Shot Zero

#GravityFalls pulls a fun visual trick using the frame:

when Bill Cipher tips his hat to Dipper, the whole frame flips around them; at first it may feel like only the camera flips, but when Dipper skids down the roof, we realize Bill has actually flipped reality around himself!

all our posts this week are about 'meta ways to use the frame'

and this may be amongst the most meta of them all

a medium shot of a cafe window; the window is oval-shaped, with an unusual middle frame piece which creates a yin-yang outline. On the left, outlined in the 'bottom' part of the yin-yang symbol, a woman with red hair is sitting. On the right, outlined in the 'top' part of the yin-yang symbol, a woman with black hair is standing.

The way #Andor arranges Vel (Faye Marsay) and Cinta (Varada Sethu) here is entirely for us the audience, using an unusual window frame to create a meta moment of commentary about the characters and where they have been emotionally.

Medium shot of a man in army uniform, sitting in a chair against a background with wood columns and slight shadows in one corner

A wide shot of a man standing in an office, across the desk from a man sitting hunched over. The many shadows cast across the whole room look like a spiderweb.

medium shot of a man in an office chair, wearing a fine-patterned suit and smoking a pipe

Medium shot of two men sitting at a desk in an office; the windows behind them are barred, and casting barred shadows on the wall, so the whole thing looks like a jail cell.

As three characters dance around truth and each other, the changing patterns of the room show the audience whether they're in the clear . . . or in the spider's web.

Check out our photo-heavy look at 1947's CROSSFIRE

shotzero.substack.com/p/patterns-i...

DZ-111: Unreliable Narrators and Fight Club How does the unreliability of a narrator impact the way a story is told? In this episode, Stu and Mel (sans Chas!) take a deep dive into FIGHT CLUB and its use of the unreliable narrator. This is a…

#FightClub 2/2

This sort of meta moment just. so. happens! to be something Stu and I did an entire podcast episode on, over on Draft Zero.

draft-zero.com/2024/dz-111/

This moment in Fight Club involves a ‘cigarette burn’ in the frame we’re watching.

That the narrator refers to it as Tyler (Brat Pitt) points to it is a meta way to signal the narrator has full knowledge of the movie we are watching . . .

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This live-action #LegendsofTomorrow scene pulls the same trick with the frame as yesterday's animated scene from Kiki's Delivery Service.

When Nate [Nick Zano] punches the bad guy, the whole frame SHAKES to make us feel the impact!

Slowed down for clarity, and also pure enjoyment.

Afraid she may be losing her ability to fly, Kiki tests her broom . . .

When she lands with a THUD! the screen shakes as though the camera is jarred by her hitting the floor.

More than a sight gag, the jarring motion makes us *feel* how Kiki’s world is shaken when she hits the ground.

every. single. time. Lake George has three people in a scene, it gets a little funky with the framing.

Step inside, and we'll show you how . . .

open.substack.com/pub/shotzero...

When Paul Thomas Anderson wanted to get closer to a picture without cutting, he swung a magnifying glass in front of the frame.

You may notice the edge ‘wipe’ across the frame, or it may feel like an extreme focus pull, but the EFFECT of jumping to "but it did happen . . . “ for sure grabs you.

All our other examples of 'wipes' this week have changed everything in the frame, and either skipped time, or 'jumped' closer to a character.

This use from 1997's Insomnia is completely different - we break it down in depth next week on our (free!) Substack.

Our long-read today is quite short: just a bunch of film characters forming hearts with their bodies.

shotzero.substack.com/p/shapes-of-...

Johnny and Baby doing what they do best: dancing, yes, but also making the shape of a heart.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2/2 The wipes+jumpcuts are stylized and call attention to themselves, but not in any particular rhythm with music or narration; particularly interesting because this leads into a scene all about rhythm, and drumming, and dancing, and disrupting the staid, orderly ‘same same ness’ of Chuck’s life.

As this #TheLifeofChuck voiceover introduces us to the titular Chuck (Tom Hiddleston), multiple passerby ‘wipe’ the frame in combination a jump cut; the first moving him from sidewalk to bench, the rest getting us closer to him.

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#MyLifeisMurder “Another Bloody Podcast” introduces Alexa playing video games, then brings it back for this final scene with a 'wipe' transition.

This wipe also ellipses time, demonstrated by the change in lighting (from warm yellow to blue TV glow), and Alexa now in pyjamas and drinking wine.

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Just like always, we compile our weekly shorts in our Wednesday Substack - last week was all about Hi and Lo angles.

New this year are our Weekly Themes, where all our shots share something in common.

shotzero.substack.com/p/week-2606-...

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During #OnlyMurdersintheBuilding episode 5.03 “Rigor”, as Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin) narrates the history of Arconia’s Secret Gambling Room, the camera uses ‘wipes’ behind first a large column , then a character, to change color and costumes, and thus jump time several years.

In this scene from Dead Presidents, Curtis (Larenz Tate) runs through neighborhood yards. After he jumps a couple fences, a tree foreground-wipe-transitions directly to Curtis running through the jungles of Vietnam; a heartbreakingly quick transition from childhood to horrors of war.

Similar to how John Carpenter makes Roddy Piper's Nada really truly LOOK at the real world, he makes us stare at so, so many types of eyes in THEY LIVE.

We've got all of them, right here.

shotzero.substack.com/p/the-eyes-h...

six shots in a grid, where people: look at suggestively arranged carrots and citrus, lustily touch apples, or plunge a reamer into a graprefruit, peel a banana, squirt sriracha onto a plate of fries, grill two eggs sunny side up

We’re doing Theme Weeks this year, which ranges from Texas Switches to ‘shots of animals.’

Here’s our Insta grid from two weeks ago, when the theme was Sex and Breakfast Food

yes, fries (or 'hot chips') w/ sriracha is absolutely breakfast food . . . though in this case, it's also a double entendre

Memory and Mirrors: EVE'S BAYOU how to shoot reflections on the past, in the present

Only saw this for the first time a couple weeks ago, absolutely blown away.

And after I finished, immediately went back to see how they did that mirror scene, and had to do a deeper dive:

shotzero.substack.com/p/eves-bayou...

insane for this to be a debut film!!!!!

Not one but two #splitdiopter shots, a J-cut, and some stomach-level cameras . . . today's longread looks at five of our favourite shots from The Wasp

#BlackLizard 2/2

As the detective and the bandit talk, they also move around the room, circling each other. The camera constantly jumps from high to low angles, not merely to make beautiful shots, but to destabilize us, the same way the characters are destabilizing each other.

The wild heist / action / comedy / thriller / fantasy caper film "Black Lizard" centres a battle of wits and love between Detective Akechi (Isao Kimura, here in the suit) and ‘Black Lizard’ aka Mrs. Midorikawa (Akihiro Maruyama, here in the dress).

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wide shot of two people by a river; Jade (knight, in red) is standing, and is up higher than Kit (princess, in black).

Medium shot looking up at Jade, knight, in red. Behind her, we can see trees and sky.

Medium shot looking down at Kit, princess, in black. Behind her we can see the ground.

This scene from Willow (2022) uses high and low angles to show shifting dynamics as Kit argues with her knight Jade.

Not only their positioning, but how the angles perceive them, changes through the scene.

For the full breakdown next week, subscribe (free!) to our Substack.

We look at a few of the many, many ways #Succession directors cross the line, in two very different scenes.

open.substack.com/pub/shotzero...

#Da5Bloods 2/2
4 more things emphasize David's childishness:

1. David in a different frame to his dad Paul (Delroy Lindo)
2. puts a group of Paul’s friends alongside him to fill his frame out
3. makes David seated, while Paul and friends are standing
4. gives David a baseball cap and glass of OJ

It’s fairly typical to highlight a child feeling small by emphasizing size and height discrepancies to their parent . . . but it’s made more difficult when the child, David, is played by a big guy (Jonathan Majors)

So in addition to standard “look down at kid / up at parent” technique . . .

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