We talk about shot design - because shot design isn’t just how it looks and feels, it’s how it works. || Produced by @stuwillis & @mehlsbells and @draft_zero

Melbourne / Naarm
Joined July 2022
we're celebrating Spooky Season with deep dives into Widow's Bay, The Spiral Staircase, The Masque of the Red Death, and more! if you like our bites here, but want a full meal every so often, suss us out at buff.ly/a6gl6EY
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Step into our mansion, where today we look at wonderful, unusual, and fractured uses of mirrors in 1946's THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE buff.ly/KrpQKhD
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Excalibur (1981) is peak Terry English' armor. You can nit-pick aplenty, but it was one of the last times and entire cast of Knights hit the screen in full, polished armor. Notice the Grail embossed over Lancelot's plackart, plenty of nice details like this.
The way I just went “holy shit” with my jaw on the floor when we caught a glimpse of this design
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It's a fool's errand to post even the few seconds of this beautiful shattered mirror shot on socials - the House-of-Mouse's algorithm will have us shot down before you can say boo! - but we take a closer look at its wonderful animation next week on the Substack.
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(and pssst, next month we're looking at big, bold color washes from a Series 3 episode).
Series 6 did more with neon lighting than prior seasons, but Slow Horses is always making distinct choices; often scenes have their own mini-visual-arc, as this one from the Series 2 finale.
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In The Boys Season 3, Homelander has a long conversation with a few of his Selves in a mirror (photos 1-3) In season 4' “We’ll Keep the Red Flag Flying Here,” the mirror is shattered, depicting how much more fragmented and broken Homelander is (photo 4).
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Shot Zero retweeted
every time i watch the exorcist i get to this scene and i'm like yeah man that is some of my favorite looking 40 seconds of film ever
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As Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) tries to get the upper hand on an old nemesis, the scene's choice of angles show how off-kilter both men really are. We break it all down in our longread, today on the site: buff.ly/kEhNR0d
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this beautiful shot of Cat Hardy (Li Jun Li) says so much - it’s visually indicative of how Cat’s allegiances are split, but also demonstrates how her life is close to shattering, as Silvermane (Brendan Gleeson) comes closer and closer to discovering what she’s really up to.
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Reminder we’ve got a weekly roundup of five short shot analyses - now even more themed! - published every Wednesday. Here are last week's shots, looking at characters under the influence of everything from mushrooms to special bubbble gum shotzero.substack.com/p/week…
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Shot Zero retweeted
We shot the aftermath first. Then redressed everything to shoot the 'before times' after. The ace steadicam operator was Paul Edwards. It was the first day of the shoot on the film too!
SHAUN OF THE DEAD (2004) uses the exact same walk before and after the zombie outbreak, turning an ordinary morning routine into a brilliant visual joke. The attention to detail is unreal.
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Already suffering #SlowHorses cravings now the finale has aired? Coming up, we're dishing up looks into scenes from Seasons 1, 2, and 3, to tide you over! (FTR we are Team Louisa here! No matter how good in bed you are, you don't help yourself to a stranger's Ben and Jerry's!)
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The #Spider-Noir title sequence uses lines like spiderweb gossamer to make cracks across a mirror, the shards of which reflects The Spider, his city, nemeses, friends, and those in-between. [full breakdown of the title sequence coming on Substack next month!]
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From the moment we meet Tilly, it's clear how much she values fashion and presentation. So when she opens the door to her mother’s house and is immediately pictured in a shattered mirror, the stark contrast tells us all about who she is now, versus the past she is now facing.
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This week's socials snippets are all on cracked mirrors; first, we look into the silver surface of a very large, tricky mirror shot in 1946 classic The Spiral Staircase. buff.ly/MKw4zqV
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Shot Zero retweeted
just came across the mother of all transitions in anna magdalena (1998)
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Revisiting one of the best jump-scares in all cinematic history . . . one so good it coined its own term! buff.ly/bSBbP92
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Shot Zero retweeted
underrated part of this scene is how the camera work goes from steady to shaky because the camera crew was struggling not to lose it too
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When Mayor Tom (Matthew Rhys) ingests mushroom tea meant for Wyck, the rest of the episode uses various techniques to depict his trip. We expounded on a longer scene [buff.ly/V8hXKqN], and here are two smaller moments. 1/2
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#WidowsBay 2/2 Both use sound mixing to give us an approximation of what Mayor Tom hears; one pairs with a low wide-angle pan to give us an up-close-personal view of Mayor Tom’s sweaty brow and paranoid eyes, while the other dolly zooms to depict / induce a vertiginous feeling.
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Wicker knows its target audience. Phenomenal. No notes.
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