【翻译/校对：赵翔宇】
这篇文章是《视与听》杂志上的一篇强文，文中的视频从PTA之前5部作品中各选取一个长镜头，进行画外同步解说，进而总结出PTA摄影风格由繁至简的演变，文章还包含了对应于这个视频的完整文字版解说词，现在把这篇文章翻译出来，供大家一起交流。
【正文：】
本文追溯从《赌城纵横》（1996）到《血色将至》（2007）共五部影片摄影手法的变化历程，讨论保罗·托马斯·安德森（Paul Thomas Anderson，下简称PTA）是否已经摒弃了那些华丽的东西。
在思考《大师》是如何区别于PTA早期作品时，我发现最显著的不同是摄影机的运动和展现。我相信会有人分析后发现，这部影片在多达一半的时间里，几乎都是特写镜头，而很少有镜头的运动。
这跟他《不羁夜》和《木兰花》那种充斥着眼花缭乱的斯坦尼康镜头的炮轰时期不同。但是通过观察他电影生涯中的每一部电影，可以总结出PTA电影手法的演变。这篇文章审视了PTA之前5部作品中的一种标志性的跟拍镜头，展示了（5个段落中的）每一处是怎样体现他的摄影手法的，涵盖了从他早期电影的花哨，到（后来）比较精细的“重构图，轻运动”的方法。
虽然《大师》里也有在百货商店的一些旋涡式的跟拍，而且后来还有一些直线型侧面跟拍，来展现那段摩托车狂飙的兴奋感，但这部电影里更多的是入镜头和反打镜头的室内戏。看起来PTA的摄像风格跟斯科塞斯，奥特曼，甚至是库布里克（PTA经常被拿来跟这几个人比较）的相同点，已经不像跟乔纳森·戴米的那么多了。其实，PTA在《不羁夜》的DVD评论音轨里，表达了自己深受戴米的风格影响，不过戴米本人倒是无法从《不羁夜》中认出一个PTA说是受他影响而拍摄的镜头。
一个电影不花心思在驾驭摄影机的运动上，而是更在乎电影在精神层面的触及，这种取舍现在（在PTA的电影里）看来是很明显的了。在PTA迄今为止的大多数心理层面的电影作品里，为了进入人物内心，他在很大程度上放弃了自己标志性的摄影机运动。
（下面就是这篇文章的主体，这个视频在PTA之前5部作品中，各选取了一个长镜头，并从对斯坦尼康使用上加以解说，进而探讨PTA摄影风格的演变）
【视频：保罗托马斯安德森作品中斯坦尼康镜头处理之演化】
【下面5段是上面这个视频的对应画外解说词（保留英文部分，便于对照视频，其实也可以单独看文字）】
In his first feature, Anderson’s use of Steadicam already exploits the dramatic qualities of cinematography, juxtaposing Sydney’s dynamic movement against other gamblers seated like zombies at their slots and screens. The camera whips to a side-angle view of Sydney, tracking him laterally; in doing so it seems to pass through walls of ordinary gamblers. It then opens into a wider view of the floor, a panorama of light and sound, both realistic and expressive.
No other shots are as flashy as this one in Hard Eight, a fairly low-key drama led by a reserved, even inscrutable lead performance. But Anderson allows this one shot to give a glimpse into Sydney’s subjective experience, the thrill of walking the casino floor. It’s a precocious display of character development achieved purely through camera movement and staging. The camera revels in this sensory landscape and simultaneously transcends it, as Sydney advances to his rightful place at the head of the craps table.
在他的处女作里，PTA对斯坦尼康的使用，已经利用了摄影的戏剧特性，把Sydney的运动与其他僵尸一样坐在他们自己位子上的赌徒并列呈现。摄影机侧拍Sydney，在旁边跟着他走，我们看到他穿过了几排普通的赌徒。接着是比较广阔的视角，光与声的全景，即真实又有表现力。
这是《赌城纵横》里最浮华的拍摄段落，摄影机相当低调地被一个缄默甚至有些神秘的主体牵引着。但是PTA让这个镜头稍微给观者展示了一些Sydney的主观体验——走在赌场里的兴奋感。这是单纯通过摄像机运动来实现的对人物性格的初步展示。摄像机纵情于展示感官上的画面，同时当Sydney来到他赌桌旁时（也即这个段落结束时），摄影机展示过的内容，也已不再只是感官上的画面了。
The celebrated opening shot of Boogie Nights hits you from the beginning with the bold appearance of the film’s title followed by a discombobulating tilt to the theatre marquee. It tells us we’re in Reseda, in the heart of Southern California’s porn country, but the floating sensation of this crane shot works less like a physical establishment of place, and more like an out-of-body experience.
Like the shot in Hard Eight, the camerawork owes a debt to Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas and Casino, the way it explores a historical milieu by moving through it. But a key difference is that Scorsese’s camera asserts a documentary authenticity, primarily through an explanatory voiceover and a steady accrual of factual observations. Anderson discards those elements, plunging us directly into a state of sensory overload, washing us in a lurid palette of red and orange punctuated by neon.
这段著名的《不羁夜》开场段落，从一开始就能抓住你，镜头先是以大胆的方式显示出电影名，紧接着是没有规则地斜拍向电影院的招牌。它告诉观众，我们在Reseda，在南加州色情乡村的核心地带，但是升降镜头的漂浮感，让你感觉那不像是一个机械在拍摄，更像是你在魂不附体地游荡。
如《赌城纵横》的段落一样，这里的摄影风格得益于马丁•斯科塞斯的《好家伙》和《赌城风云》，镜头为展示历史环境而直接深入其中。但是一个关键的不同的是，斯科塞斯的摄像机追求的是纪录片似的真实性，主要通过解释性的画外音，同时（通过摄影机观察到的内容）一点一点引入事实情况。PTA没有这样，他让我们直接陷入一种感官超载的情形，让我们淹没在红黄霓虹的浮华中。
This three-minute shot introduces us to eight characters, perhaps more than we can keep track of, but the feeling is always pleasurable, like being at a party where you don’t need to know everyone’s names to enjoy their company. Anderson’s camera is exultant, wanting to encompass everything and everyone at once, but if you look carefully, you’ll notice that at almost every point your vision is trained to focus on one particular character or area of activity, so that you’re never overwhelmed or confused. It also employs lighting cues like this spotlight to train our attention to a character’s arrival. For all its panoramic spectacle, this is still a linear viewing experience.
The shot ends with a double climax, a collision of speed versus stasis. A lateral sweep across the dance floor: a joyous expression of Rollergirl’s young body in motion, then slows to half speed to dote on young Eddie Adams, backlighting his youthful good looks like a discovery hidden in plain sight, waiting to burst upon the scene.
这个三分钟的段落引入了8个角色，也许我们会应接不暇，但是感觉上还是会不错的，就像你参加一个派对时，大家在一起，你不需要知道所有人的名字。PTA的摄像机太兴奋，想同时顾及到所有在场的人和事，（你可能觉得自己会发懵）不过如果你仔细看，你会注意到几乎你看到的每一个小段落，都会有一个摄影机在引导你去关注的人物或是活动区域，这样你就不会晕头转向了。而有时灯光也起着提示的作用，比如这里这个聚光灯提示我们注意到一个角色的到来。虽然有一些全景，它（总体）仍是一个线性的走位。
这个段落以双重高潮结束，也即动静的对抗。镜头先是从舞池侧面拍过去：一个滚轴女郎在兴奋地扭动她年轻的身体，然后画面的速度减半，聚焦到年轻的Eddie Adams，逆光中，他那年轻又俊朗的脸庞，好似隐藏在显而易见之处的惊喜，就等待着要从画面中突现（在观众眼前）。
This single two-minute-five-second shot encapsulates the essence of Anderson’s three-hour magnum opus, connecting five different characters with the sheer velocity of forward motion through narrative space and time. Working with an unlimited budget and final cut, with this film Anderson enjoyed a creative freedom afforded to the rarest of directors.
But with that freedom came a great anxiety, one that pervades the film. It’s an anxiety to prove himself, to do something even bigger than Boggie Nights. And it informs the hurried pacing of this particular shot, as the camera moves faster than what we saw in his previous films. We no longer have the sense of coming into one’s own as in Sydney, or in celebrating and absorbing a subculture as in Boogie Nights. Here the shot amounts to a relay race between five characters organised in six different configurations. The point of focus is exchanged between them smoothly along a single line of movement.
Ostensibly, this shot wants to reveal the working guts of a Hollywood television studio, but it doesn’t settle long enough on anything in particular to let you take in the details, other than the anxious sensation of people working and moving. If there are any potential areas of interest on the periphery, they pass fleetingly. It’s a shot that wants to be everywhere at once, and nowhere in particular. The attraction is in the camera movement itself as a spectacle of kinetic exertion: movement for the sake of movement.
这个2分05秒的段落，压缩了PTA这部时长3小时的巨作的精华，它通过向前运动（的摄影机）穿过叙事的空间和时间，把5个不同的角色联系起来。因为有着不封顶的预算和最终剪辑权，PTA在这部电影里体验到了一种难得的创作自由。
但是与此同时，自由慢慢变成了渴望，这种渴望弥漫在整个电影中。那是他想证明自己的一种渴望，他想做一些比《不羁夜》更棒的东西出来。而且这种渴望加快了这个段落的节奏，摄影机运动的速度比我们之前在他电影里见到的都快。我们再也体验不到那种进入角色（比如Sydney），或是融入到那些亚文化群体的狂欢（比如《不羁夜》）中的感觉。这个段落里，相当于是一场5个被安排在6个不同组合中的角色们的接力。随着（摄影机的）单线运动，画面焦点在他们之间平滑地转换。
表面上，这个段落看起来是想展示好莱坞电视演播室的内部，但是它不在任何地方多停留，不给你提供细节，它展现出来的更多是人们工作和移动的焦虑感。在任何潜在的兴趣点上，镜头都会快速的移开。这个段落，影片想同时触及所有地方，但是不强调任何一处。吸引人的是摄影机那绝妙的运动本身：为了运动而运动。
【私恋失调 Punch-Drunk Love (2002)】
With Punch Drunk Love, Anderson moves away from ensemble filmmaking in favour of a single character study, but ironically, the simpler premise allows his tracking shots to discover more complex applications. He does carry over one aspect of Magnolia: the sense of gnawing anxiety afflicting his protagonist. But he takes a radically different approach in portraying that anxiety cinematically. Instead of having his camera race frenetically, it tracks slowly in an ominous forward push, practically nudging Barry unwittingly through the gauntlet of his sisters as they heap casual abuse upon him.
Unlike the shots from the previous films, the protagonist is no longer held in the centre, but pushed to the sides of the frame. The slowness of the tracking movement allows us to follow not only him and also his sisters as they move around and against him. It also allows Anderson to utilise the space around the shot: notice how one sister calls from offscreen in one direction, as another sister creeps in from the other direction. This kind of lateral push-and-pull creates a counter movement to the tracking shot’s forward movement, a multidirectional tension that’s new to Anderson’s repertoire.
It’s even more prominent in this forward tracking shot. Here we really see Barry’s frustration of being pulled left and right throughout the film while all he wants is to go forward. It’s as if Anderson is using Barry as an on-screen surrogate to challenge and complicate his own forward moving impulses.
在《私恋失调》中，PTA不再追求群戏，而着力于单个角色的塑造。但是讽刺的是，这个更简单的前提，让他的跟拍镜头有更多复杂的用途。《私恋失调》中，他有一点是得到保留的：让他电影里主演抓狂的焦虑感。但是他采用了一个完全不同的电影手法，来描绘这种焦虑。这次他没有让摄影机快速移动，而是是让它带着不详地感觉缓慢地跟随着（Barry），当Barry的姐姐们跟他说着烂七八糟的话的时候，摄影机其实是不紧不慢地跟着Barry穿过她们的。
不像PTA之前的电影那样，这次的主人公不再处于画面中间位置，而是被放到了画面的边缘。摄影机这种缓慢的移动，让我们可以不仅跟随他一人，还可以看清他在周围晃晃悠悠的姐姐们。而且也可以让PTA来使用这个段落的空间：注意这里他的一个姐姐在从画面外的一个方向跟他说话，与此同时另一个姐姐从另一个方向悄悄入画。这种侧面推拉创造了一种与向前运动的跟拍镜头相反的运动，一种多方向的戏剧张力，成为了PTA的新绝活。
在这个向前的推拉镜头中，这一点更加突出。在这个地方我们真正地看见Barry左右徘徊的挫败境遇。这好像是PTA在用Barry作为一个银幕上的代表，用来挑战和复杂化他那向前运动的摄影习惯。
【血色将至 There Will Be Blood (2007)】
This two-and-a-half-minute shot is one of the longest in There Will Be Blood, yet it only moves several feet. But within those few feet it is able to create four distinct compositions, a profile closeup of Eli Sunday entering Daniel Plainview’s office, an obstructed wide shot of Plainview at his desk, a medium three-shot of Plainview, Sunday and Fletcher, and a final closeup of Sunday. Each of these shifts changes the dramatic tenor of the scene and the dynamic between its characters, exploring and expositing the space between them.
One way that it does so is by providing multiple steady points of visual focus for the viewer, as demonstrated in this scientific study by the Dynamic Images and Eye Movement project, that tracked the eye movements of several viewers to see what they were looking at in the frame. This steady multiplicity of focal points is something radically different from Anderson’s earlier films, where one dominant point of focus takes our eyes through the shot.
This camerawork may not look as flashy as those of his earlier films, but the dynamism and energy is there, compressed in slowness, steadily building dramatic tension, pushing towards release.
这个两分半的段落是《血色将至》里最长的段落之一，然而在这个段落里镜头只移动了几英尺的距离。但是就在这几英尺里，PTA却能创造出4个不同的景别：侧面特写要进入Daniel Plainview办公室的Eli Sunday，桌边的Plainview的有阻塞的广角镜头，Plainview, Sunday 和Fletcher的中景镜头，最后是Sunday特写镜头。每个景别的转变，都在改变着场景中主体以及角色间的动态关系。这些转变探测并且揭示着他们之间的关系。
实现这个目标的方法之一，是通过给观者提供多个视觉焦点，如这个“动态图像和眼运动”工程的科研演示所示。这项工程通过追踪参与实验的那些观者的眼球运动，来统计在每一帧画面中，他们关注的焦点是哪里。这种稳定的焦点的多重性，跟PTA早期作品是完全不同的，他早期作品里会有一个明显的焦点抓住我们的眼球。
这个段落的摄影也许不像他早期电影那样浮华，但是画面的活力和能量就在那里，蕴藏在缓慢移动的镜头里，它平稳地构建起戏剧的冲突，进而推动着（这种冲突）走向释放。
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