' Out of Sight' The Elmore Leonard-based crime comedy that saved Steven Soderbergh's career

Achieving stylish entertainment without forgetting the spirit of experimentation

Soderbergh finally had enough and abandoned the spirit of experimentation that had fueled his previous films to make his first major studio film. . No, that's a big lie, I'm sorry. Soderbergh decided to generously inject his long-standing ambition to explore the possibilities of film and his cinephile taste into the framework of a major film!

For example, in this work, the images sometimes turn into still images. The effect was intended to change the scene or add an accent, but Soderbergh deliberately chose not to examine it carefully and randomly decided on a frame to use as a still image. I think Soderbergh is some kind of control freak, but what makes him so great is that he uses even this "appropriateness" as a pawn to control his work. Soderbergh's outstanding skill for instantly determining the balance between precision and relaxation, between planning and randomness, can be said to be the essence of Soderbergh's directing techniques.

"Out of Sight" Fim (C) 1998 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.

The complicated composition of mixing past and present was handled using a super simple method of changing the color of prison uniforms for each prison. A unique tempo was created through the above-mentioned still images and interlaced chronological editing, and by combining the light beats of former DJ David Holmes with the nostalgic melodies of the Isley Brothers, the entire film was brought together in style. His ability to make a number of eccentric challenges look fashionable could be called a Nouvelle Vague-esque work, along with his subsequent work, `` The Man from England '' (1999).

However, the experiment was too much and there were some failures. There is a scene in which Jack escapes from prison and takes Karen hostage, climbing into the trunk of a car with him. The conversation the two have in the darkness of the narrow trunk determines what happens next, but Soderbergh thought, ``Since it's actually pitch black, let's make the screen pitch black.'' However, when we did a test screening, one scene in which nothing was shown on the screen and we only heard the lines over and over was very unpopular. Soderbergh readily admitted his mistake and reshot the film so that their faces could be seen.

What ``Out of Sight'' left behind on the film industry