Week 26.04 - ANGELS & DEVILS Socials Roundup
19 Jan - 25 Jan 2026: Shooting and Framing Good and Bad Influences
Week 26.04 posts include Angel & Devil shots from High and Low (1963); The Emperor’s New Groove (2000); The Children’s Hour (1961); How I Met Your Mother (2005-2014); and My Name is Bruce (2007).
The Children’s Hour
The Children’s Hour is incredibly intentional about shots — for example using doors as liminal spaces, or using a split diopter twice to depict two different characters coming to conclusions.
So this framing of the student Mary with Martha (Shirley MacLaine) and Karen (Audrey Hepburn) on either shoulder is intentional . . . though unlike most of the rest of these shots, it’s more depicting what the characters imagine Martha and Karen as, not what we the audience are meant to see them as.
How I Met Your Mother
During Season 1’s iconic episode “The Slutty Pumpkin,” Ted tells tale of several costumes of Halloweens past.
During one flashback, there’s a conventional conversation framing between Barney and Ted, respectively dressed as a devil and a ballot box.
Because of what we already know about Barney, his dressing as a devil makes perfect sense. But it’s also to set up the shoulder gag — as Ted turns to face ‘the fourth wall’ and the shot moves back about 75° left, an angel wanders over and creates this tableau:
The Emperor’s New Groove
Instead of blocking in the devil and angel, or cutting to them already in position, or using SFX, in animation you can simply make them POOF! appear!
My Name is Bruce
Of course, you COULD also do it in live action, like so:
My Name is Bruce goes the most difficult route: compositing three different live-action Bruce Campbells talking to each other.
It’s difficult to keep this up for any length of time, especially when you factor in eyelines and movement, so the closeups of angel and devil make things much easier (and cheaper) for the VFX artists.
High and Low
We did a much longer post on how this film establishes two characters as an angel and devil trying to convince the main character of what to do, but certain shots make the whole ‘shoulder conscience and tempter” impeccably clear.
