Five Shots: ANDOR "Narkina 5"
just what it says on the blaster handle
Five of our favourite shots — including three very different ways to transition scenes! — from Andor 1.08 “Narkina 5”
Camera Move and Rack Focus
The scene begins in a medium shot, an Imperial Starpath Unit we’ve seen before centered and in focus.
As Dedra (Denise Gough) speaks, the camera pulls back and tilts up slightly to show her in frame; the focus pulls to her, and she finishes talking as the shot settles.
The final landing shot shows her, the Starpath Unit, and the entire board room of bored Imperial colleagues, before cutting to one such colleague.
With a little clever blocking, movement, and rack focus, one shot gives us details, exposition, and context.
Unpleasant Symmetry
Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
As his life is sent spinning, shots of Syril underscore the cold, ruthless, sterile, bureaucratic efficiency of the Empire.
Many of his shots are perfectly symmetrical — even when other people are in the shot, they’re often balanced by someone else (as in the observation room: picture 1, below), or a later shot will re-balance the Force (as with Dedra questioning him from either side: pictures 2 and 3, below).
Scene Transition: Shapes
Andor loves using architectural shapes to transition, whether comparing and contrasting characters (such as this Season 2 juxtaposition of Vel and Cassian), or showing stark differences in locations such as here.
In the Fondor, the camera pushes forward towards a round window which looks out to the vastness of space.
That directly contrasts with the prison on Narkina 5, all the inmates can see are infinite squares leading to more prison.
Scene Transition: Motion
We had person-to-person and location-to-location, here’s person-to-starship!
As Bix (Adria Arjona) runs from Imperial cops, all seven shots have her, the stormtroopers chasing her, the camera, or all of the above, moving Left-to-Right.
Then the scene cuts from a closeup of Bix looking over her shoulder, to a wide shot of space, with the Fondor coming into screen also moving L-R.
As a nice little touch, it’s coming exactly from where Bix was looking in the transition frame, like so:
Scene Transition: Sneaky
This scene transitions so smoothly from one scene to another, you may not even notice at first you’ve been handed off!
First, Bix and Brasso (Joplin Sibtain) chat; Brasso always on the left, Bix on the right.
Note when Brasso repositions, he moves across a doorway in the background; no rack focus, nothing wild to draw attention to it, but clearly intentional.
Then suddenly for the first time we see Brasso on the right and Bix on the left; not only does this jump the line, it’s a much wider shot than they’ve been in so far
In addition, a full half of the screen is obscured, making sure we know this is a wall or doorway, thus suggesting we’re also in someone’s POV.
People move across the empty space, blocking ‘our’ view of Bix and Brasso, then the scene cuts to a 180 shot of that doorway, with people moving to carry motion across the shot.
As those people clear frame, this shot shows us whose POV the prior shot was from: Vel (Faye Marsay).
Continuing the bustle of movement, another person walks into the shot: it’s Cinta (Verada Sethu) who sits down and begins talking to Vel.
Then the camera moves closer . . . and boom, before you know it we’re in a new scene, without even noticing.
Vanity Card
We’ve done a lot of Five Shots for movies, but this is our first for a TV episode.
If you’d like more TV entries, let us know in the comments, or feel free to drop us a line and suggest a specific episode!
