Blow Up (1966) Scene Breakdown

The depth of field seemed to stay the same throughout the scene; the focus would remain on the characters. The lighting on the characters is soft, which contrasts the harder lighting, and hence shadows, in the backgrounds that filter through the geometric objects in the room. A lot of the actor movements are repeated, or mirrored such as when the actors lean against the triangular wooden frame. The camera accentuates this by moving closely with these movements.

The framing of each shot has in it a large portion of the background, showing a lot of the objects in the room. The shots are hence rather busy ones, and select shots have objects obstruct the view of one or both of the characters. I imagine this would have involved firstly positioning the camera in a desirable position, then directing the actors to move to a position that has part of their body obstructed to create this effect.

Shadows seem to play a big role in the scene, and the lighting creates varying shadows on the white wall from objects in the room, and the character’s themselves. The shadows are not dark though, and with the lighting does not create much contrast. From this I assume that the director would have had to work closely with the cinematogapher to ensure that shadows were being thrown on the walls, while working with the actors to stay close to walls or spaces that show the shadows.

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