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Analysis Of The Movie ' Rita Ha ' By Noah Baumbach

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Chosen Clip: Clip 1 from Frances Ha (2012) Dir Noah Baumbach Directed by Noah Baumbach in 2012, Frances Ha follows young New Yorker Frances Halliday (Greta Gerwig) who, at age 27, is living with her best friend Sophie (Mickey Summer) whilst in an attempt to get her life heading in a succesful direction. The film examines and humanizes the importance of growing up in different cultures, experiencing the highs and lows of a sacred friendship, the realities of early adulthood and making sacrifices in order to get to where you need to be. The stand out aspect of cinematography used in this scene and Frances Ha as a film throughout is the careful choice by Baumbach to shoot digitally, but to edit the film as monochromic. Sam Levy (director of …show more content…

Omtting colour and using natural lighting helps not only this scene but the entire story to develop as it provokes more concentration from the viewer into this raw dialouge and acting. The classical style of cinematography is used by Levy in shooting Frances Ha. The scene is shot with a steadycam – evident through a smooth pan following Dan from the couch to the kitchen. For the majority of the scene, the camera is fixed in one position on Frances and Dan through a mid shot as they are seated on the couch. This shot size is framed around the subjects for a measure of distance (Bordwell and Thompson, 2008). The pair are sitting very close together and the shot further outlines this by being close to the subjects – without being labelled as close up shot. It is a tight frame, with a tight fix on the subjects. This communicates to the audience that these two are a couple and they are very comfortable with eachother and have been for a long time. The depth of field and focus range is very slim. This is a result of the distance between the closet and farthest objects in the scene being very small. Baumbach wants to focus soley on the characters in this scene as the position of the frame is extremely neutral. The lens is level with the pair sitting down on the couch with no high or low angles used. For Baumbach, it was not a case of symbolic cinematography, but instead to provide a more a neutral perspective to develop the

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