Blog #4

I chose to analyze the scene from the movie Phone Booth in which actor Colin Farrell is confessing his love affairs and his deepest insecurities towards his loved ones in front of a humongous crowd in New York City.

Stuart Shepard (Farrell) is a public relations man who is being threatened by an unknown caller in a phone booth. The caller knows Stuart very well and begins to give him orders which if does not accomplish, the caller will trigger the sniper from an unrevealed location and kill Stuart.

In this scene the caller had just told Stuart to publicly admit what he really feels of himself. Stuart goes on to reveal how materialistic and selfish he is, and goes on to admitting his love affair with a woman named Pamela (Katie Holmes), to his wife Kelly (Radha Mitchell), whom are present in the crowd surrounding the phone booth Stuart is in.

I chose this scene to work with, most importantly because the whole movie is shot in one space only. To entertain viewers for an hour and a half  with a film that unfolds in one single space is challenging, but the movie manages to develop in a positive way thanks to the actors performance.

In this particular scene we have a slow piano playing with a sorrowful tone that goes well with the feeling of the scene. The camera goes from Farrell to Mitchell and back in a one person conversation. It focuses on Farrell when he speaks, and then on Mitchell for the reaction of his words. In that same way, the camera goes from Farrell speaking to Holmes reacting and back. The camera makes it look like its a third person who is witnessing a conversation as we all do on a regular bases.

The camera also takes several shots of the police officers, news reporters and a crowd of people who are silently witnessing the confessions. Theses shots are not wide but not too close, they are at a moderate distance to show abundance of people.

Because the scene is mostly just Will Farrell talking, the shots are close on his face to concentrate on sadness and desperation and on the faces of whoever he is talking to, to highlight dismay. There are occasional zoom-ins when he has a long line to say. And sporadically, we have shots from a wide distance that includes him and the crowd from above them.

As I mentioned earlier, the majority of the movie is shot in one location, and for that, the camera angles the crew chooses must add on to whatever the scene is about. It has to compliment the acting more than it would in other sets.