Gravity breaking the modern rules

Quote: Fleastiff

Quote: zippyboy

Part of what makes Gravity great are the long shots, or scenes, with no cuts.

Just aired on TCM: Beneath the 12 mile reef a 1955 Romeo and Juliette amidst Conch sponge divers and Greek sponge divers in Key West. Do you have its financials handy Mr. Paco? Its average shot length was ten seconds. All that underwater stuff you know.

How did Orson Wells' Touch of Evil do? It had the longest opening shot in movie history, was that limited to opening only shots?

Are you talking about this film? It was a financial flop
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047029/

Touch of Evil was also a flop in the USA, but it did well in Europe.

One critics take on the best long track shots in film history (includes Children of Men)
http://trueslant.com/mikeharvkey/2009/11/30/the-10-best-long-tracking-shots-ever-filmed/

Quote: Pacomartin

Quote: Fleastiff

Quote: zippyboy

Part of what makes Gravity great are the long shots, or scenes, with no cuts.

Just aired on TCM: Beneath the 12 mile reef a 1955 Romeo and Juliette amidst Conch sponge divers and Greek sponge divers in Key West. Do you have its financials handy Mr. Paco? Its average shot length was ten seconds. All that underwater stuff you know.
How did Orson Wells' Touch of Evil do? It had the longest opening shot in movie history, was that limited to opening only shots?

Are you talking about this film? It was a financial flop ... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047029/

No. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045551/?ref_=nv_sr_1
Beneath the 12 Mile Reef ... it was a 1953 film shot in the Florida Keys with some shots of Key West.
Average shot length was ten seconds.

Man, I thought for sure that the tracking shot from Atonement was going to be on that list.

5 1/2 minute steadicam shot from Atonement

Alfonso Cuarón makes the best comeback to all people who criticized the movie for inaccurate depictions in the movie Gravity. He points out that to be accurate when Sandra Bullock pulls off a suit she would be wearing adult diapers if it was reality.

Perhaps film audiences do hold similar views about laws and sausages. One doesn't want too much reality. Adult diapers? For all of the Fifties, most wives were never shown as taking a bathroom break on TV, perhaps giving rise to the "I pooped today" tee shirts girls wear nowadays.

Runner up: Don't trust atoms, they make up everything.

Quote: Fleastiff

Perhaps film audiences do hold similar views about laws and sausages.

But there are a lot of people who love to pick apart films looking for inaccuracies. But some so called "inaccuracies" are deliberate decisions made by the author to improve his story.

Famously Shakespeare had a clock strike 3 in his play Julius Caesar. Even Shakespeare knew that the Romans kept time with sundials and candle clocks. But Shakespeare felt entitled to use an an anachronism if it advanced his story.

Quote: Pacomartin

But some so called "inaccuracies" are deliberate decisions made by the author to improve his story.

Which doesn't amke them less inaccurate, does it? :)

Accuracy, now, does not always make for good fiction. One of the most boring chapters I've gone through is the very realistic, very accurate "stern chase" scene in Niven and Pournelle's sequel to "The Mote in God's Eye," the title of which escapes me just now. It's proof, I say, that a space battle can be tedious. I'd rather have X-Wings whizz about like WWII fighters any day (even banking in the thin, thin vaccum).

Kubrick intentionally filmed this in candlelight to give it the authentic look. It looks a lot like the lights and darkness of an oil painting masterpiece.

Starting at .50 secs

EDIT

I didn't intentionally look for a gambling scene, but just happens to be one. : )

Movies change as to audiences.

Originally movies were shot one camera and one viewpoint as if the audience was sitting in the center of the mezzanine.

Some later techniques developed because budgets were too thin to do things "right".

Film databases catalog such trivia as name changes, first appearances, boom shadow, continuity errors, etc. but Wikipedia considers such things to be trivia and forces their deletion.

Casablanca was filmed with a one third scale plane in the background and the director hired a midget to wear overalls and work on the plane.

What do audiences want? What do they expect? What will they tolerate? Who knows. Most car chase scenes used to be filmed at 15mph. Then along came French Connection (where a Teamster missed his mark) and Bullit (filmed at speed). One director got good "street reaction" from the bank robbery scene by NOT telling anyone it was a movie, including the local police. Another director filmed a scene for blocking purposes with later shots to be for dialog... and intentionally did only that original scene where the actors thought it was a rehearsal to determine camera angles. The scene from In The Heat of the Night where Tibbs and Gillespie drink beer and chat was totally unscripted. Not one word of dialog was suggested to them... and the beer was real. Rod Steiger never broke character in that film and is said to have cut the on-location pot use by a third just because he never stopped being a small town cop chewing his gum.

The director of the first Ben Hur sent all the Teamsters back to the start line and said Gentlemen, I will shake hands with each one of you who crosses the finish line, but the first one of you to do will also get five thousand dollars. One director kept ordering re-takes of a Bob Hope "oater" in which dozens of extras had to consume large quantities of real beer. Half the day was gone before the extras were drunk enough to suit the director.

What will audiences want in the future? Who knows?

You reminded me of something else I remember seeing a clip on:

Quote:

His earlier insistence on not filming with live ammunition proved to be a good decision; having been told while filming Angels with Dirty Faces that he would be doing a scene with real machine gun bullets (a common practice in the Hollywood of the time), Cagney refused and insisted the shots be added afterwards. As it turned out, a ricocheting bullet passed through exactly where his head would have been.[95

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cagney