Director had used zooming and panning in various scenes, and I found it interesting how the simple techniques can draw audience's attention.
During the scene of Woltz's bedroom, camera was slowly panning toward the bed. As the camera got closer to it, we could expect many things. For example, one of the classmates said that he was anticipating to see a dead body popping up. Then at the end of the panning, the dead horse's head was shown. Interesting fact of panning and zooming is that it creates a suspense in the scene. It makes audiences feel they are actually in the scene, which draws their attention and make them fully concentrated.
Second scene was Michael on the chair. Camera was doing exactly same thing (zooming & panning) as the previous scene. But this time, effect was different. It created the suspense in the previous scene, but this time, it empowered the character of the scene. It made it possible for the audiences to feel the authority and the power of Michael.
It was very interesting to see how the same technique could give different effects. I'm looking forward to discover the next effect of zooming & panning.
Taewoo, I agree with your points of effect of zooming and the camera panning. I think that if Coppola did not focus on the way he used the camera, the movie would not have been the same. On the topic of the scene in Woltz's room, I thought that the suspense was enough as it was going up the bed. As soon as the camera started to go back down from the head of the bed to the bottom, the suspense truly hit me and I was on the edge of seat. I hope to see other scene's like that which use the camera as much as possible.I'm not sure if you noticed it or not, but in the scene when Luca Brasi enters the room with Sollozzo, the camera is in a position where you can see the fish design on the door, as well as the people in the room. As the scene is ending, I noticed that the camera is closer to the fish. Other than the physical effect cameras have, I think that they also want to show what is more important than other things in the scene. In this case, the fish was very important.
ReplyDeleteNick, that's a good point about the fish and I hadn't noticed that the in the second scene, the camera was closer to the fish. But I think that you guys are still missing a key point to the zooming and panning of the camera when the audience is curious about a shady subject. While I agree that zooming into a character's face in a moment of suspense only adds to this effect, I think there is more to be noticed. In the scene of Jack Woltz waking up with the horse head in his bed, the camera slowly zooms in, looks around then quickly jumps out. The important thing to notice is that it does start to zoom back in. This is almost identical to what the camera does to Kay when Michael is telling her about the mafia family and almost identical to what our minds are thinking. When we are curious about something shady, we approach the subject gingerly and once we find out that it is something repulsive, we tend to jump back. But for some reason, in the end, our curious and outgoing side always lures us back in. Copolla did a very good job in making our emotions a parallel to what the camera does.
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