I was asked to analyse the various angles and shots taking place in any scene of any movie, i chose a movie i am familiar with, that being ‘John Wick’ I chose this movie as it features many different creative shots and angles throughout the film, I will be analysing a famous scene.
Whilst the scene itself only consist of a few shots + angles, it conveys a very large amount to the audience, which coupled with the actors superb acting, really helps set the tone of the movie and scene.
The scene starts out with a wide shot of the character Aurelio, bent over his workshop doing something.
The scene previous to this one included Aurelio hitting his bosses son for stealing John Wicks car + killing his dog.
The pose Aurelio takes mixed with the fact that he’s doing work denotes the fact that he believes what he did was justified or not that big of a deal to him, the wide shot showing the entirety of his body allows the audience to see he is clearly doing something, which is later shown to be flicking through a newspaper when he stands up.
The shot carries onto Aurelio standing up and picking up the phone, which then swaps to Vigo standing atop a skyscraper, the shot is a medium shot, it shows the upper half of Vigo’s body, but only the back of it.
Throughout this scene Vigo’s back is shown to the audience, perhaps showing us that he believes he is in a position higher than Aurelio, as he has not yet learned why his son was struck, the shot slowly pans in on Vigo’s back until it cuts back to Aurelio.
The next shot opens up on a low angle of Aurelio whilst he is on the phone to Vigo, in this shot he explains that he struck Vigo’s son for what he did to John, he walks around slightly in this scene but his body never leaves the shot.
In this scene Aurelio still addresses Vigo as ‘Sir’ which may imply he still believes that he is his boss, but that his son has made a mistake.
The scene then progresses back to Vigo, who slowly turns around facing the camera, but never looking at it, all whilst in a close up shot.
The only word said by Vigo throughout this shot is “Oh.”
Upon turning around it is seen that Vigo is visibly aware of what has been said and understands fully the consequences of doing so, coupled with his stark reaction to what Aurelio has told him, it tells the audience that what has been done to John will be brought up again.
The following shot is a wide of Vigo standing on the skyscraper top again, but from a different position, this is a low angle +wide shot.
The shot composition perhaps represents Vigo’s disposition, he believes that was has happened is terrible and knows that the repercussions will be dire.
This scene is ended by Vigo walking towards the camera slowly, with a look of hopelessness on his face, the entire scene was built to enhance the already heavy aura that Keanu Reeves character already had, really showing the audience that his character was feared and respected by even the largest of people.
An extremely brief and broad overview of the movie would be as follows, it follows John Wick, a former hitman who has recently lost his wife, his dog was the last memory of her and it was killed by the son of a Russian mafia boss, the same Russian mafia boss John had worked for in the past, he killed it as he wanted johns car, he beats john up, steals his car and drives away, tries to sell the car and fails, john then spends the rest of the movie fighting various people who attempt to kill him (all of whom hired by the mafia boss to protect his son) but it is all shown to be futile as john eventually kills the boss’s son, and then the boss himself in a climatic fist fight in the rain ending scene.