do
i had just turned 13 when the first
harry potter movie came out
according to warner brothers nearly 60
percent of the people who saw that movie
were 17 or younger for a whole
generation of us the harry potter series
spanned our adolescence and imprinted
onto our lives
a love of reading but less has been said
about
the films i think their commitment to
good cinematic work
was potentially just as important for
young people's
filmic education as jk rowling's
accomplishments were for
our literary upbringing for me that all
starts with alfonso quran
and the third film in the series the
prisoner of azkaban
coming at a crucial time in both the
books and the films
azkaban marks potter's transition from
perilous adventure stories for children
not in the restricted section
two increasingly dark increasingly
nuanced treatments
of character and plot picking quaran to
handle this passage
seems perfect in retrospect as it set
the tone for the grimmer and
grimier final installments of the series
but warner brothers has to be credited
for taking a chance on a director whose
previous film
was an explicit mexican road trip drama
about sexual discovery a lot of the
style of that film in quran's previous
work is
readily apparent in azkaban most notably
his fondness for a moving
often handheld camera just take a quick
sped up look at this early scene from
the great hall
not a single shot is stationary this
gives the scene and the film
a feeling of forward momentum and
establishes a curious camera
but it also lends to the film a sense of
unease
an inability to find stable footing now
for a film that is to be haunted by a
feared killer
throughout such a style is fitting
and this isn't the only signature
technique quran brings to potter his
famous use of the long
take is here as well this shot right
here is a minute and 49 seconds long and
as the critic kristen thompson has noted
it marks a crucial tonal shift in the
film
now the first two scenes one in which
harry blows up his
horrible aunt and one in which he takes
a ride on the ridiculous night bus
are both pretty light-hearted you can
almost say that these two scenes are a
nod to the two comparatively
lighter films that came before this
in this scene and this shot harry learns
of the true
danger he faces and what's important to
notice here is that with deeper more
significant peril
comes deeper more significant isolation
mr weasley pulls harry into another part
of the leaky cauldron
separating him from his friends while
keeping the specter of sirius black
in the foreground when the conversation
turns explicitly to black his image is
placed
between them with family and friends
framed in the background
then mr weasley pulls harry into an
alcove so that they are
alone asking harry not to go looking for
black and finally
for the key dramatic question and period
on the scene
quaran frames harry completely by
himself
now this is great filmmaking isolation
will go on to be a key theme in azkaban
and
the rest of the series despite its
constant message of
friendship and its focus on the bond
between harry
ron and hermione the series returns
repeatedly
to harry's feelings of being alone the
chosen
one his gradual realization of a burden
that he must carry
without help the prisoner of azkaban
reflects
deepens and foreshadows these feelings
by separating harry out from his
surroundings or else
placing him apart from those around him
quran
never misses a chance to return to this
theme
whether it means separating harry from
his friends in a shot about
something else telling emma watson to
kneel
out of a shot or ending the movie by
having harry
literally fly away from a crowd
internal consistency this is one of
quran's major strengths
it's what makes the prisoner of azkaban
a cut above the rest of the films in the
series
some of which are quite good motifs
shoot back and forth across the run time
like
magic spells and comment on each other
tightening a web
that laces meaning throughout little
things
like following empty footsteps in the
snow
before introducing a key object that
visualizes people moving through
hogwarts castle with
footsteps some immediate foreshadowing
there but what about some
longer foreshadowing maybe a little bird
that flies
around the grounds in the beginning of
the film to places it will only
later occur to us that map the sights of
significant scenes
in the movie or what about something
more meaningful like quran's
recurring motif of moving the camera
through glass
a motif that pays off twice in this
scene where the students
fight off a bogger a creature that
visualizes your worst
fear twice in this scene into beautiful
shots the camera
moves through the mirrors of this
wardrobe suggesting that
while it's important to look through
windows and see the world
you can also look through mirrors which
is to say
into yourself not to mention that these
shots just make you think
wait how did he do that a great question
for any young
film goer to ask and that's the point
here isn't it we hear so much about a
film industry that continues to
pump out crap films that's ruled by
lowest common denominator fare
there are a number of reasons for that
but one of them is that a lot of the
movie going public suffers from
cinematic illiteracy we don't know what
makes a good film so
the industry serves up superficial
projects that play on cheap emotions and
make us into passive viewers but
learning film
is always an active enterprise all great
movies
are teaching movies because they
encourage us to participate with them
and
with the whole of cinema this is why the
prisoner of azkaban is so important like
anything it's easy to develop a taste
for something
when we learn it young harry potter is
a mega franchise one millions of kids
bought tickets for and millions more
will watch
and re-watch at home having a great film
like this in that roster well the
results could be
exponential a small light that
in the end shines much brighter
than anyone would expect
hey everybody thanks for watching
obviously i'm a huge harry potter fan
i grew up with those books those ages at
the beginning were actually my ages um
so this was a blast to make i want to
thank you guys actually because
a lot of people actually pledged a
dollar or three dollars after last
week's video
um and those small pledges really mean
so much
because what matters to me is that if
you have the ability to pledge
trying to do so over a long term period
because
the patreon is really my salary so
knowing what i'm going to get gives me
the ability to plan
new projects bigger projects in the
future just makes everything a lot
more stable so i'd rather you do a
dollar you know over
a year than you know five dollars or ten
dollars over a couple weeks
obviously if you can do five dollars
over a year you're amazing and i can't
even believe it
um but thank you guys for everything
you've donated to this channel it's been
amazing it's helped me
grow this thing and it's growing really
fast now and it's really exciting
people are watching and paying attention
which is all i ever wanted to start so
thank you again i will see you guys next
wednesday