Scene Deconstruction

The scene I would like to deconstruct comes from a TV series I watched recently on Netflix called The Umbrella Academy. The show is one of the best shows Netflix has produced this year in my opinion and has many great scenes throughout the episodes, one of these is a dancing scene present in the first episode which helps understand the characters and their personalities in a variety of ways.

The scene starts with one of the main characters, Luther, setting up a vinyl to playing the song  I Think We’re Alone Now which is the first of many instances that shows how one of the best aspects of the whole show is the choice of music and the soundtrack in general, all the songs are accurately chosen and fit the scene perfectly in most cases. Luther and his brothers, the other characters in the scene, just had a fight and decided to isolate themselves from the others but when the music starts playing the echo reaches the rooms where the other protagonists are located.

The scene begins with a close up of the diamond and as soon as it touches the record, the music starts playing and then we see a medium shot of Luther enjoying the song, and a long shot of our second protagonist, Allison. Nothing special about this shot which could have been done in a more interesting way, maybe emphasizing with a medium close up on the way she looks annoyed by the song playing and then laughs looking down. The next sibling is introduced in the next scene with a birds eye shot from the ceiling with a dolly movement towards the character while also slowly spinning. This might have been done to give a mild sense of confusion to the viewer since the same character assumed drugs in the previous scene. We see the other characters reaction to the music with still shots and then they all start dancing, slowly at first, but as the music becomes more intense, so to their choreographies and the music goes from being diegetic sound to non-diegetic.

After various back and forth cuts between the characters with relatively simple, but functional, camera movements, we are presented which what in my opinion is one of the best shots in the series. We see  the camera moving away from one of the main protagonists, Vanya (who will be very important later in the season) and breaking through the natural confines of the house, presenting us with a shot that frames the entire building split in two giving us the chance to see all the characters at the same time dancing together, while they are completely ignorant of what is going on in the other rooms.