by Stanley Anderson » November 2nd, 2004, 9:20 pm
[from loeee]:
>Costuming: impossible. There is just no way to do it right. You'd have to
>put clothes on everyone, and that would change everything.
So you don't think the Tabloid-type TV show technique of using large "square" pixillated areas would work effectively, eh?:-)
But yes, I agree -- that is definitely a difficult hurdle. I think that theoretically, it could be done tastefully, even with the lack of clothes. I suspect most if not all the "revealing" scenes could be done "from the waist up" when necessary without too much awkward filming to avoid the nether regions as much as possible. And though this could still be the source of some untoward titillation, it is the sort of thing that discriminating viewers could get used to. I'm thinking of an Easter Island movie (can't recall the name at the moment) that involved a lot of topless scenes, especially of one of the lead characters. It was initially surprising, but by the end of the movie one was more interested in the story.
And by the way, I'm not at all sure that there wouldn't be a "cinematic" way around the question if a little creative thought were given to it (ha! it suddenly occurs to me to say "in order to avoid the "sin-ematic" aspect:-). Perhaps something along the line that the Green Lady's skin colouring and Ransom's "Piebald" burn, causing enough of a "shadowing" effect that with careful filming techniques might be able to effectively (and not corn-ily) disguise the delicate parts. Not sure, but possible perhaps. (but if it were successful, I could imagine an academy award for "best costuming", given the difficulties involved -- either that or "best editing":-)
But in the mean time, perhaps we can imagine that that particular aspect would not be a problem and consider other aspects of filming a movie of the book.
As a humourous aside, an interesting thought occurred to me that I would NOT recommend, but which I can't help mentioning. I'm thinking of a parallel to The Wizard of Oz where the parts that take place on Earth are in black-and-white while the parts on Perelandra are in colour. This is silly of course, but something along that line might be done. In another of our favourite movies, Enigma, in the director's commentary, he talks about the different film and colour techniques that were used to distinguish the flashback memories from the "real" scenes -- subtle differences that made the colours of one setting "richer" or alternatively more subdued than the other.
--Stanley