Week 51: Socials Roundup
Posts from 19th December to 25 December
Week 51 saw posts on Parasite (2019), Lady Parts (2018), Willow (1988), and Steven Universe (2013-2019).
Parasite
Love the visual storytelling in this scene from #Parasite:
The Pizza Shop Owner is staged centre-frame with lots of negative space. The composition feels very open. But then Ki-Woo steps up to talk to her, and the camera starts to creep forward. Closing in. Ki-Jung pops into frame (beckoned by Ki-Woo) and thent moves behind The Pizza Shop Owner, blocking her co-worker in the b/g, as Chung-Sook enters. The Pizza Shop Owner is now trapped on all sides of the frame. Cornered by this family. And so she gives in - The visual tension broken by the tilt down to the money. So. Damn. Good.
Lady Parts
This joke (from the short which launched We Are Lady Parts which is EXCELLENT) works best because of two choices:
1. using a well known song; because the audience is already acquainted, we can pay more attention to body language, specifically how Saira (front passenger seat) is annoyed until . . .
2. smash cut (0:12). Importantly there's no 'jump' in the music, so feels as tho this is the second (or third) time the chorus of this incredibly repetitive song has come around, wearing Saira down until she is fully in the swing.
Bonus; they repeat the smash-cut-edit at 0:26, with everyone somehow getting even more into singing along.
Sheer joy and delight from performances to edit.
Willow
This week’s #SexySaturday is from 1988's Willow. What's so sexy about this scene (and many others in the movie)? Madmartigan (Val Kilmer) and Willow (Warwick Davis) are allowed to be good, caring & affectionate fathers to baby Elora.
While this scene is played for laughs, it isn't laughing at them, but in a difference of parental opinion. 35 years later and it still feels refreshing.
In a later scene we even see Willow change Elora's nappy in the middle of an action scene! Willow is *actual* Dadcore.
Steven Universe
Steven Universe S2E06 takes the form of an in-universe documentary being made and presented by Ronaldo. The ep has great fun translating the tropes of amateur doco filmmaking into animation; such as this gag built around sound perspective.
We cut from a MS of the presenter, Ronaldo, whose dialogue sounds close mic'd to a wide-shot where Ronaldo continues his talking at the same level... so we can't hear him. So he has to yell!
The gag delights because it both reflects Ronaldo's amateurish character AND because it's an unexpected sound perspective in animation.
Bonus points for the tilt: not only is the whole shot 'handheld' but it overshoots the framing and the "cam op" has to correct the framing.