This thing pops up before YouTube videos with alarming frequency. I’m talking about the one that starts with him on a set, not the one where he’s seated. He looks very “director-y” with his baseball hat and all, and he talks to the viewer directly, even tho the action seems to indicate it’s a working set. And what he says drives me crazy! I can’t believe it was left in and another take wasn’t tried!
Just now I was looking for it to link, and when I finally found it (on Facebook) I was astounded to see that not only had they left the crappy dialogue, they had included it verbatim in subtitles!
“But there’s also a very other simple but important shot here…”
WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN?
How many people were present when this was filmed, edited, reviewed, etc. that all thought this opening dialogue sounded perfectly fine AND WHY?
I’ve never seen past about 8 seconds or so, tho, so I have no idea if the dialogue continues in this weird style, but ddamn! those eleven words make me cringe every time I hear him say them.
Ummm… are you in the filmmaking business? Have you directed more successful films than Ron Howard? I happen to like his style and thought the video was completely appropriate given the subject matter. I don’t know what crappy dialogue you are referring to, and no, I had never seen it before. I don’t know what you expected, but it conveyed the information perfectly to me. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
That’s the way he talks. Don’t like it, don’t listen to him. I have watched lots of his YouTube vids and have been able to understand every one of them perfectly. Maybe I’m just used to the way he talks. If you don’t think he’s worth listening to then don’t sign up for the Masterclass.
I admit I would not have thought that the notion that the grammar present in “But there’s also a very other simple but important shot here…” would ever be considered as anything but lacking on the Straight Dope Message Board.
I watched it. Its just the one sentence, and judging by the rest of the intro, he’s just really passionate. Fascinating juxtaposition: He’s not the Director of his Masterclass video on Directing. It’s actually THAT Director with whom you have a bone to pick.
And the bone to pick is obviously “How dare the director let Ron Howard speak extemporaneously and unscripted in such a grammatically atypical fashion!”
“Very” and “other” are both modifiers of “simple”. There is a customary order, which is obviously what OP’s fixated on, but reversing them doesn’t invalidate them.
I presume it means “But there’s also another very simple but important shot here…”
People are bad at grammar, especially when speaking. I agree that this can be irritating, but I find the best way to deal with it is not to ever pay too much attention to what anyone is saying.
Nitpick: I think “other” is modifying “shot” here.
As for “very”, it was presumably intended to modify “simple”, but the word ordering suggests a different reading of the phrase – one in which “very” modifies “other”. I would call this a grammatical error, although I’m not entirely sure where the line is between “bad grammar” and just “not idiomatic English”
I mean, if I said “I saw a brown big bear”, that might sound odd, because most people would say “I saw a big brown bear”. There’s a more idiomatic and less idiomatic way to order those adjectives. But the meaning is unambiguous in either case; both adjectives can only modify “bear”.
But if I said, “There’s a very other simple shot,” when my intent was to say, “There’s another very simple shot,” the reader could be confused, at least momentarily. It leads you to ask, “How can something be ‘very other’?!” I assume that’s what the OP found objectionable.
Have you ever heard someone say “a whole nother?” Like, “There’s a whole nother bedroom upstairs?” The more correct way to say it, of course, would be “another whole bedroom,” but I hear “a whole nother” fairly frequently. “A very other” strikes me as a similar type of error–inserting a modifer into the middle of the word “another.” The “n” is dropped in this case, but it seems like the same basic idea. It’s not quite correct, but it’s also not the worst error in the world, either, and an easy mistake to make when you’re speaking quickly.
