For this blog post, when given the
prompt of finding a moment in a film that I thought was shot beautifully, I
chose a moment from The Young Victoria.
I primarily chose it for the transition into this scene that unfortunately I
couldn’t find anywhere so I’ll have to describe: Victoria steps onto the dance
floor, in a medium shot, with the camera placed in what feels like the middle
of the floor and Victoria seems to magically float to meet Albert there. We can
tell that she isn’t walking, and based on the reading I’m guessing that ratchet
might be the best way to describe the focus since Victoria stays in focus as
she pulls forward and the audience is blurred in the background. Up until this
moment the film is shot in a way that seems realistic, and while this article
gave me a deeper level of appreciation for how any minute decision impacts the
viewer’s perception, this moment stood out as a moment when I “saw” the camera,
but in a way that I thought beautifully reflected how we experience time during
adrenaline-filled landmark moments-like like time is suspended but whooshing
past you simultaneously.
Another prominent technique is the
moving shot that rotates around Victoria and Albert as they themselves rotate,
and I felt that this successfully engaged me in the feeling of the waltz. At
the very end of this clip it seems like the director plays with time by showing
one moment (when Victoria drops her arm to Albert’s shoulder) multiple times
from different angles around them. From Victoria’s perspective, this could be another
sign of time seeming to stretch, or it could also be a commentary on how the
audience viewing her all take different active stances on criticizing her? In any event, I feel like the risks paid off
in this scene and stood out as special, and the content and placement in the storyline
allowed it to work well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiuloBasqf4
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