A Sequence in 11 Shots
-------------- SHOT 1:
The men exchange words.
Mid-shot, the woman ENTERS the frame.
(Classical use of scale and segmentation.
Heightened character dynamic.
Relational space crisply drawn.)
---------------SHOT 2:
INSERT: The little girl ENTERING background, biding time.
(Simultaneity across spheres of action.)
---------------SHOT 3:
RETURN to established shot:
The men talk.
Little girl in BACKGROUND, her movement continuous.
The mother notices her.
---------------SHOT 4:
INSERT: The mother noticing her daughter.
(Simultaneity across frames.)
The men are HEARD: still talking.
---------------SHOT 5:
RETURN to establishing shot:
The men continue their exchange.
The mother disrupts frame, REMOVES herself from foreground action.
---------------SHOT 6:
Movement continuous (her walking to her daughter).
---------------SHOT 7:
RETURN to establishment shot:
The men continue talking.
The woman has now moved herself into the BACKGROUND,
caught now, by her doing, within the geometric box made by
the fence and the flattened, pictorial mise en scene.
caught now, by her doing, within the geometric box made by
the fence and the flattened, pictorial mise en scene.
---------------SHOT 8:
Behind the wire (from the position of the menbut not a POV).
The mother shoos the girl further away.
She turns back towards the men (and the camera,
as the camera is placed where they stand - in correlation
to both her will to look and, as the scene will soon show, one
man's will to look straight back).
An approaching-symmetrical portrait of a woman framed, by slats and mesh wire.
(... separated, still willed to look)
as the camera is placed where they stand - in correlation
to both her will to look and, as the scene will soon show, one
man's will to look straight back).
An approaching-symmetrical portrait of a woman framed, by slats and mesh wire.
(... separated, still willed to look)
---------------SHOT 9:
Her POV.
The men talk. The deal occurs.
---------------SHOT 10:
A child's preoccupation found (while the adult mother is bound now,
in her substitution, obligated to witness).
in her substitution, obligated to witness).
Her sphere now twice removed from the men, her mother between.
(Simultaneity of experience.)
---------------SHOT 11:
At her daughter.
At the men.
One shot, devoted to her.
(Space is crystal clear.
Her languor evoked through judiciousness.)
Two fields of attention.
Her first attention: watchfulness over her daughter
Her second: morbid curiosity over these shady men.
What shines through in her, quietly and alarmingly:
a wearied, encapsulating ambivalence felt towards both.
