“What the hell’s going on, Doc? Where are we? When are we?”
“We’re descending towards Hill Valley, California, on Wednesday, October 21st, 2015.”
“2015? You mean we’re in the future?”
Yep, we’re all in the future now.
The Back to the Future trilogy are the films that made me want to be a filmmaker, and 30 years has not dulled their appeal one bit. In a moment I’ll give a single example of the brilliance with which Robert Zemeckis directed the trilogy, but first a reminder…
If you’re in the Cambridge area, you can see Back to the Future along with my short film Stop/Eject at the Arts Picturehouse next Monday, Oct 26th, 9pm. You need to book in advance here.
If you can’t make it, I’m pleased to announce that Stop/Eject will be released free on YouTube on November 1st.
Anyway, back to Back to the Future. Robert Zemeckis is a major proponent of the Single Developing Shot – master shots that use blocking and camera movement to form multiple framings within a single take. Halfway through BTTF: Part II comes a brilliant example of this technique. Doc has found Marty at his father’s graveside, the pair having returned from 2015 to a nightmarish alternate 1985. In an exposition-heavy scene, Doc explains how history has been altered and what they must do to put it right.
It could have been very dull if covered from a lot of separate angles (and not acted by geniuses). Instead Zemeckis combines many of the necessary angles into a single fluid take, cutting only when absolutely necessary to inserts, reverses and a wide. Here are the main framings the shot moves through.
It starts on a CU of the newspaper…
…then pulls out to a 2-shot…
…which becomes a deep 2 as Doc walks away…
…before pushing in to Doc at the blackboard…
…and panning with him to the DeLorean…
…then pulls back out to include Marty again…
…rests briefly on another 2-shot…
…then becomes a deep 2 once more as Doc moves away…
…then a flat 2 again…
…then a deep 2 again…
…then pushes in to a tighter 2 as Marty realises it’s all his fault…
…then it becomes an over-the-shoulder as Marty turns to Doc at the DeLorean…
…then a 50/50 as they face each other…
…then it tracks back to the blackboard…
…and tracks in further to emphasise the reveal of the second newspaper…
…then dollies back with Marty as he takes it into the foreground…
…then dollies into a tight 2 to end.
I wonder how many takes they did of this, and how many different takes are used in the edit. Just after the reveal of the second paper there’s a cut to Einstein the dog, and when we come back to the developing shot the framing is slightly different, suggesting the dog shot is there to allow a splicing of takes more than anything else. All the other cuts in the scene are strongly motivated though, and seem to be there for narrative reasons rather than take-hopping.
Given the shortness of the lens – not more than a 35mm, I reckon – it’s likely that Michael J. Fox had to deliberately move out of the camera’s way at certain points, and the table seen in the opening frame may have been slid out by grips early on in the take to facilitate camera movement. I’d love to see some behind-the-scenes footage from this day on set, but none seems to exist.
So there you have it, one small example of the inventiveness which makes these films so enduring. Now stop reading this and get back to your trilogy marathon!