DOORS SCENE: Chris, Jessie, Gabby, Maddy & Natalie.

NO. OF SETUPS: 7

SHOT LIST:

1. Wide shot of Van walking down the stairs & past camera.
2. Medium close up of Van who walks into frame & Wide shot of Cine. This becomes a shot-reverse shot – Van over the shoulder.
3. Mid-shot, over the shoulder shot of Cine as part of the shot-reverse-shot. Wide shot of Van.
4. Medium close up of Van & Wide shot of Cine as part of shot-reverse shot. They walk out of frame.
5. Wide shot of Van and Cine who walk towards camera. Their end point becomes a mid-shot and X walks into frame.
6. Mid-shot of X. Also an over the shoulder shot (shot-reverse shot) of Cine and also Van.
7. Mid-shot of Cine and Van. Also over the shoulder shot of X as part of shot-reverse shot.
8. Over the shoulder shot of Cine as Van and X exit frame.
9. Wide shot of both doors closing together.

DECONSTRUCTION & ANALYSIS:

The camera coverage in this scene is steady and still throughout, implying that a tripod was used for all of the shots and there was no hand-held camera. There is no movement at all in this scene, no pans, tracking or hand-held camera. As the characters are always bumping into one another out of nowhere, perhaps utilising some movement to show this would’ve added some variance and emulated the character’s feelings and/or movements.

For example; in the very first shot of the scene, Van walks towards and then past the camera, however if the camera followed her movements either by using hand-held to follow her either from the front or behind, or even a pan to follow her as she passes the camera could have added some urgency to the shot. The framing of the first shot is also a bit awkward in that if the stairs were more centred in the frame, there would be less empty space to the right of screen and Van could have still walked past the camera. The empty space to the right of frame suggests to the audience that something or someone will emerge from there, however this doesn’t happen and makes it feel awkward and unnecessary to show empty space.

The (almost) over the shoulder shot of Cine (shot 3) feels too distanced, both in the distance between the characters themselves, and the distance between the characters to the camera. When cut with shot 2 as a part of this shot-reverse shot, the distances don’t match up. While shot 2 remains nice and tight on Van, in shot 3, Cine is a lot further from the camera than Van previously was. It looks clumsy and doesn’t flow as nicely as it should. In shot 3, Van is so far away from the camera that her dialogue isn’t given much importance at all, even though technically in this shot-reverse shot sequence, she is the one that should be in focus. If this shot was tighter on Cine and maybe even positioned Cine closer to Van, the cuts would flow together better. It would also prevent all of the empty space that surrounds both of them and makes them look small in frame (especially Van).

Shot 4 utilises background and foreground space in a nice way and introduces the third character X. However, there is quite a lot of head room in this shot that once again makes the characters seem quite small in the frame, and makes it look a bit awkward. This could have been easily fixed by lowering the tripod and eliminating the head room. Perhaps the DOP got a nice frame in the beginning of the shot, but didn’t account for the end frame which once again had quite a lot of empty space surrounding the characters.

The following shot (shot 6) is really nicely composed in the way in which there is little headroom and the camera is nice and tight on the characters. Van and Cine whose backs face the camera in this over the shoulder shot, fill the frame nicely and the camera is close on X who is speaking. The closeness of this shot also demonstrates the cramped nature of the location which is pertinent to the location and the script in explaining how these characters just happen to bump into one another. This kind of closeness is what is missing from the previous shots.

The following shot in the shot-reverse sequence (over the shoulder of X) frames all of the characters nicely as well, however it isn’t as close as the previous shot. Cine who has the main dialogue here is the furthest from the camera, which isn’t such a bad thing in that she feels a bit threatened in this part of the scene. While her positioning may add to the way in which her character feels at the time, it doesn’t match the closeness of the previous shot in the sequence and does feel a bit out of place. To remedy this, bringing the tripod up a bit and maybe zooming a bit closer in on Cine could have closed the empty space between the characters. While this was an awkward shot to film due to the cramped nature of the location, it is possible that it could have been closer in on the characters to demonstrate this constrained location.

As this was shot in a shoot to edit style, the shots do cut together nicely. However, if a closeness and tightness of frame was established and remained for the entire scene, it would feel more united and reflect the cramped nature of the location. Perhaps some moving shots could have also reflected the character’s movements and added another dimension to the scene.