Week 94: Socials Roundup
Posts from 21 Oct - 27 Oct 2024
Week 94 posts include shots from Looking for Alibrandi (2000); Mermaids (1990); three scenes from Colossal (2016); Agatha All Along (2024) and Doctor Who (2005-2023).
Mermaids
Charlotte (Winona Ryder) experiences several big events, including her father's abandonment , a cross-country move, and the news of JFK's assassination.
The shots of Charlotte approaching and climbing the bell tower are all framed to give us her feelings of destabilisation, being small and overwhelmed in a big, cruel, confusing world.
Colossal - Within a Scene
This scene from Colossal blends big, overt techniques with small, 'hidden' ones.
The establishing shots of buildings are from a high, kaiju-esque perspective, with ominous music ending in a climactic stinger as Gloria (Anne Hathaway) opens her apartment door.
The camera tracks as she walks into the living space, rambling in a slightly-heightened, clearly-lying way to her boyfriend Tim (Dan Stevens). The subtlety comes through in the depth of field.
As Gloria walks past Tim, the focus pulls to him. The shot holds in a medium with both in frame, focus staying on Tim as Gloria rambles to keep us in his frustrated, disbelieving frame of mind.
Tim gets up and walks into the kitchen, as he passes Gloria the focus quickly pulls to her, but because of the motion you don't quite notice until he leaves frame and she's in focus.
Tim's dishes clattering is sound-mixed as punctuation to the end of Gloria's story, before the scene moves into singles, and Gloria trying-to-be-cute-to-save-her-skin acknowledges the lie.
Colossal - Scenes Apart
The first time Gloria (Anne Hathaway) sees footage of the kaiju, she walks across the room in shock. The medium shot is half her laptop Frame Left, half her Frame Right, almost making a ‘split screen’ effect.
When Gloria takes friends to the park to show what she's discovered, the shot repeats; news footage Frame Left and Gloria Frame Right, she and the kaiju making the same motions.
The shots make the connection between Gloria and the kaiju clear as day.
Doctor Who
PRO TIP: if you pass a house with mysterious voice is coming out of a speaker, and you go in to help . . .
and see a completely backlit person like so . . .
DO NOT WALK UP THE STAIRS
If you do and get used by aliens in an attempt to incorporate your brainwaves into their damaged spaceship, you can't say #DoctorWho episode "The Lodger" (and decades of film lighting people as creepily as possible) didn't try to warn you.
Looking for Alibrandi
Need a last-minute Halloween costume idea?
Find a newspaper and go as a member of Nonna's spy ring!
Agatha All Along
This week’s episode of "Death's Hand in Mine" uses the same painting as Ep 2 (which you can see here, and which shows the lamps-as-torches have been there all along) to frame Jen in her own High Priestess tarot card.
