Week 25.13 - Socials Roundup

Posts from 24 Mar - 30 Mar 2025

Week 25.13 posts include shots from Monsterland (2020); Bringing Up Baby (1938), For All Mankind (2019-present); Good Cop/Bad Cop (2025-current); and Severance (2022-current)

Good Cop/Bad Cop

The opening of this Odd Buddy Comedy Procedural gives us a lot of information: the crime the episode will centre around, the tone of the series (it’s got stakes like death, but also comedy and is pop culture savvy), and the location.

The final shot before the title card has all of the above, as the rack focus from the dead President to the greeting card carousel display [well spun by some art PA just off-camera] contrasts hard with the postcard telling us not just where we are, but the throwback vibe Eden Vale wants to project.

For All Mankind

For All Mankind 1.08 "Rupture" shifts abruptly from cold-blue video call between superior and employee to warm-tinted connection between friends.

In a smashcut scene transition suggesting a connection between spouses across hundreds of thousands of miles, Ed (Joel Kinnaman) in space slams his hand in frustration and his wife Karen (Shantel VanSanten) jolts awake down on earth.

The colour shift as well as the clear closeup of Karen immediately tells the audience we’re in a new place, but the scene lets us sit with Karen's sleep-addled confusion for a moment before revealing it was a door noise, and not Ed’s frustrated hand gesture, which woke her.

Another nice detail: Ed and Karen are placed in similar places in their frames on either side of across the transition.

Bringing Up Baby

We’ve done a bigger piece on Bringing Up Baby’s physical comedy, but the devil’s also in the details!

Look at how all these shots within a few minutes of screen time incorporate textures, from sets and set dressing to props and wardrobe . . . and of course, a real, live leopard.

As conversation flies, the camera doesn’t need to do anything fancy because various contrasts, shapes, sparkles, and textures keep things visually interesting . . . and you don’t want to move the camera much because again, they were working with a real actual leopard.

Monsterland

Episode five "Plainfield, IL" of this psychological drama horror anthology (we talked about Episode 1 here) shows several years of a relationship between Kate (Taylor Schilling) and Shawn (Roberta Colindrez).

This shot comes soon after Shawn sees something disturbing, and Kate begins acting strangely.

Among the first things you may notice is the beam dividing the shot, and the off-kilter angles of the white doorframes.

When Kate walks 'out' of the middle and immediately 'into' the right side of frame but now away from us is a ‘wait what?’ it’s a ‘wait what?’ moment — Shawn repeating the movement a moment later makes clear the shots are essentially of two doorways at 90° to each other.

A diagram of what the house layout would look like, and how the geography would work if shot simultaneously with two cameras.

It’s the only time a shot like this is used in the episode, and it works because it’s right at the start of the characters (and us) knowing something unsettling is going on . . . but not yet beginning to grasp quite what.

Severance

Much has been made (and revealed!) about shots in the Season 2 finale, but this is my [Mel’s] personal favourite.

It’s a classical painting pose struck against cold, sterile, uniformly geometric metallic backdrop instead of colourful drapery. The silhouette-with-the-barest-hint-of-features brings out the mythological nature of Helly’s vision and Helena’s position within her father’s family / company sphere; the way she holds the pen looks like the knife she’s tempted to wield it as; her lanyard reminds us of the corporate setting and a noose around her neck; the clock stands in for the episode’s ticking time bomb.

Also, it’s simply a damn fine-looking shot.