Week 25.52 - Socials Roundup
22 Dec - 28 Dec 2025: Happy Holidays call for SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS!
Week 25.51 posts include shots from Brooklyn 99 (2013-2021); Knives Out (2019); The Ice Harvest (2005); All That Heaven Allows (1955); and Nothing Sacred (1937).
The Ice Harvest
You could accomplish a shot like this with a split diopter, but there’s no tell-tell blur in the scene as Charlie (John Cusack) moves around.
You could also accomplish it by placing the shotgun shell quite close to camera, lighting carefully, and opening wide for deep depth of field.
Or, you could ask props to build you a nice, large, fake shotgun shell!
All That Heaven Allows
A very Christmas melodrama, All That Heaven Allows makes great use of colour, and also camera movements.
This whole scene is two shots, both moving to achieve different goals.
The first wide, drifting shot lets us feel Cary’s (Jane Wyman) loneliness in her big empty house. When she goes to the door, the scene cuts closer to see Alida (Virginia Grey), then dollies in as Alida walks closer, speeding its movement dramatically as she makes the announcement “There’s been an accident.”
The camera then drifts behind a screen as Cary bustles around to get her coat. This move puts Cary behind a scrim which represents the shock she is in from the news, and the screen’s bar shows some division between her and Alida, who has been somewhat torn about what is happening between Cary and Ron.
Brooklyn 99
May your holidays involve less competitive-awkwardness than Jake and Amy’s, and also 100% fewer trips to the emergency room!
This Brooklyn 99 ‘cutting the turkey’ double-entendre-off is sold with framing.
Once the table tableau has been established, shots all cut Roger and Victor (Bradley Whitford and Jimmy Smits) off mid-torso as their hands move furiously off-screen, while the widest shots tease the turkeys juuuuust on edge of frame.
The framing also explicitly sets up the punchline, but we’re so distracted by all the other cuts amidst the turk-ing-off, we don’t notice until there’s a missing thumb.
Knives Out
The Knives Out mysteries often show as they tell . . . like this scene from the OG Benoit Blanc caper.
Nothing Sacred
The first screwball comedy filmed in color, Nothing Sacred uses everything from elevators, pillars, doorways, and stark slashes of shadows to set its characters apart from their surroundings . . . and sometimes each other!
