The Mad Magic of Off-Screen Space

A video essay about the freedom directors have to play around with off-screen space. // Join me on Patreon: // Follow me on Twitter: Off-Screen Space! This famous area of film studies can make for a fun case of how the spatial geography of movie scenes doesn’t need to follow the logic of real life. Sometimes, something you would see and/or hear in reality is not noticed by the characters because it’s simply not in the frame. Movies gotta surprise you every now and then. Based on Roger Ebert’s comments on how Sergio Leone plays around with off-screen space in “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly“, we’ll examine some other cases of directors doing the same to one level or another, such as Peter Jackson recreating one of Leone’s gags in “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring“. We’ll take a fun look at Jackie Chan in “Armor of God“, where he has the world’s worst (or, cinematically speaking, best?) spatial awareness; then, how in one shot from “The Banshees of Inisherin“, Martin McDonagh fits characters into the landscape; the climax of Dario Argento’s “Phenomena“, featuring a particularly sneaky villain; a terrific comic moment in John Ford’s “The Wings of Eagles“; history’s greatest knife reveal in my favorite Anthony Mann film, “Reign of Terror“ (also known as “The Black Book“); and a quick look at an often deleted scene from Jules Dassin’s “Night and the City“. Here’s the link to Roger Ebert’s review for “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly“ for his Great Movies series: #videoessay #filmmaking #cinematography Way Out West by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Artist: Scheming Weasel (faster version) by Kevin MacLeod Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library