Random thoughts about the movie, etc. -- Cuaron

[GulPlum]

Nia wrote in response to my objections about McGonagall getting 
Binns' scene telling the kids about the Chamber:

> There are some rational reasons for their 
> choices: To have Smith tell the students the Chamber had been 
> opened fifty years before would have meant they had to cut out or 
> completely alter a scene they both liked (Harry going into the 
> diary) and to alter that would have thrown off the rest of the 
> story thread too. 

Yes well, that's why movies are "adaptations" of books - making a 
movie out of a book isn't just a question of filming the "best bits". 
In any case, whilst having McGonagall do the exposition would make 
the flashback less important in driving the story forward, it 
wouldn't be entirely unnecessary - it introduces Riddle and Aragog 
and makes a lot of structural sense, drawing parallels between Riddle 
and Harry. The flashback's focus would have been slightly different.

I've thought about it some more, and exposition of the true history 
wouldn't have removed the need for the flashback; what it would have 
removed would have been the whole Polyjuice sequence, because the 
Trio would have had no reason to suspect Malfoy. 

As we know, the introduction of Polyjuice and how it works is VERY 
important for GoF, so I will amend my original suggestion, and scrap 
the idea of McGonagall suggesting that Hagrid opened the Chamber and 
was expelled. In any case, McGonagall knows (or at least, she 
*should* know, if she's doing her job properly!) that the Trio have a 
soft spot for him, so she wouldn't accuse him that way. 

All she needs to do is to confirm the Chamber's existence, that it 
was opened once before, and that it houses a "monster".

<snip - Cuaron>

> Although I agree with your other comments about his creative 
> storytelling, you make it seem as if Cuaron uses the pans as 
> mindlessly as Columbus.  

Sorry, a small misunderstanding here. Perhaps the way I phrased 
things was a bit off; I made two separate points but put tem in the 
same sentence. I dislike Columbus's over-used Hogwarts overviews as 
transition scenes, on which I think we're agreed. :-) 

The separate point was about his downward vertical pans, which didn't 
annoy me as much as they did you. All I was pointing out is that I've 
noticed that whilst most directors would use upward and downward pans 
fairly evenly, Columbus has a definite leaning towards downward ones, 
whilst Cuaron seems to prefer upward ones. I wasn't assigning 
artistic value to one or the other (both are objectively equally 
valid), just making an observation.

There is actually one (rare) upward pan in CoS which annoys the hell 
out of me. When the kids come across petrified Mrs Norris, they see 
the writing on wall reflected in the water before they look up. In 
any other hands, that pan could have been an artistic flourish. In 
Columbus's, it simply doesn't work.

While I'm on the subject of filming styles, another observation. One  
basic element of filming kids: to bring the viewers into the kids' 
world and to give them a childrens'-eye-view of world, you put the 
camera at chest height! Every bloody photography manual goes on at 
length about that, so how come after so many kids' films, has 
Columbus not learned it?

This is a basic failing on Columbus's part: he just loves putting his 
camera in a crane so much that we're perpetually looking down on the 
kids (intercut with ultra-close ups of their faces). This causes a 
great deal of emotional distance, and one thing Columbus should have 
done before attempting PS/SS was to see his erstwhile mentor's E.T., 
the vast majority of which is filmed from (adult) waist height. 

This is something Cuaron seems to understand instinctively. The two 
parts of his Great Expectations use very different camera moves and 
camera angles: during the first half, when the the main characters 
are kids, the camera is at their eye level most of the time 
(especially when looking at adults); once we cut to adult Finn, the 
camera becomes much more fluid.

It's those kinds of things, apart from Cuaron's much more astute 
story-telling abilities, to which I'm looking forward. And although 
I've not had the chance to see his approach to major action 
sequences, I'm expecting him to be better than Columbus. Then again, 
off the top of my head there aren't any real action set-pieces in PoA 
besides the three Quidditch matches (which I fully expect to be cut 
down to two if not one, though I fail to see how, as each one raises 
an important plot point!) so Cuaron might not be stretched too far...