Art of the Chase: BARKING DOGS and Changing Directions
Art of the Chase: BARKING DOGS and Changing Directions
what we can learn from a chase sequence in Bong Joon Ho's first feature
An analysis introduction as sudden as the chase begins.
Park Hyun-nam (Bae Doona) steps out of an elevator and looks around, spider senses tingling.
She walks down a staircase; off her look, we cut to a POV shot to see a flash of orange colour; cut in closer to signify she is very intent on this hand belonging to Go Yoon-joo (Sung-Jae Lee).
Then a reverse shot which shows her face framed in the same narrow stairwell confine (but the slot slanted going the opposite direction) as she yells.
That yell kicks off a chase which signals to the viewer how Hyun-nam would be disoriented and distracted, while allowing us to follow clearly who is where. It does this by:
colour-coding the ‘hound’ and the ‘fox’ in yellow and orange, respectively.
making closer shots shakier and moving in a more circular fashion as we are ‘with’ the characters in a twisting stairwell, and shooting wider shots stable and more ‘objective’, framing the characters more squarely within the architecture.
When the film changes which direction characters are running across frame, it’s done in closer, twisty-bits and not the wide - eg. Hyun-nam running L-R at 0:31, and then Go Yoon-joo running R-L in the shot starting 0:31, closely followed by Hyun-nam in the same direction. The camera swings to follow them, then - their direction firmly re-established - the cut to three wide, wider, widest shots from 0:38-0:44 keeps them consistently running R-L.
Quick shout-out to the editing which lays characters ‘on top of each other’ on the cut so it feels smooth and continuous - eg. the cut from 0:27:-0:29
As the music and editing get more frenetic, we are sucked in as the hound gets closer and closer to the fox, both running L-R until . . .
1:28 we see Hyun-nam’s eyes widen
1:29 a shot from Hyun-nam’s POV as a door opens towards her
1:30 the reverse as we see the door swing towards her contorting face
1:31 a smash cut to a plane in the door-coloured sky (the plane going R-L, or the opposite direction as Hyun-nam so insinuating an impact; framed right about where the apartment numbers had been)
1:32 the sound mix crossfades from chase-and-yell sounds to a plane ‘air displacement’ noises as
1:33-1:39 Hyun-nam falls, the airplane noise now sounding like blood rushing in her ears
While the whole chase has used elements drawn from animation (the sharp rectangles framing faves, the ultra-wide reminiscent of comic book apartments which are just boxes on boxes), Hyun-nam’s sloooooooo-mo fall is the most cartoonish of the sequence, reminiscent of Wile E Coyote suspended mid-air for several seconds before WHUMPing to the ground.
But there’s still one last detail to wrap up.
1:39 a cuts to the first wide-exterior-very-canted angle, looking down over the railing edge to see Hyun-nam on the floor, giving us *just* a moment to get our bearings before
1:42 we see Go Yoon-joo headed L-R on the floor above, and the camera follows his motion in one last directional switch.
Three little tots walking the opposite direction complete the scene.
Before you shoot your chase scene, consider not just how all the elements are going to cut, and how to keep the audience aware of the orientation of characters to each other, but what sort of feelings your shots and cuts are going to evoke in the viewer.
Barking Dogs’s chase scene has clear stakes - will the hound catch the fox - and we’re never at a loss for who is where, but its choices also cause tension, make us laugh, and drop our jaws in awed disbelief; not just at ‘what happens’ but the way it’s shown to us.
It’s those feelings which make a chase sequence something you want to watch again and again and again.