Four years after his passing, we still haven't quite caught up to Satoshi Kon, one of the great visionaries of modern film. In just four features and one TV series, he developed a unique style of editing that distorted and warped space and time. Join me in honoring the greatest Japanese animator NOT named Miyazaki.
1 comment:
I got so caught up in this it was hard to make notes. Satoshi Kon was so innovative and effective that one decade of his work continues to inspire filmmakers today.
He used 3 major types of scene transitions:
• general match cut
• exact graphic match
• intercutting two different time periods which mirror each other.
He would also
• rewind the film
• cross the line into a new scene
• zoom out from a TV
• use black frames to jump cut
• use objects to wipe the frame
• go inside a new scene which begins in an actor’s T-shirt picture
Kon’s work was about the interaction between dreams, memories, nightmares, movies and life and matching images were how he linked the different worlds.
Kon
• stacked transitions back to back
• loved ellipses and would often jump past parts of a scene
o see a key pop up in a different scene
o see a man jump out of a window and fade out and come back later
o cut to a scene we don’t understand, reveal it is a dream, and go back to the conclusion of the previous scene
o see the start of a murder scene and see the gory effects later
• used symbols to illustrate character death
• would start scenes in close up so you had to figure out where you were as you went on
• used an establishing shot then revealed it was a point of view
• constantly showing an image then revealing it wasn’t what you thought
• cut for speed
Kon felt we each experience space, time, reality and fantasy as individuals and as a society.
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