Hi my name is Tony and this is Every Frame a Painting
So this video was supposed to be done for Mother's Day but that didn't happen
Sorry ma. Anyways today's film is Wolf Children directed by Mamoru Hosoda.
This is a really lovely little film and
it won the Japanese Academy Award for Best Animated Film two years ago.
If you haven't seen it, please do but my video will provide no spoilers
so you can enjoy this without having seen Wolf Children.
My subject today is a single shot from the film right here.
It's a lateral tracking shot lasting 57 seconds
and it follows the two children, Ame and Yuki
from first grade the fourth grade without any cuts.
We see Ame as a loner in first grade while his sister Yuki
adjusts to life in school. We see him bullied, we see her reaction,
we see her find a place in the classroom while he starts to ditch class.
That's really it. So why do I think this shot is actually kinda amazing?
This might sound like a weird thing to say but I've never really understood how
to use the lateral tracking shot.
I've seen other directors use it, sometimes beautifully, but I've never
figured out how to pull it off myself.
Because when you break it down, the lateral tracking shot is kinda weird.
It's one of the least subjective shots in cinema
It's actually one of most objective. It doesn't suggest any character's POV
It suggests you're an omniscient God and you're watching. It's very literal.
What you see is what you get, so what do you use it for?
Most filmmakers use it as a quick establishing move.
When you wanna start a scene and end in your master, it's a simple way to go.
--Hey man, if I were to
shave off a nipple, would it be covered by workmen's comp?
Sadly in the last five years, this type of shot has just been beaten
into the ground by DSLRs and sliders. Even good movies shot on DSLR
have slider overkill. So yeah, we can find a better way to use it.
Well, what else is there? Another place you see the shot is in war movies.
When you wanna show the vastness of an army, the lateral tracking shot will do the trick
It's really the go-to shot for establishing a camp.
--This whole goddamn war --Like finding a needle in a stack of needles
It's also great for running whether it's people running towards destiny
or towards the woman they love, even just running to run.
Hell, why not slow-motion? Or Tom Cruise?
And I don't know why but it also
really popular for supermarkets, maybe because they're soulless and terrible
like the Safeway near my house.
Godard seems to have done the definitive "I hate supermarkets" shot in cinema.
And there's a bunch of other one-off uses by certain filmmakers.
Peter Greenaway uses it to make the frame feel like a moving painting.
I've seen Park Chan-wook use it for an amazing fight scene.
I've seen Buster Keaton use it for physical comedy.
I've seen Scorsese use it for a mass execution and I also really like this
one-off gag from Toy Story.
Some filmmakers make it a personal statement. Stanley Kubrick loved it
because it showed things the way they were and now how we imagine them to be.
He used it brilliantly in Paths of Glory to show the extent of the trenches.
And in The Shining, it's everywhere, one of the ongoing ways he builds a sense of dread.
The environment just feels oppressive when you look at it like this.
Another person who uses it a lot is Wes Anderson
because it conveys that kinda dollhouse, flat storybook look he loves.
It's also kinda inherently funny when you have
bright colors and people moving in straight lines like this.
But the one thing I rarely see the lateral tracking shot used for
is intimacy. It's not really an intimate shot.
No matter what you always seem to end up at a distance from the characters
and even the greatest filmmakers know this. So how can you make this shot
which isn't really intimate... intimate. --Did you get my flowers?
Here's one way by Martin Scorsese --you didn't get them, I sent them
Track away from the character
--Can I call you again? It's weird because it's unmotivated
and it's the opposite of what you're taught to do
but it really works. It feels empty and sad and lonely, and it makes you
feel bad for Travis Bickle by removing him from your field of view.
--I tried several times to call her but after the first call, she wouldn't
come to the phone any longer.
Or here's another. This is widely considered
one of the greatest shots in the history of cinema.
The fascinating thing about this shot is sheer length. It's nine minutes long
of the main character trying to take this candle from one end to the other.
But since the shot has only one visual focus and one dramatic goal,
Tarkovsky can let the moment unfold. We see every step
the character takes, every failure, every retry.
The shot's length puts you in a weird meditative trance.
Because it's so simple you can read it as a symbol or metaphor for
any struggle you could possibly want. It's a model of simplicity and purity
and then there's this:
I actually think this is the most emotional use of this camera move
in the last five or ten years.
And to prove it, watch how the moment plays if I take out the track
and just do a straight cut or a dissolve
or a push in. This is a perfect example where the lateral move
is exactly right. Being further away from the characters makes this moment
sadder because we can't help them. Moving left to right implies that time
has passed and we can never go back.
So all that brings us back to Wolf Children.
Like a few shots on this list, it's actually a really intimate
little piece. It shows kids growing up right before your eyes.
But unlike every other shot on this list it's actually physically impossible.
This isn't a literal shot, it's figurative
It's really only possible through the magic of movies
and specifically animation. It moves back and forth
through time and space and all it does is
tell the story these kids growing up. So even if you're like me and
you don't really understand how to use a lateral tracking shot,
it's great to see that someone out there clearly does get it
and is pushing forward the visual grammar in some small concrete way.
By the way, the rest of this film is really lovely and beautiful and will
probably make you cry at the end. And call your mom right afterwards.
So go watch it. Happy Mother's Day.