Sunday, November 15, 2020

Looking at a Shot from "Bullitt"


Trying something new. I thought I'd attempt to discuss a single weird shot in the 1968 classic film, "Bullitt". I wrote this text and made the video for Twitter (hence the 2 minutes and 20 second video limit, and you can read the original thread here.

Here's a quick video analysis of a shot in Steve McQueen's "Bullitt" (1968).


view on YouTube

An example of a similar phenomenon - in this sequence from "The Blues Brothers" (1980), the crash cam gets hit by the car, and the editors chose to keep this chaotic, potentially fourth-wall-breaking moment in the cut.


Here's the shot I'm referring to, isolated:


Update! @MarkMcKenny1 spotted these incredible videos. First, an old YouTube clip of the sequence. The original shot has a ton of light leaks and damage and a black frame! This means at some point (for DVD?), WB cleaned up the damage and also removed the black frame.


And this, a clip from @RealEOC, shows off the film damage and additional light leaks. It cuts directly to behind-the-scenes footage of the shot, and to say that the movie camera got damaged is putting it lightly. This is how catastrophic damage to a film camera can cause light leaks. That rig got completely taken out!





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