In Tuesday’s studio, to help us understand coverage better, Robin showed us three clips of the same situation of two people at a bar. If asked to summarise, all these scenes could be described as the same: two people talking behind a bar. However, visually, they were presented in vastly different ways.
The first scene from Mad Men was the simplest. Excluding the establishing shot, the conversation between the two women were largely covered in three shots. There was the conventional mid two-shot, and then two closer up two-shots, one angled so that it focused on Character 1 and another angled towards Character 2. There were a couple of slight variations in terms of the shot length but all in all the entire scene intercuts between those three shots. The second scene, taken from Gossip Girl, has slightly more variety. It still contained the three basic shots covering the conversation, but also added close ups of the two women’s faces to see particularly emotional reactions. The third scene, however, contained a whirlwind of different perspectives. There was a complicated mix of different angles and shot lengths for both characters together and apart, and even crossing the 180 degree rule multiple times.
Sometimes I think that filmmakers are making unnecessary trouble for themselves by presenting a scene in 18 shots when it could be covered in just 3. It was only after watching and comparing these clips that I realised how many choices go into making a scene purely in terms of camera. There are infinite coverage choices to be made in any given scene and it’s up to the filmmaker to decide however complicated or simple to make it, although these are decisions that perhaps a casual movie goer wouldn’t even notice. If I were talking to any of my friends that aren’t media students, they would look dumbfounded if I asked them to recount the choice of angles, shots or cuts that were made in a particular scene. However, it’s in fact these meticulously made small choices that allow the scenes to look as smooth and seamless as they do. I hope that as a student of The Scene I can continue to learn to recognise and appreciate the artistic value of all these choices that filmmakers have made.
