I’m fascinated by the work of Vimeo user Roman Holiday (real name: “Matt”), whose supercuts scrutinize a few very specific, isolated elements of famous movies to demonstrate how they serve as universal fundamentals of film making. He has two essential kinds of videos: first, supercuts that survey dozens of seemingly unrelated films to identify a single kind of shot that appears in all of them. Below are two examples: clips of two characters driving in a car, shot from the car’s hood; and another that corrals shots from inside a refrigerator, looking out at one or more characters.
His second basic form is a distillation of a single film down to just its close-up shots, spotlighting the nuts-and-bolts detail work that helps propel a story along, often at just a second or two at a time. Below, supercuts of close-ups from “Jackie Brown,” “Die Hard,” and “Hard Boiled.”
All of them are surprisingly transfixing to watch, even with their larger narratives stripped away. See them at vimeo.com.
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