Week 53: Socials Roundup
Posts from 2nd January to 8th January 2024
Week 53 saw posts on Reacher (2022-current), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Letterkenny (2016-2023), Mad Max: Fury Road (2016), Broad City (2014-2019), Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (2023) and Romeo Must Die (2000).
Reacher
Our *primary* interest is shots and editing here, scripts and writing on @draft_zero, but invariably they inform each other. This conversation between Reacher and Roscoe starts in the lobby (with a detour in the elevator, elided for clarity), then ends with Reacher noticing some toothpicks, which he'll use for tactical purposes later.
On the page this could be anything from "Reacher notices a room service tray" to "as Roscoe opens their hotel room door and checks it out, Reacher hunts further down the hall until he finds toothpicks."
It's the direction which sells this moment seamlessly; after a full thirty seconds of walk-and-talk, during which the camera has constantly with the characters' walking (with closer-and-closer cuts so the hallway can be long enough for the whole chat!), Roscoe says something which surprises Reacher, stopping him in his tracks . . . and the camera stops with him.
While Roscoe continues past camera, Reacher looks around as though thinking 'what just happened' - his eyes fall on something, and he bends down to an insert shot of a tray with toothpicks, before he follows Roscoe out of frame.
The next scene cuts into a closeup of him unwrapping the toothpicks, and voila! We've been sold and transitioned in a few smooth moves.
Bonus; the transition is assisted with a colour change from the cool blue of the hallway to a warm yellow of the room, and the shot moves up to a mid of Reacher and Roscoe, instead of simply cutting out to a new shot.
Brokeback Mountain
Film techniques such as jump cuts, crash zooms, closeups, etc are all a language, and sometimes what a scene doesn't 'say' is also interesting, especially when the audience may expect it to.
In this scene from Brokeback Mountain, Jack's mom gives Ennis a paper bag and a bit of compassion, while Jack's dad sits and glowers.
Twice the scene cuts to mum in the foreground and dad out-of-focus in the background, and when dad speaks we may expect to cut to a closeup of him or at least a rack focus when he's talking; but we never get it.
By choosing blocking and depth of field which keep dad backgrounded, and never prioritising him in the scene, it's as though Ang Lee is saying we can't avoid him entirely, his prejudice still exists and hurts, but we can not focus on that hatred, and refuse to acknowledge him as important.
Letterkenny
Letterkenny has a bit of fun 'Wilson framing' characters so you can't see their face for the fence, and continues the gag whether in wide or medium shot.
(These are all from Season 11 AKA Season 08, depending where in the world you are.)
Mad Max: Fury Road
This one Mad Max Fury Road shot serves two big purposes:
1. economy of storytelling
2. a gutpunch as you put the pieces together.
What's (almost) most interesting about this shot is what *hasn't* happened before it in the movie.
Fury Road hasn't shown this room before. It's clearly empty, but we haven't seen the people who used to be in it. We haven't been shown Immortan Joe even has wives.
Right before this shot we see Joe running (tells us: important) to a giant vault door, unlocking and walking in, then the first shot inside switches to this high wide.
In terms of symbolic use of shot, we are literally looking down on Immortan Joe; a bird's or god's eye shot. But practically, we can see the room's whole layout, allowing us to make a guess as to what the room is, but then read the words:
"Our babies will not be warlords." uses two plurals. The room from a top down shows us a space big enough for many people. From all these context clues we can gather mothers / wives have escaped.
This one shot is exposition in a nutshell. This one shot enables Miller to get away with not showing the wives at all previously as setup or foreshadowing, and tells us exactly what kind of person Immortan Joe is and who has defied him.
Broad City
Sexy Saturday reminds you not to neglect humour or weird mishaps which come with sex.
The biggest joke in this Broad City scene is in the visuals. As Abbi sits and starts telling her story, the shots (MWS establishing the table, and shot-reverse-shot of her and Ilana) keep the two friends as the only subjects.
At 0:10 when Abbi delivers the climactic (pun intended) line, the music swells and there's a new shot: still a medium two-shot similar to the scene establisher, but now a fancy, horrified woman is framed between them. The focus racks to her as the music swells, perfectly landing the punch line 'gasp'.
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget makes several visual nods to The Truman Show
(h/t to friend-of-Shot-Zero @girlbureaucrat)
Romeo Must Die
Last week we looked at a dialogue-less series of 'people find out bad news' in Romeo Must Die; this scene of Romeo finding out is longer than those five scenes together, because it's interested in showing Romeo's surroundings, how impossible escape is, and more, before we even see Romeo himself.
The establisher goes 'all of Hong Kong' wide, before a MCU on a prison guard. The next series of shots are high & low & wide & medium (and several fun canted angles); all this covers barbed wire and guns and guards to tell the audience "this is max security all right.'
The sequence also shows how the gate release works, which will come into play later. The camera follows one 'fresh' prisoner in particular as he's offloaded from a transport bus, shuffles in while shackled, gets lunch, and then sits down to whisper something inaudible into the ear of a man we see only from behind.
By the time it cuts to Romeo / Jet Li's face, the film is over 12 minutes in, and the buildup in this scene alone has been 90 seconds showing in detail how much work it's been to get him this news . . . so you KNOW something is about to go down. All that is done without us hearing a word.