Being the fourth in a series. Earlier installments can be found here:
If it seems like there's a lot of narrative sans analysis in there, that's because there is. One assignment for Tuesday is that the students need to select one of the frames I didn't analyze and describe its formal properties (framing, lighting, &c.). (The moments when I narrate the plot are likely the most compelling for those not interested in Film Theory 101 because I wrote them plenty funny.) Unlike my earlier posts I skipped a lot of frames. Why? Because director Bryan Singer is a loon whose camera only stops panning once in this entire sequence and there are only so many hours in the day/seconds in your attention span.
We begin with a computer simulation of what's supposed to happen:
Singer provides a template his audience can refer to. (Note that in the simulation the camera is above the plane. This will be important.) He pulls the camera back into a close-up on the nice stewardess lady who's explaining in her nice-stewardess-lady voice what's happening in the simulation:
This would be a good time to mention that Singer films this scene like the obsessive former film student he is. The camera never stops moving. Never. The only reason this close-up doesn't become a medium close-up is because he cuts to Lois Lane asking a question. At this point the camera glides slowly and fluidly—not unlike the plane on the simulation—creating a sense of constant motion without any excitement. Then he cuts to Lois with a workmanlike reverse shot:
But it's an odd reverse shot. Lois meets the stewardess's eye but there's no eyeline match because the stewardess responds to everyone on the plane:
Because viewers expect eyeline matches in shot/reverse shot sequences, the stewardess's response feels like a snub. Singer's violates convention in order to evoke an emotional response from the audience and does so with great efficiency: he doesn't need for Lois to look snubbed or say she feels snubbed because the editing took care of that for him. He then reverse cuts back to Lois:
Who never appears to break eye contact with the stewardess. Keeping the one-sided match makes Lois seem determined. With his next cut he reveals something we had no reason to suspect: that this shot sequence has a source in the scene itself.
This has a mildly unsettling effect. Singer tells the audience that he's willing to withhold critical information. What we see may be focalizing through the needs of a particular character (the network cameraman) or those of the director (Singer himself) or both. I say "both" because Singer immediately cuts to a point of view shot from the cameraman's perspective as he whip pans from Lois to the stewardess:
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