Does anyone know if the bad editing when the boar/s runs from right to left over the screen was a misstake from Kurosawa, or if he did it on purpose for some strange reason?
"Bara bip, bara bap, bara bop, bara bip." Santino Corleone.
It looks like he filmed them running across all separately, and then edited them together to look as if they're all running across one after another. I doubt that he intended the editing to look choppy, he was just trying to get the affect he wanted, albeit not seemlessly.
sharethe moment during the boar hunt reminded me of the 'running sequence' from seven samurai, although this may be an unwanted comaparison, or an unintentional result. the technique looked similar to me at any rate, and is unlikely to have been used to make one big angry pig look like three, as some directors are want to do (there are other shots containing more than one of them in the sequence, if i remember correctly).
its definittely there though as you describe. i prefer to think of it as an instrument to direct the pace of the scene; the boar may have fled in different directions, or taken a longer than acceptable time to pass the static camera there.
at the very beginning of the scene the hunters are all alert, but motionless and silent, the edit may have been a pace issue to contrast this.
yeah, i noticed that one too, the frames jumped between shots, like it was the same boar running back and forth filmed mulitple times and then spliced together to look like more than one. he did a great job of doing that with limited extras and horses throughout the whole movie, just not so hot with the boar.
If you look closely, you'll see that there are three boars (the same three whose backs you see passing in the lower part of the frame in the previous shot). What has happened is that interior frames of a continuous shot of the three boars running past have been removed to tighten up the space between them. I wouldn't call this a mistake as much as it is cutting to preserve the rhythm of the sequence. In fact, I think that the jump cuts are exaggerated at the beginning of the film precisely because they are unsettling. Look at the sequence as a whole, with the music and the cuts setting up a complicated rhythm, climaxing with the jump cut between two close angles of Hidetora and then the black frame with the blood-red title.
shareI think the 'jump' of the grass, the hill, and the background indicates that this was three different shots, framed slightly differently. I hear what you're saying about the fast edits, and I don't disagree with that point... I think this is a case of him trying to use fewer boars and trying to make them look like more... kind of the way he was famous for doing that with the horses in 7 samurai, and making 140 extras look like thousands in Ran (I think that was mentioned in the trivia section?).
I like your idea though, I think it would have been even better to show the three boars as an analogy to the three sons, if he'd either done a better jobe editing/framing the shot, or presenting them in three more distinct and separate shots.
After rewatching the scene, I think you are right. There is an angle change on the jump cuts, and there are three shots. While I still think they were done to pace the boars' passing in the "rhythm" of the scene rather than to multiply the number of boars (since there are three of them in a continuous shot before that), I agree that the angles use are too close to each other for the edits to work correctly. The cuts consequently look more like mistakes than having the effect I think was intended, which was the effect I mentally "filled in" remembering the scene.
Still, considering that Kurosawa was pretty much blind by this time, I'm surprised there aren't more continuity errors!
It's funny, I was going to mention the exact same thing about his vision! As good as he was at setting up a shot like that in his previous films, it must have been difficult with his vision problems.
I agree with you about the pacing and the rhythm. I think to some extent maybe the boars represented the sons, and the tough old one they ate was representative of him?
Cheers
He always used 3 cameras from different angles (I don't know why 3 - but I've heard it was always 3), the different directions might well have been different cameras. I'm not sure why you think that was bad editing or a mistake? I'll have to take a look to see what you're talking about.
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RIGOLETTO: I'm denied that common human right, to weep.
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I know this post is really old, but I would like to point out, that the tree immediate cuts follow the soundtrack's claves rhythm - it appears very intentional to me
Sometimes my arms lean backwards
Like Schoonmaker/Scorsese, Kurosawa was a very unconventional editor, though brilliant in his own way. Those cuts were entirely purposeful and were meant to be noticed. Someone mentioned similar editing techniques in Seven Samurai. It was simply a stylistic tic of his.
Kurosawa himself edited both films, by the way.