"Let's make things difficult to see and hear. That makes for better cinema!"
Jackie Chan once discussed action scenes in US movies versus his movies. Western films: cut before the punch lands, maybe cut a few more times. Hong Kong moves: just show the action in one scene.
A great example of this is Hard Boiled 1992, the Hospital Shootout.
I think audiences are beginning to appreciate continuous scenes and are becoming more frequent in western films. The most recent one I can think of is John Wick 4, when it goes top down.
Some of the recent Michael Bay movies are so aggressive when it comes to cuts, the average shot length must be 2 or 3 seconds.
Michael Bay are basically not worth watching for me. Things move around the screen too fast to know what's going on. The Transformers movies are especially bad due to it because it can be hard to tell which robots are on which side; and , if you're bouncing all over the screen so you never get a chance to focus on one, it becomes impossible.
Modern live music edits are like this as well. When the guitarist is rocking a solo, I don't want to see the back up singers or the lead singer in rapid fire edits. I want to see the guitarist.
The top down John Wick scene had me flabbergasted in the theater. The choreography, the camera tracking, the flame thrower like shells from the shotgun all just made for one incredible scene that as you say definitely goes against modern editorial styles.
> Some of the recent Michael Bay movies are so aggressive when it comes to cuts
An excellent episode of Every Frame A Painting is "Michael Bay --- What is Bayhem?" It explains in detail in what way those particular movies are poorly made.
I wouldn’t say they are all poorly made, but they became poorly made as they became more Bayhem. Like how Tim Burton leaned too far into his style (and his love of Depp in everything) and lost the balance. The Rock, The Island, Bad Boys, and Armageddon are very fun, exciting, and visually interesting movies. Then he leaned into Bayhem and now his movies are barely comprehensible.
I once sat in on a TV production class, early in the schoolyear before my schedule got sorted out and it turned out I couldn't take it. So I was in it for one day.
But the teacher had the incoming students do a very simple exercise: He turned on some broadcast TV, and told us all to bang our fists on our desks every time there was a scene cut.
Then he changed the channel a few times. Soap opera. Newscast. PBS. Cartoons. Movie. Commercial break.
Our hands were sore by the end of it, but it stuck with me -- every time I watch older or foreign cinema, I am cognizant of how much longer the shots are.
So the class wasn’t to be for you, but the instructor taught you a lasting lesson in one day. Damn, I wish every class session I’ve ever had was that impactful.
