Thursday, April 7, 2016

The Art of Whip Pans

Since the visual effects of my opening is supposed to provide this chaotic and energetic feel to it, I felt like whip pans are the best way to justify it. I have recently ran into this video where it displayed every whip pan that is used in a Paul Thomas Anderson film. One of his films, Boogie Nights, has incorporated a bunch of these tricks of fastly rotating the camera to blur the vision. Like my film opening, this movie had a bunch of scenes that presented an energetic environment with the camera panning from one character to the other. In some shots, you could notice the after the whipping movement, the camera also dollies a little closer towards the subject indicating a sense of importance that comes from the person or other thing you have in front of your eyes. Here's an example below:

                                                     https://vimeo.com/52970914

What my plan is now along with close-ups of the instruments and the medium shots of the complaining students,  with the whip pans, I will transition from a medium shot of a student performing to another medium shot of a student performing.... Now this... people... is called a conversation between two instruments. In Jazz band, there's always a moment when one instrument has a solo and then another solo from another instrument follows it... yet then the solo from the first instrument returns. You see what happens? The two instruments are playing back and forth, almost as if they're arguing over something but its a beautiful argument. This trick is used often in modern arrangements to really captivate the spectators eyes. Let's see if you get captivated by this "conversation" that is used in Damien Chazelle's "Whiplash":


What you just saw is exactly what I am going to do (but two instruments rather than the conductor doing this). This will obviously further emphasize the art of playing music as people who are not really into the category of performance arts will soon understand how layered and expressive an atmosphere like this can be.

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