Luck

[Calzone Lord]

Originally Posted by GenuineRisk

Come to think of it, Luck isn't any more complex than Game of Thrones, but I guess complexity is easier to take when there are swords and a lot of nekkid people.

Luck seems very simple outside of the Dustin Hoffman charachter -- where a lot of stuff is going on and some of which I'm not exactly following.

I enjoy watching Luck...but it's so badly handcuffed by the time period it's based in.

Base Luck in the late 1800's -- make the Dustin Hoffman charachter Plunger Walton... you will have so many great angles and charchters of the time to work with. It couldn't possibly fail.

You'd have much better angles at every turn. You'd lose the Escalante charchter (obviously the best one on Luck) -- but his type of role could be replaced by someone like former slave Brown Dick. Brown Dick's Wiki page: ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_D._Brown )

Brown Dick won the Belmont as a jockey in 1870, he won the Kentucky Derby as a trainer in 1877, and was the leading trainer at Churchill Downs in 1871 and 1872. You'd have the whole race thing with some black jockeys and trainers.

Charchters based on people like John Morrissey, Charles Reed, Pittsburgh Phil, and the butcher Dwyer Brothers would be obvious.

[GenuineRisk]

Originally Posted by Calzone Lord

Luck seems very simple outside of the Dustin Hoffman charachter -- where a lot of stuff is going on and some of which I'm not exactly following.

I enjoy watching Luck...but it's so badly handcuffed by the time period it's based in.

Base Luck in the late 1800's -- make the Dustin Hoffman charachter Plunger Walton... you will have so many great angles and charchters of the time to work with. It couldn't possibly fail.

You'd have much better angles at every turn. You'd lose the Escalante charchter (obviously the best one on Luck) -- but his type of role could be replaced by someone like former slave Brown Dick. Brown Dick's Wiki page: ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_D._Brown )

Brown Dick won the Belmont as a jockey in 1870, he won the Kentucky Derby as a trainer in 1877, and was the leading trainer at Churchill Downs in 1871 and 1872. You'd have the whole race thing with some black jockeys and trainers.

Charchters based on people like John Morrissey, Charles Reed, Pittsburgh Phil, and the butcher Dwyer Brothers would be obvious.

You've mentioned that before, and I do think it would be a great premise for a show, not to mention make for some great costume porn, so to speak. The budget, though, I imagine, would be astronomical for a TV show.

[Calzone Lord]

Originally Posted by GenuineRisk

You've mentioned that before, and I do think it would be a great premise for a show, not to mention make for some great costume porn, so to speak. The budget, though, I imagine, would be astronomical for a TV show.

I've never understood why they need to make their own racing scences.

Can't you just get a cheaper racetrack to let you film a few actual races and use them?

The racing scences are always terrible in every horse racing production. They're better in Luck than in any horse racing movie...and they're still pretty bad.

Why not just find a racetrack that will let you film races on the track. Put those cameras on the jockeys helmets and take as many flashy camera angles as you can for each race.

Hell, even film the trial races at EVD that so many soon to be first-time-starters in the state of LA compete in. If you pay the connections a few hundred bucks to wear saddle towels and silks I'm sure they'd be happy to.

After you have 100 races or so in the bank...pick the cuts from the most useful ones.

If you want to add anything to an actual racing scene ... go make the silks, go buy a similar looking horse, and add on to it.

Making an entire horse race from scratch is nuts and the end-result is always laughable.

[Indian Charlie]

Phar Lap scenes were pretty good.

[GenuineRisk]

Originally Posted by Calzone Lord

I've never understood why they need to make their own racing scences.

Can't you just get a cheaper racetrack to let you film a few actual races and use them?

The racing scences are always terrible in every horse racing production. They're better in Luck than in any horse racing movie...and they're still pretty bad.

Why not just find a racetrack that will let you film races on the track. Put those cameras on the jockeys helmets and take as many flashy camera angles as you can for each race.

Hell, even film the trial races at EVD that so many soon to be first-time-starters in the state of LA compete in. If you pay the connections a few hundred bucks to wear saddle towels and silks I'm sure they'd be happy to.

After you have 100 races or so in the bank...pick the cuts from the most useful ones.

If you want to add anything to an actual racing scene ... go make the silks, go buy a similar looking horse, and add on to it.

Making an entire horse race from scratch is nuts and the end-result is always laughable.

Really good question. What you're referring to is stock footage which you see in a lot of films, to better and lesser degrees of success. It's challenging for horse racing sequences:

The race sequences in a movie are staged to advance the dramatic action of the plot, and that is shaped via the number and type of shots. There's no way to determine that before a movie is storyboarded, and by that point you might as well just shoot the race as the director/art director/cinematographer envision the sequence, rather than hope that stock footage will give you what you need. Not to mention the time and cost of an editor going through thousands of hours of stock footage.

A camera in a car driving alongside actual racing horses, which you need for decent mid- and close-up shots would likely affect the outcome of a race, which would be unfair to the bettors.

Stock footage may not match the look of the film or video being used in a project, and the abrupt switch in video speed, or film type, is very jarring to a viewer and will take them right out of the story. It's very obvious in "Secretariat"- watch the film and you'll see the look of the video and film change a lot throughout the film, and not just in the racing scenes. It's really disconcerting. And even in that rather poorly made film, they felt they had to put the real footage of Secretariat's Preakness on a television, so the movie audience wouldn't notice how different the video quality was.

Trying to make continuity work from several actual races would be impossible. One of the things that I found hilarious about Jockeys was how often they cut several different races into one "race" and how obvious it was. The horse going into the winner's circle had a different saddle cloth from what was supposed to be the same one in the race, etc. I'm sure they did that to improve the look of the races- cutting together the best angles, etc., but it made for some huge continuity errors.

That said, I kind of love stock footage, because it can be hilarious. One of my favorite scenes from The A-Team (the original series) was when Murdoch landed an airplane by crashing it into an airport. The footage was obviously from Airplane. 1970's and 1980's TV shows pulled stock footage from movies all the time.

[Calzone Lord]

Originally Posted by GenuineRisk

A camera in a car driving alongside actual racing horses, which you need for decent mid- and close-up shots would likely affect the outcome of a race, which would be unfair to the bettors.

They would do this all the time in Dubai.

You would get the Jeep camera angle as well as the awesome blimp shot after a race. Only difference is that the vehicle would drive inside of the rail instead of on the track with the horses.

I don't remember all the racing scenes in Secretariat...all I remember is that the ones I remember were horrible. I'm not a suing person...but If I was Laffit Pincay Jr. --- I would sue the sh!t out of Disney for the ride he gave on Sham in (I think it was the Preakness) in the movie.

You can't make an entire race from scratch without it looking like a complete joke.

If you film a hundred races with all the riders wearing a jock cam -- you will get your share of dramatic races. A horse will break slow or flat out get left and still win. You'll get a few great head-to-head stretch duels. You'll get many instances of rough riding, inquirys, and major traffic trouble.

No one would have to sit there and watch all of the racing footage...just simply read the result chart...and in 20 seconds you'll know if anything dramatic occured that you'd want to work with in your racing scene.

Give me just 8 jockey cameras, NBC camera angles, a pan shot, and cutaways of a crowd and I'm sure I could put together way better racing scenes than anyone trying to stage a horse race from scratch.

[Calzone Lord]

This is what the Dubai Jeep camera angle looks like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XNuajf5Av0

[Calzone Lord]

This is Laffit Pincay Jr. -- one of the strongest stretch riders in racing history -- pulling Sham up for the entire final furlong of the Ky Derby. Fast forward to 4 minutes and 25 seconds in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhHfn...eature=related

[PatCummings]

Originally Posted by Calzone Lord

This is what the Dubai Jeep camera angle looks like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XNuajf5Av0

It also is used in the UK on turf courses...of course, it helps immensely to have a paved road to do it.

[dagolfer33]

Originally Posted by Calzone Lord

This is what the Dubai Jeep camera angle looks like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XNuajf5Av0

You had to select that f*c*ing race as your example. I vividly remember having Dar re me and another horse/all/Gloria de Campeo and another horse in a pick 3. Then I went back and scratched off 4 or 5 from the all trying to be cheap. The pick 3 came back 103k But, yea, nice camera angle.