Here's a dazzling concept for a music clip: One shot, stationary camera, five guys. This performance of "Cold Irons Bound," from which Amazon.com is posting on their page for Bob Dylan's new album "Modern Times" (to be released Tuesday), lets you do your own cutting as you watch it. Keep your eye on Mr. Zimmerman as much as you want, but you'll no doubt find yourself focusing at times on the bass player, or one of the guitar players or the drummer. So, it's different every time you watch it. It's interactive! (And further proof that the integrity of mise-en-scene is aesthetically and morally superior to montage...)
Hell, one of my favorite videos of all time has absolutely zero cuts in it... Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al". Ingenious. Chevy Chase at his best. They just stood there and played their very subtle bit to the end. I still laugh when I think about it.
That video looks like footage from "Masked and Anonymous."
Isn't Cold Irons Bound a 10-year old song off Time Out of Mind? And isn't that just a clip from the godawful Masked & Anonymous (this is coming from someone who loves pretty much everything else Dylan or Larry Charles ever did
This is all very true, although (just to make this an issue with many shades of grey) one only need to look at Jonathan Demme's Neil Young: Heart of Gold to see the emotional power of the ocassional cut. Nothing but senseless cutting, however, and the viewer is bound to have a headache (see any Michael Bay or Ron Howard movie for my own personal examples).
JE: I just got "Heart of Gold," Rob, and can't wait to watch it. I lived for many months with "Stop Making Sense" when we played it first-run in Seattle at the Market Theater. Demme knows how to shoot music.
He certainly does. While there are a number of promising movies both coming up in theaters and on DVD that I have not yet seen (and that includes Man Push Cart, which I hope to catch during a visit to NY), Heart of Gold is the best of '06 that I've seen so far. Demme's camera and Young's lyrics communicate such wisdom and feeling together that it's akin to a sit-down with God.
It takes a very special kind of director to know how to stage a very long shot with no cuts, especially when it's still. There are very few directors now days that know how to use it, why they should, and when they should. No real thought put into anything with a lot of the Hollywood films. Andrei Tarkovsky was a wonderful Director when it came to long shots. Mezmorizing really. Then the few cuts mean that much more. Kurosawa uses it in "Sanjuro". Two Samurais facing each other down. The camera stays on the two still men for so long, that when they finally move and blood flies into the air, it's an emotional shock - then he cuts! Or Hitchcock staying on Ingmar Bergman's face in "Notorious". He holds it for such a long time, before cutting back to Grant's reaction. Or Tarantino in "Resevoir Dogs" when he tracks in on Harvey Keitel as the two other gangsters argue in the background. If you're going to make a cut. You make it count.