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fuckyeahisawthat · 5 months

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So, this is shot in a mirror, right? Specifically, this mirror--

--although they might have cheated the angle to get the kiss shot.

It goes by super fast, but you can see a bit of the gold frame, out of focus on the right edge of the screen:

Cool trick! But why?

I think there's a few things this shot achieves.

One, it creates the sense that something is just slightly off. Even if we don't clock that this is a mirror shot (it took me a bunch of watches to figure out that was what was going on) your brain is going to register the flipped image as slightly not what you expected. The screen direction of their movement is wrong--in the shot where Stede pulls Ed into the room, they're moving from screen right to screen left, so we expect them to continue that motion, but because we're seeing it in a mirror they're now moving screen left to screen right. All this adds up to make the moment seem slightly off-kilter. It's a bit of visual foreshadowing: while this is a passionate, intimate moment that they both want, Stede and Ed are not on the same page, and that becomes an issue in the next episode.

Two, a visual trick like this often has the effect of calling attention to our position as the audience. It can create a slightly voyeuristic effect that reminds us that we are outside viewers, looking in on the narrative the characters are experiencing.

I think this shot has much the same effect:

It's an unexpected framing choice that makes us feel like we are catching a glimpse of something not set up for the audience to see, lit only incidentally by the fireworks, and it ends with Stede literally drawing the curtain between the characters and the audience.

There's another notable place where a mirror shot is used in the show, and it's here:

I don't think this is a coincidence (and not just because both episodes were directed by Fernando Frias). This is a very intimate scene between Ed and Stede--maybe more intimate than their actual kiss later in the season. And while it's mostly shot in a fairly conventional manner, this shot almost makes it feel like we're spying on them while they have a very vulnerable conversation.

There are TONS of parallels between 1.06 and 2.06, which I may make a separate post about, but this one is a particularly striking visual callback. In both cases, the effect is to make us feel like we are peeking in on a private moment between the characters that is not set up for our consumption.

#ofmd #ofmd s2 #mirror shots #cinematography #parallels

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diaprincess · 1 year

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