There’s a play by Michael Frayne called Noises Off that is unique for its second act, in which you see the first act of a play from behind a set. The comedy comes from seeing the mishaps and dashing around and costume changes going on behind the actual performance. I’m thinking heavily of writing a superhero version of the play, as this summer has taught me that people apparently want to see their blockbuster films as poorly-shot behind-the-scenes specials rather than as actual films. Anyone want in on this with me?
Moving on: The cast and crew of The Dark Knight Rises will be making a big ole company move right the fuck out of Pittsburgh, having wrapped photography in the city of a million cellphone cameras. The last month has seen a literally day-by-day stream of virtually every move of the production that could be seen from any angle. What has resulted is a nearly unprecedented level of annoying-as-shit coverage of take after take of set-ups, stunts, rehearsals, mishaps, and ass scratchings. It’s been exhausting, and while people haven’t seen nearly as much of the film as they believe they have (all of this shooting and coverage will ultimately only represent a fraction of the film), it’s still been an incredibly frustrating experience having so much imagery ruined in crappy screenshots and grainy pictures that literally could not be avoided if you possess an internet connection. Compounding the irritation are the thousands and thousands of words vomited out in forums, comments, tweets, and FB posts about every nitpicky detail, most of it with absolutely no understanding of how filmmaking works, or how what they’re seeing might figure into a bigger picture. But with a classy little full page ad in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
So now perhaps the production will move somewhere hopefully more easily controlled, or with less attention-grabbing work to be done. Regardless, the vacuum it will leave is already being filled by The Avengers and Man of Steel. Is it just me, or has a switch been suddenly flipped? I’m not sure if productions are getting bolder about shooting on main streets, if some critical mass of camera phone saturation has been reached, or if it’s really just the energy surrounding the films in question. Either way, I’m happy for at least one stream of it to be slowing down. (This is something I talked about pretty extensively on the Imperial Trouble podcast, if you’re into that sort of thing.)
No more headlines like “Cool shots from…” or “awesome video of…” or “first look at…”
And if I’ve sounded grumpy , it’s because of what I think is cool and awesome and worth a look… footage from the actual cameras shooting all of this stuff!
Call me a grump or commiserate with me. Twitter, boards, comments — They’re the place to do it.
15 comments
I live in Pittsburgh, and while it was exciting to have them shooting here, I agree with you 100%. I’m sick of every other post on Facebook being shaky video or grainy “set” pictures. I know who’s in the film, I know who’s directing it, and I don’t care if you saw fake snow and prison extras fighting on some stairs.
Can’t wait for an actual trailer.
LOVE the idea of a “Noises Off” superhero movie. Brilliant.
It’s really not that hard to NOT CLICK A LINK. You make it sound like your eyes were forced open and images were burned into your retina. If you don’t like spoilage, avoid clicking on articles that say ** SPOILER – Dark Knight Rises set photos ** I really don’t understand the whinny attitude to spoilers.
There were spoilery pics on the front pages of major websites and even newspapers. Under normal circumstances I’d agree with you, but this was totally out of control.
Really don’t understand the knee-jerk reactions to what is going on either. “Bane looks short! OMG, this movie is going to blow now!” “Batman is out during the day! TOTALLY OUT OF HIS ELEMENT, PEOPLE!”
Annoying as shit.
They were used as icons, shared on facebook, posted in forums with no warning, dropped in unrelated articles, turned into meme images, aggregated into advertisements and spam, and included among header images and spotlight images on virtually every film site in operation. It was absolutely, 100% impossible to avoid seeing them if you maintained a normal routine of reading online film coverage or visting forums or using the internet.
Trust me, I tried.
Renn – I totally get your frustration with this, and appreciate your level-headed approach to the article. However, I wouldn’t call it a righteous anger. Sites like CHUD, AICN, etc., made their bones posting spoilers, on-the-set pics, rumors, sneak peeks, etc. for any movie that generated some buzz. In that respect, your indignation seems a bit hollow. We’re talking about a “world-wide web,” man. CHUD and AICN aren’t the only ones privy to “exclusive” information these days.
However, I’m totally with your intolerance of people passing judgement about a movie they know nothing about – except for a 30-second clip on someone’s cellphone.
That’s absolutely true, but the game has long since changed (read: co-opted by the man, bro). In the same way Fincher’s Social Network depicts a social networking model that was based on exclusivity which has long since done a 180 to basing itself on ubiquity and open acces, the online film coverage world has shifted from scraping and searching for every tidbit and providing rare looks behind the curtain, to becoming a studio-driven firehose of content.
But even then, those were novelties that were hard-won by intrepid web-masters and truly special things. Now it’s a deluge of minutia that if not fed by the studios themselves in ever more asymptotic cookie crumbs, pour out through ubiquitous cell phones images taken by everyone within five blocks of the action. That this film specifically had virtually every website online tapping their vein to the tweets and youtube videos and becoming flowing conduits of redundant and incessant “spy shots” was just too much for me.
Take notice of how few Dark Knight articles have been written by us in the past month, and how almost none of them were written by me. Just too tired.
Wow. You must lead a truly happy life if the most you have to complain about is the excessive inundation of DARK KNIGHT set photos/videos.
A funny context to that full page ad, I wonder if that is an underhanded F-U to the aforementioned segment of the city population and the giant boulders and crumbling buildings are directed to those holding up their cel phone cameras to take one final shot of the falling debris before it crushes them.
Eh, the deluge of dark knight doesn’t bother me. I just don’t click the links if I don’t want to. Most of the time I do… On a side note, I LOVED Noises Off. It makes me sad just thinking about ole Christopher Reeve. That movie was just awesome, and the only movie I ever really liked Carol Burnette in. IVE JUST COME FOR ME SARDINES!
It sure has been a…
(wait for it)
Steady Leak
of information getting out.
Posted by Chud Mobile for iPhone
no use in complaining, it is only going to get worse from here on out
BadassDigest, I’m looking at you!
It’s been interesting to watch the shift in philosophies among movie studios as time has gone on. In general, it takes a long time for an industry to change perspective on a topic. A little over ten years ago, studios did their best to keep as much information about films off limits as possible. Web sites got most of their info from spy reports. Then the studios realized the sites were providing free marketing to a highly-engaged audience and a select few began to be included in the studios’ plans. Today, we’re at a point where nearly everyone has a device capable of taking photos and videos on their person at all times. The same phenomenon has allowed CNN to capitalize on viewer footage — the iReport feature lets people submit video footage and images directly to CNN. But that’s part of a different discussion.
I don’t know if the studios have just accepted that people will take as many photos and videos as possible when a production is shooting in the public eye or if executives hope the glut of coverage will translate to a massive amount of traffic at the box office. With Batman it’s pretty much a sure thing. But I’d caution studios of putting too much faith in the Internet crowd — Snakes On A Plane was a pretty valuable lesson regarding that.
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