The scene starts with few montage shots of Lau walking further. These few shots are full of urban space elements, for instance, Lau’s reflection from the glass curtain wall, the extreme close up shots of the construction with Lau walking in the blurry and extreme bright background, the wide shot of harbor and buildings in distance, the close up shot of buildings and the bright sky… These shots are all so bright that makes people feel exposed and frightened.
After Yan handcuffs Lau, Lau laughs and ask, ‘Do all undercover cops like rooftops?’ Yan answers, ‘unlike you, I’m not afraid of light.’ The conflict outburst when Lau say to Yan, ‘Who knows that (you are a cop)?’ With music becomes strident, the framing changes from extreme close up of their heads to a wide shot contains the entire rooftop which audience can clearly see and feel the unsolvable antagonism between them.
Then followed by a medium wide shot, then Yan raises his gun and points at Lau, followed by an extreme close-up shot of Lau’s eyes. These changing framings shows Yan’s anger very well, when his anger hit the limit, he raises his gun. Then it is followed by a slowly zoom out. This shows Yan’s hesitation well and promotes story developments.
When Yan takes Lau as his hostage and comes downstairs with another police officer, the shot is followed by a wide still image shot of sky and clouds. It is so bright and unsettle, especially with the music. Lau’s mixed feelings and their indefinable live and death is very well shown.
mise-en-scene
The mise-en-scene is great, the location is rooftop, a place full of sunlights, a place where sky meets the ground, it makes people feel like falling, it looks over exposed which is good for the scene. Everything is under expose, the truth is about to come out. The urban space is also experienced emotionally. The big glass curtain wall, the harbor in distance, the clouds and the sky are so bright. The tension and the mind game between two characters is shown very clearly.
sound track
Another great thing about this scene is the music, it’s brilliant!! It totally goes with the character’s emotion and experience. When Lau is looking for Yan, the music is slow, gentle but a bit unstable, when Lau suddenly turns his head, the music goes intense as well. When Yan points his gun at Lau’s back, the music doesn’t get out of control, instead it gets louder gently and slowly, it creates the perfect atmosphere for their conversation going to happen. when Lau says Who knows that (you are a cop)? The music hit the peak.
When I was at school last week sometime, I found an interesting clip displayed in loop in a small screen on the floor. It looks like a short documentary of taking seeds out of a watermelon. What makes me feel interesting is that the special way of presenting this. The director treated the watermelon as a patient obviously. Firstly the framing is quite tight, audience can only see the a very tiny bit of the watermelon, from the colour and texture, audience know it is a watermelon. What is quite creative about this is that the director put a surgical gown on the watermelon. Also there are two hands there, one is operating, the other one is passing the operation tools. They both are wearing operation gloves. In addition, there is the sound of beeping like the sound from medical equipment all the way. The way of cutting the watermelon is very well-designed, it looks exactly like they are performing an operation on an patient, the watermelon. The fruit meat is so red and it looks quite juicy as well, it makes audiences feel that it is bleeding and suffering. I just want to say, how creative it is to make this all anthropopathic, detailed and sensitive. It totally works out well!
In the Heat of the Sun is a film I recently watched and am inspired by it a lot. It is an old Chinese film shoot in 1994. It tells the story of a group of teenagers in cultural revolution in China from 1960s to 1970s. After I watched this film, few words just jump into my mind, time, diachronic, beautiful, clean, sunny, funny, bright, visual feast, exquisite… The cinematography and shots construction are the things I admire and want to learn from.
Here are the several scenes I select from the film and I will analysis their cinematography and shots constructions. I can’t download the film, so I can’t cut the scenes. I will provide the time period and the whole film at the end. (I found the film on Youtube)
12:20-14:50
In this scene, Xiaobing(the boy, leading character) makes a key by himself and opens his parents’ draw, he finds a condom there, but he doesn’t know it’s a condom, he thinks it’s a balloon or something then he blows it and plays it around.
In this scene there are lots of tight framing where the ‘balloon’ flies around all over the apartment, audience can see the whole perspective of the apartment, the wedding picture of his parents, the handiwork displayed in the apartment. All of those things appear in the framing show the style and social appearance of China at that time. I just want to say that it looks so real and stylish. also there is one shoot where Xiaobing is opening the lock on the draw, once he opened it, camera pan and tilt up immediately and become stable when the framing is planform of the all of the stuff in the draw, then followed by a over-shoulder shot of Xiaobing. This shot is so dynamic and shows the most of Xiaobing’s curiosity.
31:49-33:06
In this scene, Xiaobing makes another key and get into a girl’s apartment. But he doesn’t expect that the girl comes home suddenly, so he hides under the bed and watches the girl changing clothes. The framing is from Xiaobing’s position of view, so we can only see the girl’s half legs. But we can still see some parts of her from the mirror. I really like the direction here, even though we can only see some part of the girl, but we are curious as Xiaobing. From her body language, I think that she is a really beautiful, cute and young girl, she must love smiling and has a good personality.
46:42-50:13
In this scene, Xiaojun run into the girl he likes and he goes up and talks to her. I really like the shoot construction when the girls walks pass by Xiaobing. I have some pictures blew will show it.
The location is very well chosen, as we can see from the pictures, they are walking through a path surrounded by tall green trees. There is also a short wall on the other side. It feels like a summer afternoon with a very gentle breeze. Everything is so bright and beautiful.It’s like palpitating… They are talking on this path, they walk, stop, she walks, he chases, she stops again and call him, he goes up again… The subtle relationship between them starts building…
1:40:47-1:43:00
In this scene, there is one extreme close-up and tilt-up shot of the girl’s body, she is wearing a red tight swimming suit. Again it is from the visual position of view of Xiaojun. This shot comes out really great, it reflect the psychology of the youth in not so open-minded environment. They are curious, palpitating, wondering, happy, blundering, violent, immature, sad, uneducated, arrogant…they want to try something out, experience different stuff. But all of this is beautiful.
2:00:25-2:03:36
This is the last scene in the film which I like the most. In this scene, Xiaojun who can’t swim goes up to the highest diving tower and jumps into the swimming pool. He tries a lot. When he is climbing the stairs, camera shoot from lots of angles, those special angles makes audience feel the scare and confusion deep in Xiaojun’s heart.
I watched one of Wong karwai’s movie, Chungking Express. In this movie, there are plenty of handheld camera movements. This reminds me of and inspired me that there are plenty of possibilities and shooting angles camera can be. Because of the plenty handheld camera movements, the presented pictures are a bit unstable, however Wong Karwai played with shutter speed and lights a lot in this movie, lots of clear and unclear, shaking and still. This is like his special style in this movie. Also, I found that Wong Karwai is unique about shooting angles, he like shooting from reflections like mirrors. His framing in this movie is alway tight and crowded. I think it’s good because it is conformed to the bustle of city in HK he wants to present.
I also found mise-en-scene in this movie interesting. Instead of being beautiful, this one is being realistic and that’s also a kind of beauty. There are lots of shots of street view, the restaurant, the food, market, bar, apartment and so on. All of these all the suggestive of modern Hong Kong people’s daily life. It always presents noisy, crowded and real picture to audience and causes common senses. The things and elements Wong Karwai presented in his movie are not beautiful and nice, but it makes people feel it, feel the reality of life, this is the most beautiful thing about this movie. I really liked it.
Wow, the shots in this scene is really smooth. It looks like very plain, not lots of up and downs going on. However it contains plenty of information in a very shot time. Audience is acknowledged of the relationships between characters, characters’ personalities, family background, lifestyle, living circumstances. These elements are contained very naturally in these wonderfully choreographed shots.
car scene
The car scene is also very nice. It is mainly made up by several montages clips of driving. The frame and the entire scene is totally in good control, static. Also, the shot with the little girl sitting in the middle of two men is interesting, I don’t know, never see a car scene like that. It is so steady and faddish. The car scene is perfectly covered by these small clips.
airport scene
‘a handful of shots to signify an event, iconic and generic’
‘A loose shot of the airline employee past Pierre, a close‐up of the intercom with ballpoint pen. A close‐up of Pierre –his eye‐lines cuing a shot of the clock and of Michel. The luggage tag goes on. A stewardess appears etc’.
Reference: Three brief, consecutive scenes from Truffaut’s The Soft Skin (1964)
In this scene, the frame looks static, and it is a very tight frame with lots of people in it. It is just perfect! Usually if we want to shoot a ‘lots of people dancing’ scene, first we think of panning to show audience the crowded environment. However in this scene, the frame is static, and we can see lots of people dancing around, the two main characters sometimes in the frame, sometimes out of frame. The male character looks a bit shy at first, the female character keeps dancing, looks very active. After a while, the male character is joined her and become even more active than her. Although I haven’t seen the movie, but I can feel the characteristics of those two in some level. The man is very sympathetic and a bit arrogant and the woman is bit earnest (don’t know if it’s the right word to describe her, something like that). People keep changing dance partners in the frame, and the music in funny too. This scene is just so different. I just like the feeling french movie expresses, sometimes reasonless, sometimes jumpy, sometimes doesn’t make any senses, but the way of expressing, is so unique and romantic.
This week I found three scenes in the same movie, Fast and Furious 2 movie. Those three scenes have a common shooting way.
1. Brian and Mia, at dinner, the restaurant scene
This scene contains a very smooth, casual panning, but causal doesn’t mean that camera is panning with no certain framings and angles. Also it is a medium speed of panning, not very fast. Camera first stops at the statue, and then music starts, and camera starts panning as well. From audience’s view, it’s like the camera is our eyes, searching for Brian and Mia, stop for like nearly one second for some people and tables and check. After that continue searching. Audience hear their voices before see their face, so this is a good motivation for audience to search for them, and director satisfied audience’s thoughts by a camera panning. This panning also makes audience feel like going and sitting in that restaurant too, this makes movie mood nicer.
2. Brian and Mia in bed, Brian picking a phone call scene
In this scene, camera tracks wiggly with Brain’s phone ringing, tracking and phone ringing at the same time. As I wrote in the first scene, camera is like audience’s eyes, finding where does the sound come from? The frame is also clever in this scene. every time camera stop tracking for one second, in the frame there will be a shelf with car elements on it. Camera stops tracking when Brian sits up quickly, and the frame stay still with Mia sits up too.
3. Brian and Jesse, at the car racing site
This scene also contains two pannings. The first panning is from a high angle, panning with Brian’s car moving, through the entire car racing site. Audience can see a lot in that frame, gorgeous car ladies walking around, lots of cars parking there, people laughing, cheering… Another panning of Brain and Jesse walking through the site and talking. About this panning, it is like panning far away from the characters. There are lots of other people in the site walking pass the camera, and they also get blocked by something during the walking. But we can hear their voice clearly. This is a brilliant way to bring audiences into the atmosphere.
The common thing about those three scenes is that it makes audiences feel personally on the scene by shooting with different angles and perspectives. This movie is about cars, this theme is also very well presented in those scenes. There are lots of car racing scene in this movie which makes the movie mood cool and fast. The pannings and trackings are kind of fast, but is like stable and well framed kind of fast and with an aim, not like aimlessly panning around and confuses audiences. I found them very enjoyable to watch.
My found scene is from Spider-Man 2 movie, the pizza delivery scene from 6:02 to 7:45.
Shot1- A over shoulder shot from woman’s back. Audience can see the door from the way woman is looking at, at the same time hear sound coming from that door. This makes audiences wonder and potentially introduces man character-spider-man. The camera coverage here is the long hall way of the company which establish two characters’ relationship.
Shot2- A middle shot of spider-man dealing with mops from side. Then there is one cut when he turns around towards the reception lady. It is a good cut because it makes the ‘turn around’ after cut, this will make it very clear for audience to watch. Then it still a over shoulder shot of spider man pulling off his web.
Shot3- a full size shot of spider man walking to the reception lady. Audience still can see the reception lady from spider-man’s back. The framing is good here, firstly only a part of spider-man is in the shoot and with he walking forward, walking down few stairs, audience can see the entire spider-man. It is s good way to introduce or use the stairs.
Shot4- A middle shot of spider man and the reception woman talking. Camera chooses a good frame of the elevator, spider-man just kind of walks into the frame. Because spider-man is standing up and reception lady is sitting down, so they are not at the same level, but it looks not wired, a good balace between different levels. There is a quick panning of the reception lady looking at the clock behind her which is very good pan.
Shot5- A slow pan forth and back of spider-man walking and using the elevator. The last pan stops at perfect spot, audience can see the reception lady’s back hair, part of the pizzas, and spider-man in elevator saying goodbye.
Lots of cut to edit-repeating-close up shots of the reception lady’s face expression. every time spiderman is acting strange or awkward, there will be a reception lady’s face expression cut, chewing a gum and looking at him in a scorn way.
The entire scene, the camera coverages are the hall way, the reception, the elevator and the clock. They are all well introduced through the camera panning. There isn’t lot of camera movements in this scene. For me as a audience, it is very pleasant to watch this scene.
My found scene is the beginning of Forrest Gump. It is a long single shot, camera gently and aimlessly move around with the feather. We could know it’s a small town from church, buildings, people walking, trees and so on. Finally, the feather is picked up by the leading character, Forrest Gump. Because he is picking the feather up, we can see his shoes, his suitcase and stuff in that case. Finally the camera has a close up shoot of his face. The character is very well and naturally introduced. Also, the shot of his shoes and suitcase make the audience feel curious about this character. I also want to talk about the next scene. The camera zooms in very slowly focusing on the bus station, at the same time the main character starts talking and introducing himself, ‘Im Forrest Gump…’. Gump is talking about his childhood, the camera zooms out this time, which is a very good transaction from last scene.
