Week 25.19 - Socials Roundup
Posts from 05 May - 11 May 2025
Week 25.19 posts include shots from Agent Carter (2015-2016); Arcane: League of Legends (2021-2024); Your Monster (2024); Dickinson (2019-2021); and Hot Ones Versus (2024-current).
Your Monster
This reveal shot from Your Monster plays a small jump scare to set us up that ‘maybe it’s nothing . . . ‘ then relies on lighting and timing instead of editing for its real scare moment.
The way it puts Monster’s face over where Laura’s was at the scene’s beginning is no accident, both for directing our eyes and for Thematic Reasons.
There’s also some meta humor/horror at play, since Melissa Barrera had already been in 5cream and was coming up on Scream VI.
We’ll talk about the transition out of this scene at a later date . . .
Dickinson
Emily (Hailee Steinfeld) has had a day of triumphs and failures: sneaking into a lecture, spending quality time with Sue, getting found out at the lecture, having to face Sue’s engagement to Austin, and now her father lambasts her for achieving higher education against his wishes.
In other words, she’s topsy turvy.
This camera move + rack focus shows Emily’s emotional state, first framing her upsidedown then rightsideup within a few seconds and without out any cuts.
Bonus for doing that via a scientific instrument, really magnifying her father’s hypocrisy.
Agent Carter
Among many characters and plots, “Now is Not The End” establishes the relationship between Agent Carter and her man Friday, Jarvis.
Depending how you look at it, this shot is a classic Old School Spy Meetup shot, a reversal or subversion of classic cafe and diner shots, people just sitting and talking across from each other, or both homage and retrofit.
It also reveals the complexity of their relationship; at first adversarial and looking for different things, but quickly working in tandem and having each others’ back.
Hot Ones Versus
“Kathryn Hahn vs. Seth Rogen” does an extended Bit which it executes in the style of The Studio as much as it can, given the filming circumstances.
We’ve looked at some of the techniques used in The Studio’s oners, but any long, single take requires good rehearsal — not just of actors, but with camera and crew.
Hot Ones Versus opts not to do the entire audition entirely in a oner, because though there is clearly broad blocking and marks, much is improvised (plus you don’t have repeating takes to fall back on!) Editing is the best choice to if you want to convey expressions and actions of all the characters within the rapid exchange. Thus, A Camera stays to manoeuvre with and respond to Rogen and Hahn, while another camera stays with the reader, a third gets other insert and reaction shots as needed including Hahn.
It clearly focuses on running the oners going into the room and transitioning or ‘handing off’ like the end of Rogen’s ‘audition’ where the camera circles around and picks up Katherine walking towards the room.
After that handoff there’s a cut before the next ‘scene’ which starts on a wide — you can watch the whole thing here — with the cut just a split second before her black dress ‘breaks’ the white of the doorframe.
Then, the way it gets out of Katherine’s audition is different than Seth’s, because it needs to ellipse time.
Instead of following her out, it crossfades from white of door closing (focusing on the door in an echo of similar how the scene opened!) to a phone. The crossfade instead of following her signifies time has passed, and also fading in on that big, red phone indicates SOMETHING OF PORTENT!
This is a lot of fun, and shows the kind of attention to The Studio techniques that Hot Ones usually lavishes on its guests’ history and insta grids.
Arcane
What a stunning shot of Ambessa in Arcane 2.04 "Paint the Town Blue" !
The depth of field is shallow intentionally — her head / side profile which is closer to us is out of focus, which means even though her reflection in the glass is semi-transparent, our focus goes there.
The shot draws our attention to her eyes, and past them through the glass we see the outline of the machinery she’s glowering at.