Melville’ Camera movement

[jamesblann]

Hi all,

I’ve been re-watching Jean Pierre Melville’s filmography and am curious about his camera movement. He uses a lot of small and medium length, very precise movements when tracking characters and it got me wondering how these types of moves were achieved in the late 60s. Would it have been an Elemac type dolly on tracking boards? It feels as if their go-to wouldn’t have been rails as you often have characters crossing frame, or a move will start following a character from behind etc. It seems that he blended locations and sets often, not to mention they weren’t big budget movies, so I suspect it’s nothing too high tech (for the 1960s) or unwieldy…

Thanks,

 

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