JA puts on his director’s hat and nerdspeaks about Hitchcock
An article was posted about how JA and JP approach their craft and the story behind the camera. The second paragraph of the article discusses JA’s directorial choices. It reads:
There was a shot in The Girl Next Door that reminded me of a Hitchcock shot … “It was when we had a big wide shot [of] Sam sitting in the Impala in the corner of the parking lot, and it was dark, and he was waiting for this car to pull up…and it pulls up screaming in the foreground, and the wheel comes into view. The door opens, we see boots hit the ground, we track with the boots and the boots disappear as we come up over the hood and we see now Sam is gone and he’s out of the car. It was one shot and I had viewed it like that and I thought, ‘That fells like one of those classic shots.’ It was kind of like Strangers on a Train, watching the boots coming through the platforms and you’ve got the good guy going left and the bad guy going right. There are reasons for that, for having the protagonist go left to right and having the antagonist go right to left-because as American we read left to right, so that’s a much more natural feel for us. That was a thought-out move to have the antagonist going right to left, because it feels like it’s against the grain and there’s something wrong with that. There are little tricks like that that directors have been using for decades, and it’s cool to think about those things when you’re trying to put shots together.”
So naturally I had to go check out “Strangers on a Train” and compare it to the previously described scene from “The Girl Next Door” (7x03). :)
Here are screenshots from 7x03 in my inadequate attempt to show the scene (because I can’t find a clip on YouTube and don’t know how to edit and upload clips myself, doh).
Shot establishing that Sam's sitting in the Impala in the dark.
Over the shoulder shot (Sam's shoulder is extremely out-of-focus on the right) showing the car driving across the parking lot and coming to a stop. I found it interesting that JA used the words "it pulls up screaming in the foreground, and the wheel comes into view" when the final shot that's chosen has the car actually slowly rolling in background and there's no close-up of the wheels. It sounds like this was likely filmed with the intention of being almost identical to the opening sequence of "Strangers on a Train" but it got changed somewhere along the way (maybe during the editing process).
Reaction shot. Sam's "oh" face reminds me of an alert watch puppy.
The boots of the antagonist walking across the screen from right to left. This falls in line with that JA describes for how he visualized the scene: "The door opens, we see boots hit the ground, we track with the boots..."
"...and the boots disappear as we come up over the hood and we see now Sam is gone and he’s out of the car."
Final shot of the sequence showing that Sam's not in the Impala.
For comparison, here’s the opening sequence of “Strangers on a Train” showing the antagonist (Bruno) in the black and white shoes and the protagonist (Guy) in solid-colored shoes (who knows what color they really are, it’s shot in black and white). As JA mentioned, every shot of Bruno features him walking from right to left across the screen-counter to western reading convention-and every shot of Guy shows him walking from left to right-in line with western reading convention. Furthermore, shots of Bruno and Guy show the same sequence of events (both getting out of the car, both walking across the pavement, both walking on the train … even their pace is the same) and alternate from one to the other. Not only do these choices/techniques give the illusion that the characters are walking toward each other even though in the film’s reality they may not be, it makes it visually clear that these two characters are destined to meet. So it’s no surprise by the end of the opening sequence they literally bump into each other, with their feet nonetheless. Heh.
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I hope everyone is having a good summer. Our heat wave is supposed to break tomorrow, yay! I can't wait to go outside again and not feel like I'm in a gigantic hair dryer.