sanguinarysanguinity:

old-type-40:

Given the news that Jackie Chan won an honorary Oscar, I thought people might be interested in this excellent analysis from Every Frame a Painting.

The video above points out the ways in which Jackie shoots his scenes that make them more effective than American action sequences.

OMG YES.

If you’ve ever tried to vid an American-filmed action sequence versus a Chinese-filmed action sequence, the difference is stark. With American-filmed action sequences, once you take away the “biff, bam, pow” soundtrack, there’s nothing left: it’s all dark, muddy, vague, directionless flailing. It requires SO MANY FRAMES to put together a half-comprehensible sequence, because the thing hitting and the thing being hit are NEVER IN THE SAME SHOT. As a vidder, walking a viewer through an American-shot action sequence is like walking someone through a math problem: you have to painstakingly explain, step-by-step, what anything has to do with anything else, and the whole time you’re praying that you haven’t lost them along the way.

Whereas what the commentator says here about Chan’s HK-filmed sequences is spot on: everything you might need to understand a shot is IN THE SHOT ITSELF. You don’t need a “pow” in the soundtrack to inform you that someone supposedly hit someone else: you can SEE the thing hitting and the thing being hit – and any other necessary context! – all in the same frame. Chinese-filmed action sequences vid like butter, I tell you. Everything the viewer needs to know is in every frame, so you can show them twice as much in half the time without them getting confused, it’s MAGIC.