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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

The single greatest SHOT ever...?

Andrew Rieger said:
I miss those days when most production problems needed to be solved in camera. Now we are like, "just shoot it and will remove everything we don't want in post". Technical limitations can lead to creative solutions, especially in the case of Soy Cuba.
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Lucky for you those days are back, shooting in 3D has plenty of technical limitations.
If I had to choose a favorite shot it would probably be a Kurasawa movie or maybe the shot here at 1:07 (sorry for the weird voice dubbing)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI1PvSuezxU

But I just wanted to point out to the O.P. that Barry Lyndon is still, STILL not on blu-ray!!!!! :banghead:
 
I'm assuming I'm one of the early-middle aged guys on this forum... but anyone here see Tarkofsky's "Andrei Rubliev"?

andrei-rublev.jpg
 
Also... the concept of the "single greatest shot" means more to me than the iconography of the images, but the technical expertise with a nod to the time it was made.

For that purpose, there's a battle scene in "Andrei Rubliev" that's fantastic (there's a cow that's on fire running through the scene, and a horse falls off a castle... both animals were killed during the take. Also, the modern technical acheivement goes to the guys at Doggiecam Systems for their work in Children of Men (driving shot), but over all, I'll have to say the procession from "Soy Cuba" should take the cake.

I discussed this at length with Roger Deakins, ASC; the amount of planning for the shot is absurd. The camera is handed off to a variety of operators that are preattached to various rigs, from scaling walls to walking through cigar shops to being tied to wires and pulled over a city street from several stories up. All of this was done in the 1960s:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5niug_soy-cuba-procession-procesion_shortfilms
 
the shot in rattatouille that goes through the critics eyes into his past; I nearly cried.
 
Mitch Gross said:
I love the rooftop pool sequence from Soy Cuba but am always bowled over by that final shot from the funeral. Really wrap up the film and it is visually stunning while completely telling the story of the populist revolution.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYFXv6bDIY8&NR=1
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God, yes. Soy Cuba is an incredible film; there are so many contenders in there for greatest shot.

One of the things that doesn't get a lot of attention in that film (relatively speaking) is the magnificent infrared aerial photography of the island. Those opening moments with the black waves and white foliage are really stunning. I also remember a similar shot in the middle of the movie that seems to start out as a helicopter shot, before descending into the foliage, through the leaves, and onto the ground. Always wondered how that one was done.
 
The opening of Haneke's Seventh Continent inside the car going through a car-wash. I saw it last night, brilliant simplicity.
 
Several of the opening airport shots of Tati's masterwork Playtime are brilliant in their mise en scene -- and are rather different than most noteworthy shots, in that they are comedic in tone and the camera is static, the movement taking place within the frame.

When it comes to moving camera shots that don't really "show off" or draw attention to themselves, few, IMHO, are greater than Bella Tarr in his later work, from Damnation on. The simple genius of the choreography of say, the opening shot of Werkmeister Harmonies, in which an almost edited sequence of shots from wide to close-up to wide again is created is just one of many noteworthy examples.

Of course, when we ask "single greatest shot" -- is this primarily a technical judgment, an esthetic one -- or both -- does it refer to a simple tour de force (such as Touch of Evil) that also has significant meaning and surprise -- or does it refer more to the sheer spectacle?

It strikes me that now that the camera can be moved so much more easily technically speaking, that we see many more "spectacular" shots that are a bit pallid in terms of their expressive richness -- sort of spectacle for spectacle's sake.
 
i'd say just about every shot from The Fountain and the new Pride and Prejudice or No Country for old men
 
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