It's the question that drives us
It's the question that brought you here
You know the question, just as I did
What is the Matrix?
Well Keanu, there are a lot of answers to that question.
But today, we're going to be talking about the Matrix as in the 1999 film written and directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski.
It's one of the most important popular
and influential movies of the past 20 years
but these days it's legacy seems to be pretty much all based on a few surface level things
Bullet time,
black leather
and generally improving the quality of Hollywood fight scenes
What gets overlooked is that the Matrix is an astoundingly well made movie.
with some serious film making craft that's worth studying for all the cool, badass, aesthetic elements,
it's unlikely it would have become such a phenomenon if it didn't have such effective storytelling
Watching this movie, you realize how much care the Wachowskies put into every frame of it
that there isn't a shot or edit that doesn't serve a clear purpose.
Nothing is haphazard
everything is precise
I could honestly make a 5-hour series analyzing the filmmaking of the Matrix
but for now I wanna focus on a small element of it.
One that back in 99,
nobody left the movie theater excitedly talking about
but one that's an essential part of what makes the movie work
the scene transitions.
If you break it down, movies are a collection of scenes
and the transition points between scenes are a major opportunity for a filmmaker to control the pacing,
to part information,
or to give the audience subconscious clues.
Most scene transitions that you see
work kinda like this
a conversation in one scene ends
then cut to an establishing shot with a new location
then start a new dialog scene there
That does the job and there's nothing wrong with it
but there is so much more that can be done. The first act of the Matrix is split into 8 sections;
there is the code open with Trinity,
then Neo at his apartment,
then Neo meeting Trinity at the club,
the Neo at the office,
Neo being interrogated,
the car ride with the bug extraction,
meeting Morpheus,
and waking up in the real world.
This act follows Neo entering two new worlds;
the metaphorical world of Morpheus and Trinity and their little group
and then the actual real world.
The way the act is structured,
Neo keeps taking the steps into Morpheus's world.
Then stepping back into his own.
So he'll go to the club
then back to his ordinary apartment and office.
Then he'll be introgated by Agent Smith
then back home again.
And when you look at the whole act laid out like this, you
realize that every other scene starts the same way; with Neo waking up.
The idea of waking up is basically a mantra in this movie.
I mean the final scene is set to the song Wake Up by Rage Against the Machine.
And along with waking up, there is the recurring idea of dreaming.
So before these are actually discussed in the dialog
how does the movie laid the groundwork for these ideas?
Through the transitions.
When Neo decides to follow the white rabbit
and go to the club, literally taking his first step out of his mundane existence into the this new world
the transition emphasizes this by cutting from the stillness and silence of a one moment
to the exact opposite.
Immediately we're hit by movement and a wall of sound,
which make it clear that we're in a very different place.
And how does the movie shift us back at the end of the scene?
Well, during the scene the background music subtly shifts from Dracula(?) to Mindfields by the Prodigy.
As Neo's conversation with Trinity reaches it's end, the music builds with the repeated noise
that seems like it's part of the music but then we'll momentarily realize
it's his alarm clock.
That sound bridges the two scenes, guiding us from one into the next.
giving us a moment of humour
and building on the dreamlike feeling.
Since the alarm cut off the previous scene and we never saw Neo leave the club
and go home, it makes us wonder
was that just a dream?
Skip ahead to the end of the interrogation scene and we get a similar transition
The bug pulls itself into Neo's belly button
and we're cut to him waking up in bed as if from a nightmare.
It's an effect of cut because it uses the motion of both actions to connect them,
the bug goes down
Neo sits up. And the two scenes are linked by the sound of his scream.
But again, this cut straight into him waking up makes us wonder if that previous scene really happened.
The final scene of act one, begined with Neo waking up again
but this time not in his bed.
To get there the camera,
imitating Morpheus' words from earlier in the scene
essentially tumbles down a rabbit hole
and by rabbit whole, i mean
Neo's throat.
The shot plunges into blackness
and then, for the first time in his actual body
Neo wakes up.
Before this, each time he'd woken up he'd stepped a little further into a new world.
and now as he wakes up, he has entered it completely.
Okay, I wanna jump back and talk about the movie's first two transitions,
the one's on either end of the code open where Trinity escapes the Agents.
The first begins with the camera moving through the 3-dimensional space of computer code
through a void
and into the hallway filled with police officers.
The following one has the camera diving into the mouth piece of a phone
then pulling out from the screen of Neo's computer
On first viewing, those seem like examples of the impossible CGI aided camera move that became
popular in the late 90s,
but the truth is they are providing important visual information that will make sense later on.
And especially on a second viewing.
We learn that the matrix code actually makes up everything in this world
as exampled by Cypher's line
and of course what Neo sees in the climactic scene.
So by moving through the code and into a tangible world,
the transition is creating a link in our minds between the two.
And same thing with the second transition.
As the movie gives us a clue by having the camera travel through the phone
just as the characters travel through the phone back into the real world.
So when this transition is used again in the final scene
as the shot moves through the code and out through the mouth piece of a phone
this time we understand what it means.
Let's skip ahead
in act two, with things slow down a bit as Neo spends a lot of time learning about
the history of the Matrix,
and how things work.
But when the Wachowskies want to pick up the pace
they use transitions to do it.
Several of these are what David Bordwell refers to as the Hook.
An audiovisual texture linking an element from the end of one scene
to one at the beginning of the next.
So when Neo utters his classic line
Morpheus replies
And with a flash to wide(?) accompanied by a sound effect, we're now in a dojo with both of them
clad in martial arts attire.
Our minds immediately connect the iconography of the location and clothes
to Neo's previous lines. So this jump forward makes sense to us.
It's efficient storytelling.
A few scenes later in the Agent Training Program, there is a similar transition with a line of dialog
providing a Hook to a new scene.
Morpheus gets a phone call
Tank says
and Boom
we're suddenly mid-chase
with the music announcing the urgency of the situation.
There is a lot of talking in this section of the movie
which isn't a complaint. I think this is an example of really effective exposition.
But it's important that the Wachowskies know when to use these transitions to pick up the pace and
grab our attention.
Further ahead in the act,
transitions are employed to emphasize Cypher's betrayel.
In the scene where he chats with Neo, they drink a gross homemade alcohol
The only thing available to them in the real world
then as the scene ends Cypher says
again making an illusion to the matrix as a dream world.
As we have a quick shot of the matrix code
and then a close up of
juicy, delicious steak.
A sharp contrast to the beverage of the previous scene.
And for the trasition into the next scene, the film cuts straight into a shot of
whatever this goop is that they're eating.
It's using food in these transitions
to draw a contrast between the two worlds
underlining Cypher's decision.
Let's move on to the third and final act
this one is pretty linear
since while the previous acts takes place over days
this takes place over maybe a couple hours.
So the transitions pretty much follow the action
but there are some that are really interesting.
Check out how music is used as we cut from Smith's monologue
into Neo arriving in the lobby.
There is this metallic percussion that synched exactly with Neo's footsteps.
Because of the link between the sound and the action, our mind connects the two
and since the sound began in the previous scene,
it retroactively gives the impression of Neo marching forward concurrently with Smith talking.
Much of this sequence is split between two lines of action
Neo and Trinity moving through the building,
and the Agents with Morpheus in the interrogation room.
To create a link between two, the Wachowskies use some clever transitions.
This explosion occurs in the lobby
making the sprinklers turn on in the room.
So the transition is a cause and effect between the two scenes.
Then as it shifts locations again,
one scene end with a close up of this Agent.
As it cuts to close up of this guy,
linking the two in our minds because momentarily that Agent will take over his body.
Way back when I was in middle school, the Matrix was the movie that made me want to make
movies. If you asked me why at the time, I would've told you something about how awesome it was,
and how much I loved the fight scenes.
All of that is still true,
but what I definitely couldn't articulate back then is that a large part of why this movie is so engaging
is that you're watching two filmmakers in total control.
Using every tool at their disposal
the Matrix is a pretty ambitious movie.
In a little over two hours, it has to establish
multiple levels of reality
the mythology of a future world, it's rules
create a mystery
and also tell an exciting action thriller story.
For that to work, its story telling needs to be efficient
and this is a great example of how much heavy lifting can be accomplished simply by knowing when to
end a scene and what shot to start a new one on.
This is a testament to what can be done when you refused to be lazy with your film making.
Oh and check out how they use a match cut to quickly move us between two planes of reality
That's good stuff.
Hello guys and thank you for watching.
Now, halfway through making this I remembered there is a really good nerd writer video about the transitions
in Scott Pilgrim's words of the world (?)
and it takes a totally different angle than this one
there is no real overlap between the two.
But I wanted to mention anyway because if you haven't seen it for some reason, you should check it out.
There is a link down there
and I actually almost made this video about a totally different aspect of the Matrix and I'm considering
still making that video. So if you wanna see it, let me know.
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where now available to patreons you can watch the wacky movies I made in highschool
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Also I pretty much never use my tumblr for anything other than posting these videos
is there anything I could be using it for?
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Let me know!