I like what Charles Matthews says in OSCAR A TO Z: "it's an elaborately artificial concoction, not a moment of which seems to be taking place in the real world --- it's not stagy, its soundstagy."
The blame for much of this lies, I think, not in the stage originas of the material itself, or that 95% of it takes place within the palace walls (and the 5% that's set outside looks pretty fake as well), but with the CinemaScope camera - the process still had its limitations, because although the camera moved "in and out" (forwards and backwards) well enough, it didn't "pan" from side to side very well - so the camera remains stationery sometimes as the action plays out between the characters (sometimes full-figure, which shows off the sets), and there aren't many close-ups to break up the static quality that can result from this. Sometimes the characters seem to be lined up across the screen from left to right, though there are definite attempts here to have activity in both the background and foreground of many shots.
"Somewhere along the line the world has lost all of its standards and all of its taste."
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Ray_BLOODY_Purchase
9 years ago
Yep. These were "bad habits" from the dawn of filming that came from Theatre. As they were corrected and more cinematic filming techniques came about, advancements in technology caused a "two-steps back" issue elements of sound-recording undid a lot of silent film cinematics since now sound equipment was being newly developed and had to be worked around. And as you say, when colour filming came about (As opposed to previous attempts which were post-filming tinting) two steps back had to occur again due to limits in the colour, and each new addition to colour filming added to this issue.
As I recall, when HD filming first came about we had similar issues occurring with how things could be filmed as bugs and issues had to be worked on.
::Stupid search engine...who'd even want to watch therapist porn?::
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