Found this on Twitter this morning. Astonishing.

From Steven Soderbergh’s writeup:

I want you to watch this movie and think only about staging, how the shots are built and laid out, what the rules of movement are, what the cutting patterns are. See if you can reproduce the thought process that resulted in these choices by asking yourself: why was each shot—whether short or long—held for that exact length of time and placed in that order?

And:

I’ve removed all sound and color from the film, apart from a score designed to aid you in your quest to just study the visual staging aspect. Wait, WHAT? HOW COULD YOU DO THIS? Well, I’m not saying I’m like, ALLOWED to do this, I’m just saying this is what I do when I try to learn about staging, and this filmmaker forgot more about staging by the time he made his first feature than I know to this day.

Follow the link, watch the movie. That soundtrack is “In Motion” by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Fascinating how beautiful this film is, even with the loss of color, dialog, and that amazing score.

Was this used by permission? And, if not, how has it escaped a takedown all these years?