shooter and shootee in same frame.....?

[archangel]

hi guys,
just a small update.
been watching lotz of old TV westerns on YouTube.
mainly on CarrieOK4059, i think that's the right name..........
anyway, episodes of Lawman and Tombstone Territory feature shooter-shootee situations a few times.
maybe, because of budget and a "disposable" medium mindset lead to this happening.
oh, and, i think i was it in the High Chaparral a coupla times as well.
cheers,
archie.

[dave jenkins]

Great work!

[archangel]

yup, they are the ones in HN.
was watching the latest Lawman upload tonight and i counted two in the final showdown.
James Drury guest stars as Dan Troops brother in this one and dispatches the main baddy with 2 shotgun blasts before being shot about 3 x himself.
and it's all in the same frame.

High Chaparral: the Doc Holliday episode. Doc, played by Jack Kelly, shoot a Mexican in the head a very close range. Bullet hole in head included.
best,
archie.
PS: looks like Eastwood was very wrong about this type of thing.

[dave jenkins]

According to Frayling, Clint Eastwood said:   "You had to shoot separately, and then show the person fall.  And that was always thought sort of stupid, but on television we always did it that way...

The code for TV was even stricter than the one for films, so maybe what Eastwood was thinking about was the TV standards and practices (which were in a sense derived from the motion picture ones), and later in his mind conflated movie/TV censorship issues. In any event, when he worked for Leone, American TV is pretty much what Eastwood knew about.

Once again, HD: great job.

[cigar joe]

 

[archangel]

hi,
thank you all for your interest.
here's another thought..........
maybe, if he had lived, Eric Fleming would have been even bigger than Clint Eastwood.
i like Clint - who doesn't?
BUT.
Fleming is certainly a better actor, based on Rawhide, thanks to Carrie.
he engenders a certain trust and gravitas that Clint just doesn't.
also Steve McQueen in Bullitt is really an early Dirty Harry.
again, more trust and gravitas, than Clint.
archie.

[dave jenkins]

Back to movies.  Recently watched Gun Crazy (1950) and This Gun For Hire (1942).

Both broadly follow the Hays guidelines. For example in Gun Crazy a boy shoots a chicken using a BB gun. The boy firing the gun is in one frame followed by a still of the dead chicken in the next frame. In This Gun For Hire there is even a closed door between the shooter and shootee.  Alan Ladd fires a gun at a closed door behind which there is a woman. You never see the woman being killed but hear the noise of her falling to the floor.

Both scenes are probably more effective than if they had been filmed with the shooter and the shootee in the same frame.

The Hays code unintentionally contributed to the mise en scene of many films, sometimes for the better. Some of the euphemisms developed for sex are quite inventive.

It's worth noting that your movie examples come from the 40s and early 50s. The TV shows you mention seem to be later, when the hold of the Code was weakening. Early TV was an odd beast: there were the industry Standards and Practices that had to be adhered to, but then sponsors might have additional proscriptions as well. This is particularly true when a single sponsor was dominant, as with things like Kraft Mystery Theater. But things loosened up over time.

[archangel]

hi,
more.
"The Professionals" 1966.
j.

[archangel]

hi,
and more.
Rio Bravo. (1959)
Dean Martin shoots a guy in the saloon.
j.