Oedipus Wrecks Filming Techniques
http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/newyorkstories-oedipus.jpg
Not surprisingly, I thought this film had the most interesting filming aspects. As Sheldon complains on numerous occasions to his therapist about his mother, even though he is in a conversation with him, the camera is still positioned so that it is as if he is addressing the audience directly, looking straight into the lens of the camera. There are some filming techniques, such as dark scenes during intimate conversations, voice-overs, zoom ins, and others, I believe those have been covered in great depth in my other blogs and now just seem to be a recurring theme in all his films. Instead of focusing on that, I will elaborate on one of the neatest filming techniques I have seen in Allen’s films, and this was his ability to put Mae in the sky. This is not only a brilliant filming technique, but also adds to the comedic portion of the film. She is releasing humiliation on Sheldon from up above, in front of the whole city (check it out below!).* What if he had just had Mae walking up to random citizens of New York, camera following her, and telling them different things about her son. That would have been boring and probably a little weird. Allen’s ability to do this however is extremely clever and adds a fair amount of comedy to the film. Imagine if your mom was up in the sky, overlooking all of Richmond, telling them embarrassing things about you. That would not be so funny!
Camera Shots
An interesting aspect of this film, is all Woody Allen's different camera shots. These include primarily panning, tracking, dollying, and especially craning. Panning is the rotation in a horizontal plane of the camera. This is very similar to someone who is shaking their head from side to side. Tracking is when the camera is mounted on a dolly or when the camera actually follows a subject who happens to be within the frame. Dollying is ultimately used to produce smooth camera movements. Lastly, the most important one I believe in this film, to show Sheldon from the point of view of his mother in the sky, is craning. This is when the camera is filming from up in a crane. Usually it is used to either shoot above something or to zoom out from a particular focus. This is extremely common in the endings of movies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panning_%28camera%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracking_shot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_dolly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crane_shot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panning_%28camera%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracking_shot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_dolly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crane_shot
How does Allen stand out? http://www.businessmayhem.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/questionmark.jpg
After watching all three of these films, I can honestly say, with all biased aside, that Woody Allen's film was my favorite of the three. First, his filming techniques stood out as being FAR superior to the other three. Especially the way he put the mother up in the sky to embarrass her son rather than having the mother embarrass her in a more traditional setting, down in the real world, going person-to-person doing this. Second, his film stands out because of his typical jazzy / clarinet style music he consistently uses in his films. I could immediately tell that the third film was his due to the music. This is a very interesting aspect I believe, to have consistent music throughout all of someone's films as Allen does. Lastly, one of the neatest parts about Allen's films is the way he always has himself star as a character in the film. I find this to be very interesting and something unique about all of his films.