Shots

     

                                                                        

       I think if people looked harder into the films they watched they would get an even deeper meaning behind the story being told. I remember during my senior year of high school I took a film class and the teacher told us that this class will ruin our way of watching movies because we will think about the concepts we learned in class as we watch movies. Long story short he was right because after taking that class I got more out of films than I ever did before because I thought about the concepts we learned such as the purpose of certain lighting, music, shots, angles and so forth. I was grateful for it though, because if I could get more out of a movie then I don't see an issue with thinking about concepts I learned in a class if it benefits my cinematic experience. I would re-watch my favorite movies and as I watched I would notice the deeper meanings in the certain scenes that I didn't see before and I was thankful for noticing the differences because therefore I understood the story even more than before. When I see like for example a over the shoulder shot or a medium shot of two people talking at a table, I will not just pay attention to the conversation itself, I will pay attention to the lighting, sounds and or music, what is going on around them, body language, and what the camera is doing too. Then I can anticipate what is going to happen next and I also get more out of the conversation other than the words being spoken. 

        For example, maybe the setting is a dark room and this is a superhero movie that we are watching and these two people are thinking of doing something malicious, but fool the audience with what they say, like their conversation is about something positive, but in the end these two people do something drastic. Then we can think back to what this scene in the dark room really meant, and think oh maybe that conversation wasn't really meant to be positive after all, the lighting and maybe the music was sugar coding what they really felt and wanted to plan. I feel like these kind could happen in more movies than we expect and we just never pick up on it until maybe the second or third watch. I honestly pay attention to the smaller scenes more at times and scenes that may not seem like they have a useful part in the story, because more often than not those scenes may include certain clues for the rest of the film that we may not have picked up on. Now it depends on the movie I am watching, but usually I do that with horror or adventure/action movies that may have a plot twist or something like that. 

        Personally my favorite type of shot in a movie would be a medium shot of a character. The image above is what I am referencing when it pertains to my favorite kind of medium shot. The Big Lebowski is a classic and I enjoy how close the camera is to Jeff Bridges's face (the actor who plays Jeffery "The Dude" Lebowski) because it doesn't have to be super close for us to know how Jeffery is feeling. We see a blurred bowling alley in the background so we know the focus is Jeffery at the bar with an angry look on his face. I like these shots the best because honestly any kind of close-up is just too much emphasis in my opinion and as an audience member I would rather not be so close to someones face as I watch a movie. A medium shot to me does justice in telling us what they are feeling in the best way in my opinion because we can see what is going on around them and it doesn't feel so isolated to the character. I think it is open to interpretation on which shot is best to depict emotion, but I just think medium shots depict emotion in the best way because we can see the background, lighting of the setting, and we can see body language too and objects around them too and not just their face.