Five Shots: CLOCKERS

just what it says on the label

Five of our favourite shots from Spike Lee’s Clockers (1995).

1 - Jitters

The camera moving as Strike paces makes us feel Strike’s nervousness.

It doesn’t anticipate his movements, it doesn’t keep quite in time, because the point is he’s moving erratically and not premeditatively, so it’s trying to ‘keep up’.

2 - Reflection

Rocco is reflected in Victor’s eyes as he says “I want to see what you see” — a complicated setup with beautiful payoff.

The scene ends when Victor closes his eyes, and the transition opens to his face on a newspaper, held by Strike.

3 - Oner

It starts on a smooth R-L pan following a pedestrian, but behind the pedestrian is the yellow car we’re actually going to stop with. The obviously out-of-place white guy makes his drug pickup (we’ve seen a similar one on the film’s opening scene), then the camera follows another pedestrian L-R back and INTO the shop (!!!), where it settles in for the conversation between Strike and Rodney.

This shot being a oner, with the street noises and boys rapping and people moving in different planes, all makes us feel in the swing of projects life.

The shot holds in the oner’s landing medium shot until Rodney starts telling a story of his past, when it switches to a closer two-shot just for Rodney’s last lines, which transition into his flashback.

4 - POV

In shot #1, the camera paced following Strike, now it’s in his exact POV as he falls over, and it sees things from his low, ‘sideway’s angle; again this makes us feel Strike’s anxiety and pain, except now even more explicitly.

Meanwhile the cuts to other shots from ‘normal’ angles accentuate the chaos and show what others are doing; things we the audience want to know but Strike would be unaware of.

5 - Signature Dolly

Lee’s signature move appears three times: first Strike, then Skills, last Strike’s mother.

The move and their look — all in red shirts and barrelling the camera — signals their similarities, carried along inexorably towards the film’s full circle ever after.