Composition: Beasts of No Nation: Supreme Commander scene

Context

The Commandant (Idris Elba) and his battalion of rebels have been summoned to a meeting with the Supreme Commander of the rebellion (Jude Akuwudike) as a result of their recent successes taking over small towns and killing hundreds of people. The Commandant thinks he will be given a promotion for his deeds. When they arrive at the rebel headquarters, they are made to wait all night. While the night's wait has angered the Commandant, the meeting that follows is disastrous. Rather than being promoted, the Commandant is in fact being relieved of his command and replaced by his lieutenant, whom they refer to as 2 I-C (Kurt Egyiawan). The Commandant arrived optimistic and, likely, with great respect for the Supreme Commander; he left hating him and feeling emasculated.

Analysis

As the scene goes on, the Commandant becomes angrier with the Supreme Commander as his own battalion is taken from him.

The scene actually starts a bit earlier, but when the Supreme Commander first enters, it is in this shot:

Supreme Commander (left) and Commandant (right)

 which becomes, via a small pan left, this:

 and a pan back right turns it to this:

The possible foreshadowing here is obvious, with the Commandant briefly being edged out of the frame. The pan away and back also visually indicates the Commandant's feelings toward the Supreme Commander. The Commandant is briefly in the shot with the Supreme Commander, then out, then back in. He's angry with the Supreme Commander for making him and his men wait, but still hoping for a promotion.

At this point the Supreme Commander and the Commandant sit down to their meeting.

The Commandant sends his men away to a room across the hall, but the Supreme Commander directly addresses 2 I-C and tells him to stay. As the meeting begins the film cycles through the shot above and the two below:

Notice that in two of the three shots, the Supreme Commander and the Commandant are not pictured together, and when they are, they are at opposite ends of the screen, with a lot of space as well as a desk and a table between them. Putting two characters in separates frames or shots and/or putting space or objects between them can be an indicator of the relationship between the characters.

At the point that the Supreme Commander reveals that the Commandant is both not getting a promotion and also losing his battalion, the film cuts to this shot:

Filming a conversation by intercutting 1-shots of each character is sometimes done merely for functional or practical reasons. The kind of shot above, however, is an even stronger indicator of a strained relationship, due to rarely being done only out of practical necessity. The Supreme Commander and the Commandant are both on screen at the same time, but they are both in separate frames created by the sliding door.

Notice also that 2 I-C is standing between the Supreme Commander and the Commandant (shown clearer below). As the person taking over the Commandant's battalion, he is a part of the problem coming between the Supreme Commander and the Commandant.

The rest of the meeting is shown as before, with the addition of the shot through the sliding door. The relationship between the Supreme Commander and the Commandant was already strained when the meeting began, but by the end it had become even worse.

Framing And Shot Length: Star Trek Voyager S02E5

Context

Previously in the episode, Ensign Harry Kim (Garret Wang) had woken up in a strange room in San Francisco next to his former girlfriend Libby (Jennifer Gatti), who claims they are married, and whom Harry has not seen since the Voyager became marooned hundreds of light years from Earth at the start of the series. When the scene begins Harry is still unsure and confused about the entire situation, particularly whether or not this entity that looks like Libby, really is Libby.

Why it's cool

Let's watch the scene first without any commentary.

What to look for

There are two interesting things about this scene: (1) the duration of the shot and (2) the slow push that causes the frame to tighten around the two characters.

Why is it cool

We'll talk first about the shot duration. This is a single, unbroken, 161 second (2'41") shot with dialog. The average shot duration (also known as Average Shot Length, or ASL) in modern Hollywood movies is roughly 5 seconds. approximately 1/32^nd the length of this shot. It was (and still is) unusual for a network television show to feature a shot of such length. This shot is remarkable not only because it's unusual, but because of the technical difficulties imposed by longer shots. If a roughly 2.5 minute conversation between two characters is broken up into 10 or 12 cuts or shots, the best portions from multiple takes of the scene can be edited together smoothly to construct an artificial "perfect" take (and if only one camera is being used, as often the case with movies but less common in television, an intercut conversation will definitely consist of more than one take). In addition, the more cuts a scene is made up of, the more possible reset points there are if something goes wrong. For example, if one of the actors flubs a line at 2'20" in 2'30" conversation, multiple, short shots would allow the scene to be restarted perhaps at the 2'10" or 2'15" second mark, only having to redo about 5 or 10 seconds of work. If the conversation is filmed in a single shot, if an actor messes up the last line of the conversation, the entire scene must be restarted. It's likely there were several unused takes of the scene above, but we know from the unbroken shot that every line in the conversation we see is from a single, "perfect," take.

Watch the scene from the beginning again. Notice how as the conversation goes on, the camera pushes in on Harry and Libby, slowly tightening the frame around them. The framing of a shot is a common way to indicate a character's emotional state. A wide, open shot with the character as only a small element might indicate that character feels free, or that they feel alone and isolated. Conversely, a tight shot can emphasize a character feeling trapped, or in the case of a two-shot (two people in the same frame) it might emphasize intimacy or closeness. In the beginning of this scene, Harry does not know what to make of suddenly seeing his former girlfriend again, let alone being married to her. Harry is unsure of everything, including whether or not she is really Libby. He is not entirely trusting of her, and, accordingly, the shot starts wide, with lots of space around the two of them. As they converse, Harry begins to feel closer to her, more trusting, and the camera pushes in to envelop them in the frame, leaving little else in the image but the two of them. Other than in the first few seconds of the scene when she enters the frame and sits on the bed, the characters don't actually physically get much closer for most of the scene, but the continually tightening frame emphasizes the growing bond also expressed in the acting and dialog.