Photograph 19
This shot has been cut into three and used at different points throughout the sequence. The shots starts as a wide of two soldiers in the centre of frame for less than half a second before an explosion blasts one of the soldiers two or three metres into the air, landing with half of his leg missing but perfectly aimed towards the audience to highlight the brutality of the fight the men are kept in the centre thirds before we move on screen right to see Captain Miller crawl out of the smoke and water.
Photograph 20
Photograph 21
Once more he is kept fairly central in the screen, in the middle third of the frame as he moves toward the camera. As he reaches the “Czech Hedgehog” we continue this rule of thirds through the other two shots from this angle. The focus pulling for this shot would have been extremely difficult to do, the movement of the actors, camera and the explosion would not happen the same way every time. The tide pushing and pulling the character as he comes up the beach would have changed for every shot, the speed of the camera moving towards Miller would have changed according to what the camera operator thought was suitable for framing and similarly with the explosion. The stunt man could have moved differently on his landing or take off, so the continuous focus is a great piece of work for an extremely complicated shot.
Photograph 22
The camera stays with Miller following his looking room. But he is still central in the frame. This is because the shots that follow are all from his point of view. There is no shaker used on the lens here. With the editing effect used to “slowdown” use of it would have effected the power of the shot distracted and the audience from the characters reactions.
As Miller crawls up the beach the camera moves down toward him, meeting at the “Czech Hedgehog”, never physically changing the shot size but letting the environment and movement around the camera do it instead.
The duplicated frames happen more frequently here to really slow down the shot, this is a representation of Millers realisation of what is happening around him. There is little colour in this shot showing us the reality of his situation. The brightest colour is the spraying of the blood across his face. This continues through out the three separate shots. The colour is more drained here when we focus on Miller showing his reality and colourful in the rest of the sequence; what he sees. This allows it to become more of a dream like state.
