marty all in the same shot. I believe a lot of that great blocking we all love is simply a byproduct of how difficult it was to focus using measuring tapes and marks.

trace it back to Hitchcock especially in Rear Window yes, totally landing marks. Filming on a built set, you control everything

I absolutely hate the way so many modern movies stay on closeups and quick edits to who is talking. There’s a huge disconnect where it always feels like they weren’t even the same room. Actors need to be able to work off each other.

it depends because Mann will do crazy beautiful blocking like this in a lot of wide masters - but then switch to ECU's for all the dialogue and bounce around face to face, and it works just as well.

So the key is someone has to know what they are doing. Lol.

Vilmos Zsigmond man. Close Encounters is maybe the best example of lighting used as visual metonymy or visual synecdoche (light beams representing the ship and the aliens, blinking colored lights as language, etc ..).

and also just crazy hard big source lighting for interiors. it almost feels like a composite of 2 shots.

Dang yeah. We should bring back deep focus, realistic lighting and messy set dressing 😭

Look at the River Wild from 1994, this perfectly composed opening credit scene. In 2020s, this would be only good enough to be for a nature show.

wonder if that was a reference for fincher in social network

Drives me nuts about a lot of modern movies that they don't use the frame. Centre everything, shallow focus, shot reverse shot = looks dull as ditchwater. Let people move around, move the camera, do SOMETHING.

The truth man; directors nowadays only know point and shoot introductory levels of staging.

Spielberg blocking>>>>

The mastery of Spielberg is on full display in DD. EVERYTHING about this films works & mostly soars. It is one of his very best films with John Williams producing one his very best scores.

Spielberg puts the motion in motion picture. I could study his camera motion and blocking all day. Amazing how much bang for his buck he gets out of his shot list.

Haven’t seen disclosure. But Spielberg is one of my all time favorites. He always has the authentic classic movie feel with what he makes. It’s seems to be muscle memory to just let it a scene go and give actors time to play out a scene.

Is there a way for you to show how a modern filmmaker would’ve shot this same scene? I love Spielberg but I feel like my simple brain can’t grasp what makes this so good just by seeing the texts randomly pop up mid-video.

imagine a cut every time you see a shot indicated - and a re-frame with a close up of each character speaking in a close up. there's a much easier way to do a scene even with this many characters with a well choreographed wide master.

Oh god, I can tell the difference there. I felt like I was getting whiplash lmao

Side comment: Richard Dreyfuss is an amazing actor & I love how Spielberg casted him in 3 different films

Spielberg is basically mixing the craft of live theater with film: it is his use combining camera movement with the blocking of actors that creates dynamic and energetic scenes without the use of cutting.

Shoutout deep focus, gotta be my favorite style of filmmaking by far. Intentional scenes with lighting and color that make the scene. The camera is secondary to that 🙏

That's efficiency! And a time saver on set!

Emily Blunt was great in her role and the movie definitely had a Spielberg structure to it. I enjoyed the film for the most part, I would've cut the last 3-5 minutes of the film as I wasn't a huge fan of how they ended it...but entertaining overall.

End was my favorite part. Absolutely rocked me.

The montage of footage was great...I'm just meaning the very, very end. Which maybe that's the part you're talking about.

The cut to credits. I couldn’t believe it.

I hate less lighting. Why hire actors if can't see their faces. Seems to be a thing and it's just lazy filmmaking. Look at noir films, clear and sharp, lighting tells the story.

The in depth is massive

This is why older movies after better. Everything breaths and feels natural. The camera is just a singluar perspective of a larger world. Movies made like this today get hated on by the normies when it use to just be how it was.

I've seen people on here for months glazing Spielberg's shot efficiency and composition genius across his whole career. It's disappointing to find out he's lost all his sauce.

there's multiple 5-10 second shots in DISCLOSURE DAY that have more sauce than entire feature films.

Fair. Ok not all* the sauce.

I’ve been saying

This is a great call out

I love his dynamic tripod shots

Have you read Nestor Almendros's interview in Masters of Light? This is kind of what he talks about. He says Rohmer didn't edit, he just spliced the end of scene to the beginning of a other.

I’m starting to do this now in my AI work it’s actually really fun

Yeah cool. But the film sucks so who cares.

It's a little more complicated than "light less, shoot shallow". In my mind it's more about safety in coverage. Shooting formulaic wide, medium, CU, if even doing hte mediums because people like longer lens CU's because yes, they inherently have a shallow DoF cinematic feeling where that takes more effort in a wider composition, nvm to have it be a moving camera "oner" of sorts.

The way that Spielberg shoots his movies is how I would want to do it as it just feels right

And we don’t inhabit the world

They don’t make movies like they used to. We’ve lost something that can’t be replaced. Blue and green screens have become the new norm for most movies. Sets are sometimes a few items on a stage. It doesn’t help give light, give scope or allow actors to use what’s around them

It's the lens flare for me... If 70% of the shot is covered up by a bright light, then I find that's poor composition TBH

i find it engaging and dynamic

I like how JJ Abrams and Michael Bay use them. I like lens flare, just thought it was a little much in this one.

I love long takes and letting actors act

This is better. Our eyes blur everything but what we are focusing on anyways.

It feels very theatrical - like the billboard scene in ‘Jaws.’