Annoying editing choices
When I reviewed Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I criticized the editing for choppiness. Due to seeing some additional material from the film (this is something I found during my last Tom Felton phase but forgot to post earlier), I have more to add to that criticism now :]
I absolutely adored Tom Felton’s performance in the film. But there was this one shot in the movie, which I found awfully fake and annoying. You can see the offending shot on this clip. The shot I mean is at the very beginning. The scene starts with a wide shot of Draco from behind (in which we can see Harry entering the bathroom). Then they cut to a side view of Draco crying in a closer shot and then Draco is shot from behind again, but this time it’s a much closer shot in which you can see his face in the mirror. The offending shot (for me, anyway) is the side view. It totally ruins the scene for me. The shot afterwards is actually very strong IMO. Tom Felton is quite striking in it (he’s also way more restrained on the crying - the two shots kind of jar for me). But the side view one looks (and sounds) very fake to me, I absolutely detest it.
So here’s what I found really annoying - they had much better (albeit more restrained) crying shots to put in instead :] I sort of suspected as much, but I have physical proof now:
It’s a shame I don’t have a better quality clip of that, but as far as I’m concerned that was much better than what ended up in the film. Ok, I know most of you are probably reading this and wondering why on Earth I’m nitpicking about this. It’s a ridiculous detail really (and isn’t even a book vs film one which people do tend to nitpick about ridiculously), but I somehow found that one shot really annoying, annoying enough to dedicate a whole blog post to it ;)
That interview generally had some pretty interesting and rare footage edited in. I actually got to see a bit of backstage material from my favourite Draco scene of the film *grin* It’s a bit weird seeing him talking to the floor (Harry was clearly added in later), but I still love the way he delivers that line *grin* Here’s the clip:
