Effects of Unusual Framing: LEOPARD SKIN

We looked at how 2022 miniseries Leopard Skin uses transitions to compare-and-contrast scenes and how it switches POV within a scene; now we examine how Episode 4 "The Claustrophobic Diver" uses framing to put us inside the unease the three ‘bad guys’ feel.

The Desired Effect

The three exceedingly good looking criminals are cornered, unsure who they can trust and how close their pursuers may be; the goal of the scene — besides our hearing their attempts to rationalise and reach a solution through discussion — is to convey how on edge they all are.

A sense of unease can be achieved with many techniques: extreme concave/convex lenses to make the visuals surreal; pulling focus or keeping characters slightly out of focus; handheld or shifting camera; quick camera moves and edits; colour, light, and shadow such as starkly lighting a character from below; etc.

This scene does none of the above, instead achieving its effect almost entirely through framing, and a few moments of blocking shifting within the frame.

Shot Framing

While a Dutch tilt or other more significantly ‘odd’ angles almost immediately convey something is amiss, you can tweak ‘usual’ framing to set the audience on edge, especially if you do it more than once.

For example all the group shots are fairly standard ‘here are three people in relation to each other,’ but instead of the characters taking up the lower two thirds of frame and having their eyes sit approximately on the top ‘third line’ (the red line below), they’re quite low and small, with trees and buildings looming in the exaggerated headroom.

The singles are framed similarly to each other, avoid characters heavily favouring a side of frame, and are shot from a slightly lower-than-usual angle.

This keeps them all on a literally even playing field, while the ‘just slightly unusual’ angle continues to give us the creeping unease instead of something exaggerated; they’re uncomfortable and untrusting, but none of them are known (to us the audience or each other) as the outright villain or ‘good guy’.

Meanwhile shots such as this high angle give the impression someone is watching the threesome, though a fourth character is never seen from that vantage point.

In fact, in the other wide angles, you can just see this area of the balcony, and nobody is standing there, at least visibly . . . though there is one cutaway to the maid in a doorframe listening.

Cutting Together

The edit is quite straightforward, but as always plays an important role, making sure the types of shots are integrated, IE the slightly more ‘typical’ singles above are interspersed with the more unusual shots.

If the entire first half of the scene consisted of only the singles, and the entire second half was comprised of the wide-high shots and lower-third-framed shots, it’d have a different unsettling effect; likely not in the good way but ‘what the heck are they doing’ kind of way.

Shifting Blocking

The scene ups its ‘slightly off’ framing when it restages the characters into another slightly odd configuration without moving the frame.

Everyone’s eyelines look ‘past camera’ to something we the audience haven’t seen within this scene yet; we’ve very explicitly only looked either towards the criminals, or straight down from a very high angle.

Not until one criminal walks into the far third, coming into a far-frame-left closeup, and makes a comment, does the scene cut to what the three can see, and that turns into the episode’s title card.

Cumulative Effect and Takeaways

If you want to put the audience on edge, you don’t always need extremely odd angles, stark lighting, or wide-angle lenses shooting closeups. You can tweak several of your ‘standard coverage’ shots so when put together, they give the overall impression of something being wrong.

Whether or not the audience can consciously put their finger on exactly what feels off, they’ll get the feeling!