[HPFGU-Movie] Broom Chase Scene was Re: World Cup and OoP film

[GulPlum]

At 00:59 16/06/05 , Valerie Flowe wrote:


>Eustace_Scrubb:
><However, I can imagine that the film makers would love to have a way out 
>of the threstral scenes.So we should_ just see them riding through thin 
>air, not a concept that the film makers are apt to be too keen on, I'm afraid.>
>
>Oh, they can do it! What about the invisibility cloak scenes? And what 
>about the LOTR scenes when Frodo is invisible with Gollum riding on his 
>back on the edge of the lava pit? Piece o' cake for those CG guys. 
>Especially considering that the HP movies are the  most costly in history 
>to film!

Valerie, I think you misunderstood the issue. You cropped the salient point 
from the original post (why delete the most important sentence from the 
post you're quoting?):

"In the books readers only "see" the thestrals because we're seeing from 
Harry's POV.  The movies don't quite work that way, of course, and the 
audience shouldn't really see the threstrals that the 6 students are riding. "

The point is not a production one, but a NARRATIVE one. Of course, with 
modern CGI, movies can show anything imaginable. But that's not the point.

In a book, we can get inside Harry's head and effectively see the world 
through his eyes. The narrative language of movies is different, as we are, 
in practice, external to Harry at all times (this is one reason why the 
books need to be "adapted" for the screen rather than just taking a book 
and filming it scene by scene).

The question, therefore, is valid. In theory, only a member of the audience 
who has seen someone die should be able to see the Thestrals, and 
accordingly, the rest of the audience should not. And that's plain silly.

However, there's an easy solution, using the language of movies, and not 
the language of books.

A perfect comparison are existing scenes with the invisibility cloak: 
whenever the shot is a closeup of Harry (or Neville, or Luna), we see their 
steers. When it's a long shot, we see the group sitting in mid-air. So, for 
instance, we see Harry and Luna getting on their Thestrals in closeups; cut 
to a long shot of Ron, Hermione and Ginny staring at them sitting in 
mid-air. And when they're airborne, include a shot from over Harry's head 
of him, his steer and the landscape below. Cut to a selection of long shots 
(from above and below) of the kids sitting in mid-air. And so on. The same 
rules apply to the COMC lesson.

That's the language and grammar of movies, and it works.

--
GulPlum AKA Richard, popping in and out