Between the Shadow and the Soul: A Film Analysis of Beneath You

[angearia]

I've been wanting to analyze a BtVS scene ever since I took a film analysis course and Marta's Meta Comment-A-Thon finally inspired me to give it a try.  So here's my brief analysis of some of the technical elements of the final scene in Beneath You.  (Here's a good reference for film analysis terminology.)

Comments

[angearia]

Thanks!

Oh definitely the camera shots are significant, too. I just ran out of steam as I was writing this and felt like the lighting/color/sound managed to make for a cohesive enough reading.

I think I didn't really focus much on the camera shots and movement because they weren't as strikingly meaningful to me. For instance, there's a close-up on Buffy's face as she realizes Spike's got his soul back. There's a pan shot when Buffy first enters the church looking for Spike which establishes a sense of space and how she's surrounded by darkness, on her guard. There's a long shot of Spike in the darkness as he presses his fists against his temples in pain -- that shot was interesting to me, displaying the distance between Buffy and Spike, highlighting his anguish as he struggles with his darker passions alone.

I dunno. I think I saw the camera shots/movement as fairly perfunctory. Like, Buffy has an important realization, cue close-up. Buffy and Spike talk, cue back and forth over-the-shoulder shots. There's some interesting camera movement throughout the scene which makes it seem pretty dynamic though. I probably just haven't given it enough thought. I imagine the shot sequence is where it gets interesting, but again... I've kinda lost steam!

[red_satin_doll]

I think the framing is very important but you're right, in comparison with the more "obvious" elements, it's harder to say what that contributes. But much of what you speak of in terms of visuals wouldn't work without the exact framing of each shot.

The shot on Buffy's face as she says "Your soul" -of course it has to be a close-up, because Sarah conveys Buffy's realization in her eyes before that. It's so quick (it can't be captured in screencaps) but it's there; the words "your soul" almost seem unnecessary to me. (But then again I "get" Buffy anyway most of the time.)

I haven't counted but just from memory there's a huge number of separate shots in this scene, and the placement/framing is very different from each to each. It's a scene that could be very stage-bound - I call scenes like this in the show "theater pieces" because it could be performed onstage - but the number of shots keep it from becoming boring and retain as flow, a sense of movement when there actually is very little movement. Compare this scene to the "theater scene" in Touched ("I love who you are, how you try"); it's a much smaller room, they are closer together - actually squeezed into a relatively small space - and the effect IMO is rather more stage-y. Buffy and Spike switch positions a lot in the manner of the early live tv dramas, to try to maintain a sense of movement and interest, but the effect isn't quite as effective.