Steven Spielberg makes movies with an almost inexplicable proficiency that I’ve admittedly never thought too much into. Overall, Spielberg has an ability to make films that elicit heightened emotional responses from audiences while demonstrating technical prowess without being ostentatious about it. Maybe it’s just me, but I find it easy to get lost in the worlds Spielberg builds in his movies. So, that makes video essays like one by Antonios Papantoniou extremely helpful in dissecting the nitty gritty of Spielberg’s films.
Papantoniou’s latest Spielberg essay unpacks a sequence in Raiders of the Lost Ark — specifically, the iconic desert chase scene — and is separated into sections detailing each aspect of the sequence, including types of shots, camera angles and camera movements. Papantoniou conscientiously breaks down the chase cut by cut (counting a total of 224 by the end of it). Different technical methods were used by Spielberg, composer John Williams, and editor Michael Kahn in order to generate both tension and excitement in the 9-minute action scene.
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