Center-Framing vs Chaos-Cinema: Mad Max vs Transformers
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.ย. 2024
- Join me on Patreon for bonus stuff: thisguyedits.c...
With all the excitement around Anya Taylor Joy and Chris Hemsworth's Furiosa, I thought this would be a cool video to make.
Mad Max: Fury Road" (2015) and "Transformers" (2007) are both high-octane action films, but they employ distinctly different editing and cinematographic techniques to captivate audiences.
Both films utilize their respective editing styles to enhance their storytelling: "Mad Max" with its relentless pace and stabilizing center-framing creates a streamlined narrative amidst chaos, whereas "Transformers" offers a more traditional blockbuster experience with its own brand of kinetic spectacle. Despite their different approaches, both films effectively use their visual strategies to immerse viewers in their thrilling cinematic worlds.
"Mad Max: Fury Road," directed by George Miller, is renowned for its frenetic editing style. This rapid editing pace creates a visceral viewing experience that reflects the chaotic, dystopian world of the film. Moreover, Miller employs a technique known as center-framing, where the subject of action is kept in the center of the frame. This method is particularly effective for eye-tracking, as it allows the audience to easily follow the action without needing to shift their gaze significantly, thus maintaining a continuous flow and understanding of the high-speed scenes.
In contrast, "Transformers," directed by Michael Bay, also features fast editing. The editing pace contributes to the dynamic nature of the film, highlighting the spectacular transformations and battle sequences between Autobots and Decepticons. However, unlike "Mad Max," "Transformers" does not adhere consistently to center-framing. Bay’s style is more eclectic, often using sweeping camera movements and rapidly changing angles that challenge the viewer’s eye-tracking ability. This can create a more disorienting effect, which, while dynamic, sometimes requires more effort from the audience to follow the action.
★- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ★
THIS GUY EDITS (TGE) is a TH-cam channel by film editor Sven Pape, an A.C.E. award nominee whose credits include work for directors James Cameron, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Sundance filmmaker Mark Webber.
➜ MY FREE MINI-COURSE-
secreteditingh...
➜ ONLINE EDITING TRAINING-
thegotoeditor.com
➜ PATREON MEMBERSHIP-
patreon.com/ thisguyedits
➜ MY WEBSITE-
thisguyedits.com
★- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ★
#madmax #transformers #filmediting
Join me on Patreon for bonus stuff: thisguyedits.com/patreon
Mad Max: Fury Road" (2015) and "Transformers" (2007) are both high-octane action films, but they employ distinctly different editing and cinematographic techniques to captivate audiences.
The color grading of Mad Max: Fury Road is just horrible. Not like the orange and teal cancer in Hollywood but still pretty bad. For anyone interested in that topic I would recommend reading the article ORANGE AND TEAL - HOLLYWOOD PLEASE STOP THIS MADNESS.
"the best films" all the transformers films are trash and you lower yourself by raising them up in anyway by attention.
I think another factor is that most of the Mad Max frames are less busy, they contain fewer, more congruent elements. And they generally have cleaner edges. Transformers has very busy frames, lots of elements that are almost haphazard. And the edges are pretty busy.
The scale matters too - Transformers has huge scenes accommodating huge characters _and_ small characters, so the framing necessities are different than Mad Max, where everybody (and the interactions they perform) that you need to understand are uniform (people-sized!).
EXCELLENT point Gerald
At Pixar what you call "eye tracking" we called "hookups", and a lot of my job doing camera polish involved making sure that the audience's eye picked up the important thing on the B side of the cut. This is the legacy of Lee Unkrich, who joined us as an editor on Toy Story and taught us a lot. It's why Pixar films feel so smooth.
You forgot the end quotations after "eye tracking."
@@MegaLPlover Fixed, thanks.
What is the B side of the cut? I can imagine what it means but can you explain to confirm it?
@@EbonyPope The A side is the outgoing clip, the B side is the incoming one. In other words, you cut from A to B. So the B side refers to what happens right after the cut.
@@CraigGood Okay then my suspicion was right I think. Just to make sure the B side therefore is the second shot like someone reacting to what was said in shot A right?
Man, this makes me want to rewatch Furiosa again just for the centre framing. It really doesn't feel like a 2.5 hour long movie.
The film is just so good
Furiosa was awesome 💯 One of the few recent films specifically made for the big screen, imo.
I watched Furiosa specifically knowing how good Fury Road was with center tracking. I don't think they did as good of a job as Fury Road, but it was still a good film.
I actually saw it three times at the cinema lol
If you compare "Mad Max: Fury Road" to "Furiosa," it's not quite as good. I think one of the main reasons is that some reason hate Anya Taylor-Joy. Every time I see her face, I just think, "WTF is that?" ☹️
I think another reason why Mad Max seems less chaotic is because of the camera movement; in Transformers the camera pans much more frequently ( in an uncontrolled way), whereas in Mad Max the camera remains relatively static most of the time; and when it does pan, it is always a clear movement from object A to object B.
Also the characters themselves walk into the frame in Fury Road which always keeps them on the center. Such a cool movie.
About the camera that pans is literally evey Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport fan spoilering in a nutshell!XD
Transformers mainly use the chaotic camera movement to emphasize the sheer scale of the characters and make it feel more grounded.
The cgi would not look as groundbreaking as it does if you were to choreograph it like you're filming a regular sized character.
Sound design is a big part of it as well. Transformers is a cacophony of indecipherable nonsense. Everything in the soundscape of Fury Road makes sense.
@@masterofallgoonsI disagree, I think the sound design of the first few TF movies was excellent. Obviously not as “clear” as something like Mad Max, but they’re doing very different things. The sound effects of Devastator combining in the second movie has genuinely stuck with me for the past 15 years when I saw it as an 8 year old.
The eye track editing is very much a movie trailer technique too. Pretty amazing work from George Miller. It’s also a good example of what’s possible when a director storyboards and shoots for the edit, rather than rolling 17 cameras and figuring it out later
what productions roll multi-cam and just figure it out later? genuinely curious!
@@zacharoninoodle Peter Jackson loves to have as much coverage as possible for later. It's really not an issue as the guy above makes it out to be. It's just that when you storyboard and shoot your film for the edit, you're aware of the limitations of shooting time and coverage and therefore you pre plan each shot from the get go so you know exactly what you'll have in the editing room.
@@i-deni-i5138 are you sure? One thing I know about some of Peter Jackson’s biggest productions (namely LOTR) was the meticulous planning that went into most shots and sequences. I don’t know of any instance where he used multi camera set up. I can imagine that practice being used for some marvel productions of late
@@zacharoninoodle Pretty sure. Jackson is a perfectionist and will demand multiple takes until he thinks it's absolutely perfect, but he's also know for covering scenes with multiple cameras from different angles to have more options in the editing room.
@@zacharoninoodle surprised you don’t already know, but most Hollywood directors nowadays film this way. JJ Abrams is notorious for doing this, most of the sequel trilogy was made this way (especially The Rise of Skywalker) which makes the films feel very incongruent. JJ Abrams is notorious for “figuring out” what should happen as the film is being made. Many recent MCU projects are made this way too, even Anthony Mackey (Falcon) called out the director of the new Captain America movie that’s currently in production, it’s been leaked that the movie is being reshot again due to poor test screenings and they’re just blindly filming random scenes, and Anthony called them out for not making a script and wasting everyone’s time filming random scenes.
Fury Road might be the best edited movie ever. The speed and clarity of information conveyed to the audience, with minimal dialogue, is just astounding.
Transformers might not have center framing, but Starscream transforming mid air, jumping onto the jets to kill them is one of the coolest shots I've seen lol
fury road is in my top 5 of all time, but i still enjoy the shia labeouf transfomers a lot! great fun, no shame in it
That's just one good scene in a what, two hours fast trashy edited and cut movie, where you can barely see the scenes building up?
Don't get me wrong, if people enjoy that, they can and should. But so many people grow up with bad written or edited movies, fast cuts, shaky cams, overly excessive use of CGI instead of practical effects supported with CGI, that they think this is how good movies should be done.
@@thoscho9811 I didn`t say the movie was good, chill dude.
@@alaskaaa684 It was a comment directed into too many people not being differentiated enough. So instead of saying "These are bad movies, but the effects are cool.", they just list positive things up and those often stick with people who read or hear that. Nothing personal regarding to your likes/dislikes.
I agree that it can be interpreted differently. Those movies are one of many reasons why most movies are either boring or trash today and you can barely get a chance to watch good stuff back to back in cinemas. That's why my phrasing could have been more defined. 😉
Under the surface the first three Transformers films have genius cinematography and editing. They do not get the credit they deserve for this, as they are shot very distinctly from other films. It is an acquired taste, but there are so many artistic and technically innovative things happening with the Transformers films.
The fence jump scene from Taken 3 has more cuts than both of these movies put together
Nicely put ❤
I get the Michael Bay movies are meant to put you in the heat of the action but Mad Max: FR just proved that it's possible without sensory overload.
Tracking the action in relation to knowing object location makes for a pleasant experience. The chaos in Transformers is okay, but as we saw, it leaves huge gaps in the frame and we have to follow the action like bouncing ball unlike Mad Max.
However, it is possible to have off centered chaotic action and *not* be overwhelmed. The key is to replace the void with (for lack of a better term) a placeholder object that is "removed" once the action centres itself.
A good example would be the John Wick or Spider Verse movies. You're able to follow the action no matter what part of the screen you look at because the back or foreground also becomes a character.
Center framing was the strategy on Oppenheimer. I didnt notice as much in the theater for some reason, probably caught up in the massive spectacle of IMAX, but at home i noticed the cuts are often very fast.
I suspect center framing is restful on a big screen where you'd otherwise have to move your eyes a lot - it just feels natural. On a small screen where even a chaotic framing doesn't require as much eye-movements, it's more noticeable when the framing is so orderly, especially when the content of the images isn't as kinetic as fury road.
I think the reason why Oppenheimer was mostly center framing was because of IMAX. The huge screen would fill the viewers' periphery that framing a focal point off to one side would require the viewers to move their heads. Unlike in normal cinemas where you can just move your eyeballs. I think Hoyte van Hoytema mentioned this in a bts piece or an interview.
Wow you made me realize something new about my favorite action movies: they (mostly) use center framing! Thank you! Great video
The nice thing about the editing on Mad Max is that you could put it on a VHS and watch it on a crt in 4:3 and not lose much 😂
Michael Bay's action sequences on the other hand are really disorienting. There's so much going on everywhere that it's hard to follow what your supposed to focus on that it's just numbing bombast
Two completely different styles and I like both films. Sounds like a win to me
Excellent video! It drives me nuts when people don't factor in that older filmmakers are well versed in framing. They discovered this in the early days of cinema, that the human eye tends to favour the right side so the protagonist should always be leaning more on the right side of the frame.
I think part of the problem is a misunderstanding of the Rule of Thirds. The rule was developed in regards to still images. This can still work with film, if people are given time to see and understand the shot before moving to the next one, but that's difficult in action scenes.
Fury Road solves this by putting the focus in the center, or at least following the previous shot, as you said. Meanwhile, I once counted seven cuts in 13 seconds during a walk-and-talk across a lawn in one of the Transformers sequels. It was cut like an action scene, when they were literally just doing a lore dump. It was completely absurd.
It should be noted that if you want to surprise the audience you can make an action happen on the opposite side of where your eyes are between shots. Having a ton of action on screen-right and then cut to a fast left-right movement in the next shot will make the shot pop out and then make it feel like screen-right just got crushed by something fast and unexpected.
There's a lot of ways to toy with eyetracking and a lot of movies try to focus too much on just making everything hook-up and feel readable instead intentionally manipulating the audience's view. Horror movies do this more, and Perfect Blue is a great example of a film that used eyetracking to make some surprising and quick cuts.
That’s what I like about director Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black, The Addams Family): He always centers his frames in all his movies as well.
Fascinating. I had no clue there was so much to editing. I thought amount of cuts per time was like THE hallmark on which to judge. I was very wrong :D
These results surprised me, I haven’t watched Transformers in ages… but Bayhem struck me as chaotic and that a lot of the sequences came together in the edit… I also tend to find sequences tend to feel like they are faster when the momentum is planned and come together organically.
Great video as always!
That's really interesting and makes sense. You can really see how much easier it is to follow the centered shots during fast cuts. I'm wondering now if the experience of an adult may differ from that of a child. I'd like to see that comparison in eye tracking.
I would love an analysis like this over the progress of the bourne movies
Wow, this is super interesting. I have never even realized it while watching movies, but now I can see it all!
This was a great breakdown and very easy to learn about editing. Thank you so much 😊
Yes, Transformers very chaotic, movie fatigue after watching.
I do think that Michael Bay has some very nice shots and the overall effect of "chaos" is appropriate for a scene of giant robots fighting in a city, as seen from the humans running around trying not to get squashed.
But Fury Road is a classic modern action movie for a reason. Everything works together to deliver the most epic, high-octane film.
Fury Road is a masterpiece, and I love how you break this down. It’ll make it even more enjoyable next time. I’m actually quite fond of Transformers (the first one). It feels genuinely 80s, and that score from Jablonski is gold. The effects and sound design are also mindblowing. BUT it’s waaaay too long, and terribly edited. Take the whole sneaking into his room scene. I’d like to take an exacto knife to that, and make it two minutes long.
Bonus materials for Transformers movies tell a lot about Bay’s creative process. It’s all controlled chaos. Everything is planned and at the same time everything constantly changes. Sometimes literally because the director saw something cool on TH-cam :D
It’s a skill and one of the defining things about his style but it also makes his movies chaotic and extremely tiring.
The in depth planning and not changing this plan all the time always makes better cinema.
going to be taking notes while watching this helpful video!
I much prefer the editing for "Fury Road" and I'm excited to see how it evolves in "Furiosa"
A few years ago, I used to think "Center-Framing was a priority in mmovies.I prefer Transformers over Fury Road but that's simply because of its more sci-fi genre and character. But for the past two years, I've really admired a more wasteland styled setting for fiction with not so advanced clothing, vehicles, or weapons.
For me personaly, it actually worked for Transformers pretty well as it always gave me the feeling that we experience the "action" from a human perspective which is also supported by the fact that we have often shots where we see the Transformers and their fight from a lower position.
Later Transformer movies didn't capture it quite the same. But I would say, it worked pretty well for the first movie.
I wonder how The Bourne Supremacy or Ultimatum is compared to Mad Max Fury Road? Does Paul Greengrass compensate anyway for his shaky cam and fast editing with using center framing, or do we have to hunt for what to look for?
From what i remember of Bourne Supremecy you can (mostly) follow the action from a story perspective as in who's stabbing who you just can't get a good look at the fight
@@HunterGargoyle Same with Ultimatum. I remember watching a breakdown of that one hand to hand fight scene (after Bourne jumps through the window) and why you can mostly follow the fight, despite the extremely fast editing and shaking camera.
i have been editing videos and short films for living for past 8 years, watching your videos is like doing revision before exams 😂
I don't think that is a representetive stat(I mean the cuts/minutes stats). Because Mad Max is full of action and i strongly thing there is nonstop action happening in the movie. On the other hand Transformers is a Bayhem movie but it has its slow scenes. If you compare only the action squences, Mad Max might have more cuts/minutes.
yeah, came here to say this. Especially considering the ratio found wasn't that far off
If you are shooting a chaotic scene, I think it makes sense to edit chaotically. I don't mind being lost, being a little behind in the action, doing some almost subconscious effort to understand each shot. I don't think one way is better than the other.
Really interesting! Thanks for sharing (especially about center framing)
I think Transformers (the first three films) has a lot to offer in terms of its visual design, fight scenes, epic scale, etc. but I agree that the editing isn't as precise and smooth as Mad Max, which is also an excellent film.
That's what I was missing. Thanks a million for sharing it.
I think people over criticize Michael Bay movies. I personally like the way of taking shots, placement of the cameras, framing. The chaotic fast style is enhancing the the trill .Everything looks super cool and entertaining. Just imagine watching his movies as a teenager. Maybe we don't have that high energy as we get older, that's why it's getting more stressful than entertaining. I watched 'Transformers' at the age of 20, and it offered me one of the best theater experiences. In terms of sound design and visual effects, it was mind-blowing. I can't imagine the excitement and happiness if I watched it in my teenage years. These kinds of movies are targeted to a teen audience. Basically, they are action-packed movies for entertainment, nothing more than that, and they are delivering more than 100% of what I asked for. Worth every penny."
I saw Transformers when I was 12. It's the reason I'm directing my own movies today.
My own experience with the Bayformers movies was that they're the only action films where I got consistently bored watching the action scenes. There's just too much meaningless action that goes on for far too long, and I think the "chaos framing" described in this video contributes to that. I was 25 when the first film came out, FWIW.
Maybe you're right though - perhaps it's easier to digest and more engaging for a teenager? That might explain why some viewers like it, I guess...
I saw Transformers in my 20s, and it was the movie that made me stop going to cinema as much.Made me feel like movies weren't as good anymore, then Avengers and all the marvel crap started coming non stop...
Transformers was the first movie that made me feel old. In the action scenes, I kind of turned my brain off, I don't know how to explain it, it was as if my brain was ignoring that immense amount of information. Then I started to understand when my parents said "this film is too fast, I didn't understand anything, I even got a little dizzy"
Love this kind of analysis! Thank you!!
It’s amazing how the centre framing makes the movie so much more easier and more interesting to watch, the other movie was messy as it was not focused on anything in the action, was too chaotic.
Another reason for more cuts in Mad Max is that it's mostly Action sequence whereas Transformers has a lot of dialogue scenes too. The action scenes are cut faster than Mad Max mostly.
Excellent observations! I can't stand most of Michael Bay's work. Now I know why.
After watching Transformers in the cinema, I felt overwhelmed, and not in a good way. Like I'd been stuck spinning inside a washing machine for an hour.
Fury Road, on the other hand, was phenomenal.
I think a bigger factor than the center framing is how clearly defined the subject of each frame is. Like even when transformers has consecutive shots that are center framed, the frame is busier and has less contrast, whereas each madmax frame is a bright background with a single dark subject.
Mad Max is kind of a full movie action scene, while Transformers is a regular movie with lots exposition and also down time, isn’t it?
That should be taken into consideration. Only two action scenes should have been compared.
Also scene cut detection detect so many cuts that aren’t even there…
Correct me if I’m wrong. Haven’t seen Transformers after the first watch. But have seen Fury Road many times.
Great break down of film making versus action movie making. Long ago when I would make family video/dvds on iMovie from photos, I landing on about 3 seconds per photo... that felt like things were moving along, maybe 5 seconds for a more special photo. Anything longer that 5 and you feel like your in a family slide show trope.... interesting to see the speed and number of the cuts .
"Planning shots is hard." -Bay
Focusing on the eye tracking sequences in Fury Road, which were superb, may have given a better idea of how masterfully it was shot. This video kind of makes it seem like Fury Road is lazily shot center screen the entire time which is not the case.
Thanks you so much for this vidéo. Now CENTER FRAMING and EYES TRACKING are so obvious for me for a good storytelling.
"Being the best Transformers movie is like being the best square dancer in Hong Kong."
More people should do like Mad Max and give us something easy for the eyes to follow and doesn't leave the eyes disoriented.
5:33 Huh, when I looked up Fury Road's runtime, it said 120 minutes. I guess it wouldn't make a big difference, but yeah.
And a little anecdote that I watched Furiosa the sequel to Master Max Ferrero David my mother as made of the Transformers franchise in the broadest sense since I watched the Transformers Prime series I realized while watching Furiosa that the approach to the universe of Mad Max Fury Road was there close that the Bay films should have had from the beginning with Transformers
your theory about the stress put on the viewer, i found, was no more stressful than in the 4th transformers. by the end of that film, i was feeling motion-sick and otherwise physically uncomfortable. the scenes were growing exponentially dizzying.
this may have something to do with your theory, because the 5th movie suffers from "flickering aspect ratio". The black bars on the top and bottom were changing from one shot to the next and yet, TF4 was the more physically uncomfortable experience.
I think it's worth checking out this phenomenon.
I like both movies. I think center-framing is an artistic choice that looks great. Also, Transformers is one of my favorite action movies with awesome cinematography.
Reminds me of when I got dragged to see Quantum of Solace at the cinema, the opening scenes/car chase was so dizzying and stressful to watch, felt like there was a cut almost every single second, really hard to follow or care about anything on screen. Not a fan of chaotic camera movement.
Compared to Fury Road it was like night and day, Mad Max shows how to do action the right way whilst keeping everything easy to follow, QoS showed how to just make your audience want to throw up from car sickness whilst sat in their cinema seat!
That's exactly why I find so many action heavy movies annoyingly hard to follow. The amount of cuts and things to see all over the place, plus a lot of camera shake and blur... it really detracts from the enjoyement. Especially as the movie standard still uses very low framerate, which makes fast movement jittery and even harder to follow in those scenes, it should be quite important to convey the action clearly to the viewer, unless you're actively trying to represent chaos (e.g. a shellshocked soldier under the bombs) so not the entire movie!
Overall, Mad Max Fury Road is a vastly superior piece of cinema, whereas Transformers can be a dumpster fire. :P
Now I'm interested in knowing what a center-framed Transformers film would look & feel like.
This is the first time I've heard of center framing. I was always told the rule of thirds and how to frame your shots using the line. Despite adapting to and using this rule, I always could never wrap my head around why. I guess it's just a style like anything else, and I definitely like the center style more than the thirds style.
Thanks for changing thumbnail and saving our time
Honestly that moment where Wit Whitty was in the crag and you where hunting for something, when suddenly there's Whitty
I want to see those people with my own eyes who think transformer is a better movie.
One of the main reasons I cant watch a lot of modern action films, especially Bay films.
Ready Player One was absolute hell for me lol
He made best transformers movie than newer ones.....idc about human characters but transformers had really good chemistry combined with sick action...........
@@Wr-v1 ~ My favourite Bay film is the directors cut of Pearl Harbor. He toned his style down a bit on that one. First half of The Island was great too. Wish he'd slow it down more often
@@CastlesForEyes it always felt like he makes movies with such high energy he didn't care about the aethetics of filmmaking and just filming exactly what he wanted to.......i get the fact it can be annoying sometimes for i have also felt the same with some characters in his films but i loved the action with transformers and the way they were written...it didnt bother me the way he shot scenes.......armageddon was my childhood.........
I feel like its easy to criticise because its michael bay, but i think the chaotic style of filming does a great job in TF1 of making you feel grounded in the scene like youre there, these huge robots zipping across the screen all around you. To compare it from that fight scene in fury road, rhe action comes across far more thrilling and engaging, with the quick cuts and constant centre placing in rhe fury road scene even making it a little boring by comparison. Fury road is great and centre framing can be a great technique but i dont see this as the best foot to put forward of it.
i wish action shots would linger longer
one thing to factor in would be that mad max was also a 3d conversion film. so breaking frame would be a hindrance for the maximising the 3D cut to cut. that said, one thing we all know though is eye line is everything
👍🏻 An interesting comparison study between the two cinema films.
In principle and to say it in advance: both genres are different, so their content is hardly comparable. I think the Transformer series is more suitable for very young and “superhero action fever” viewers. I haven't been part of this for decades, and - without wanting to offend anyone - these film creations, which are filled to the limit with VFX, are now really annoying me.
The way you described it, the Mad Max story is much more mature and (for me) more worth seeing. I wasn't even aware of the editing speed. Everything fits in the film strip.
Greetings from 🇩🇪 and thank you very much. ✨
Mad Max had artists working behind it. The Transformers movies didn’t aside from the CGI artists.
Mad Max editing ans eye tracking is out of this world compared to Transformers, so focused. Even if it’s not a Shawshank redemption, Ill give it a perfect 10
ive been asking myself whatmade me dislike the michael bay transformers movies more than liking them and this could be the underlining issue. i would like to know what the rate of cuts for bumblebee (2018). its also a transformers movie but wasnt directed by michael bay and was much more loved by pretty much everyone. also bumblebee's pacing felt similar to mad max fury road now that i think about it.
Usually when a modern movie has a long action scene, it gets too chaotic, exhausting, and at some point it just bores me. Mad Max Fury Road kept my attention throughout. A lot of it has to with the action just being easier to follow in MM thanks to these framing and editing techniques. That plus (thanks to practical effects) it just looks more realistic and less like the overblown CGI crapfest in Transformers. Transformers also keeps the framing close to the point of claustrophobia, to where it's hard to tell spatially is happening in the scene. Sure, this is sort of the point of Chaos Cinema - to make the audience feel overwhelmed by the action. Maybe some people love that approach, but to me it's the antithesis of good cinema.
I remember seeing Transformers in theaters and left with a headache.
Fury Road is such a fun ride.
Nice breakdown and explanation!
FWIW, IDK, if it was an entirely fair comparison by using all cuts/total runtime.
The first 2/3s of Transformers was more of a lame comedy about a boy with robot friends, than a straight-up action fest like Fury Road.
Would be curious to see how many cuts Transformers had in the last act compared to Mad Max.
The last 30 minutes of Transformers (sans credits) is the cinematic equivalent of a toddler banging pots and pans, vs Miller's masterclass.
For me, transformers simply has too much shaky cam and motion blur, plus the fact you’re often looking at only parts of the robots, not their entire bodies.
To me, it’s a poor attempt to make action. Shaky cam only makes sense to me if it’s a POV image like a body cam / the characters perspective
I think both styles have a place, the key is having a plan to know what you want the audience feeling at any given moment. In this case the amount each of the directors wants you to connect with each of the characters and the scale of the action is also very different. Transformers pretty much hands you some cookie cutter characters to act as human anchors in the middle of a giant robot fight and help the audience experience scale but you rarely need the humans to feel anything but small until the action halts and the humans get their one shining point in the movie where they save the giant robots. Mad Max is very character focused in the sense that the scale of the actual conflict isn't significant until it's anchored on the characters and we need people to see and understand what they're feeling at any given moment of the film even during an action sequence, even if the actions sequence is calling for Max to be smacked repeatedly and we just need to see the disorientation and confusion on his face in an almost comedic manner.
"Where? What? What's happening?" Is basically me during the entire Transformers movie.
The time you get to concentrate on the characters in Fury Road would be totally wasted in Transformers. So they do chaos cinema to not bore you and to make the action seem more fast paced and the CGI better then they actually are.
This whole ''Chaos Cinema'' or how I call it, "Epileptic Seizure Cinema", has pretty much ruined action movies and specially Hollywood action movies, for a generation.
With M. Bay & Paul Greengrass' Jason Bourne movies, being the worst offenders.
Scott Adkins said it best, in an interview, quote: "I understand the artistic choice/intention behind this, they want you feel the chaos of the action, BUT what's the point of creating & shooting an elaborate action or fight sequence, when you can't literally see a damn thing as a viewer, from the quick cuts & shaky cam? That's why I personally prefer the style of people like C. Stahelski & David Leitch, who do these long takes without cuts."
Now compare the "Bayhem" as done in the Lego Movie!
Wow,that was incredibly interesting, thank you 🙏
interesting video... I didn't realize Mad Max looked great because of center framing and had that many cuts
Eye trace has always been an issue on Bay's films. It also doesn't help that the frames are so dense with information (the robots in Transformers for example are so overly complex that it's sometimes hard to know what robot you're even looking at when it cuts in close, and many of them don't have a strong enough silhouette even in a wide). I actually saw Fury Road in both 2D and 3D just out of curiosity and was surprised at how it didn't strain my eyes at all. Did the same with Transformers and almost walked out it was so jarring to look at. You definitely need to plan for 3D before shooting as your eye has extra depth information to take in along with moving across the frame.
Transformers and mad max both are the peak of their perspectives
I wonder why people think Mad Max editing should be credited to the director. That is usually editing style and can only be the works of editors or directors who can edit.
To me, Mad Max: Fury Road is far and away the better film. While both are action, loud and bombastic, one is cohesive in both narrative and action where the other is much more chaotic with no focus and is louder and much more bombastic for no motivated reasoning. I remember watching Transformers as a kid and going to see it in theaters thinking it was great, but over time, the thrill of seeing a childhood property to life and learning about film production and editing, it lost it's luster and thrill. While the visual effects were good, the story and the editing, not so much. Cinema is subjective,. Off topic, I'm curious of your take on the editing in Parasite (2019).
I wonder how much this cut pacing is affected by Fury Road having more of it's runtime consisting of chase and action scenes with comparatively few dialogue or exposition scenes.
Bad filmmaker vs good filmmaker
Madmax Fury Road is a textbook example of centered editing
@CGWHY this guy has made a whole summery on why transformers is the way it is
Yes indeed I agree that the center framing is best. Very clear that I did less work to follow the story and action in Mad Max.
Fury road is an all time great. I wish George had it in him for the prequel, it was fine but he didn't put as much into that one, green screen etc...
Rise of the Skywalker's desert scene beats both films. Headache inducing fast cuts.
That was the exact feeling when I saw the scene in Transformers - where to look at??
thx
I think you couldve gone a lot deeper with this. Because transformers does NOT feel as chaotic as Fury Road. Not even remotely close.
The scene where Joes war party intercepts Furiosas war rig, the buzzards, the guitar blowing fire, the music, Hardy strapped to the front of a front car literally bleeding out.
Not much comes close to that in terms of chaos. Made me feel 17 again coming up on acid.
many people see the frenzy transformation shots in the Transformers series as "cool", I just don't get it. it's just disorienting, like the action scenes in the Jason Bourne series
Well for the calculation of cuts per minute i think its would make sense to only count the action scenes as this doesnt account for the action/storytelling ratio
3:34 WOW i feel like my brain just opened