Shot by Shot

For my shot by shot analysis, I recreated a scene from Bottle Rocket, one of my all-time favorite films. I'm a fan of the film partly because it was made at the beginning of Wes Anderson's career, before his visual style became completely defined, but still retaining the base elements of what makes his movies pleasing to look at. This scene in particular has always stood out to me, specifically for the image of Dignan laying on his back in the field with Anthony standing over him. This was a very interesting project for me, and I really began to understand it as I did the analysis of each image. I began to realize how purposeful each directorial decision was, and while I attempted to replicate much of it in my own version, I made lots of mistakes to learn from. In particular, I think I need to stop relying on handheld photography and start using a dolly, since there was lots of subtle movement that became way too pronounced in the final version. I also made the mistake of focusing too much on the scenes and performances in front of me and not looking at what it actually looked like on the camera-- I know this would've saved me some trouble later, but hey, lesson learned. Overall, I'd say this was by far the most valuable project we've done yet, and I'm eager to improve on my technique from here.