Week 26.33 posts include shots from The City of the Dead (1960); New York, New York (1977); Sunshine (2007); Five Fingers for Marseilles (2017); and Taskmaster (2015-current).
This South African neo-Western leverages its genre and aspect ratio to the hilt, while giving us story exposition in a way so stunning, we don’t care how blunt it is.
Following a terse exchange, a scramble in darkness brings in flashlights which eventually illuminate a tombstone, a spotlight on the name declaring what happened to the man our hero seeks.
Series 14, Episode 9, “A New Business End”
The dramatic use of spotlighting in Dara Ó Briain’s short film is reminiscent of a noir, as well as the way circuses shine spotlights upon the ringmasters, as elicited by the Taskmaster graphics in back of shot.
This space thriller uses the flashlights’ small beams to introduce ‘flashes’ of memory which take up the whole screen, but it also uses those lights to selectively show parts of the creepy spaceship a crew is exploring, which of course heightens our anxiety about what lies outside the bright spots of light.
We look a closer look at the full scene and all its effects here.
There’s so much to love about this shot, from the cobweb design to the creeeeeaaaak of the old door, but check how it uses spot lighting.
Instead of moving the camera to guide our eyes, they choose to move the light, roughly mimicking what the too-curious-for-her-own-good Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson) would be able to see as she moves her flashlight.
This Scorsese film uses a lot of ‘classical’ techniques to evoke contrasty, colourful 1940s musicals. He uses spotlighting regularly, especially to illuminate performances, and/or isolate performers in their own unique agony and ecstasy.
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