The Godfather 1972 movie
Pay special attention to the camera choices that the director makes — whether characters are framed together in shots or alone; viewed from above or below, or straight on; captured in a distant long shot or close-up, or a canted frame; with soft lighting or concealed in shadows; etc. Is there a pattern to the shots? Are certain characters always depicted from a particular angle and other characters from another angle? Or does it depend on the relationship between the characters from scene to scene? Why might the director make one such choice or another? Are there any cutaway shots within the scene? How about POVs? Do such choices create any emotional connection to the narrative experience of the film, or subjective insight into character states of mind? Or perhaps both? How else does the director communicate such subjectivity? What about camera movement? Is the camera static in every shot, or does it move according to character action and movement in and out of scenes? Does the camera ever move on its own? How might such independent movement guide us through the space of the film, leading us like an omniscient cinematic narrator? Does the camera move, and in the same way, for all characters, or just some but not others? What does the movement of the camera communicate about the relationship between the characters in the film and the way we experience the film? Finally, are there any unique compositional choices that further delineate the relationships between characters and their states of mind from one scene to the next? These might include characters framed and isolated within windows or doorways; groups of characters clustered on one side of the frame with a single character remaining alone on the opposite side from them; proportional distances between characters in a shot so that some appear larger than others; etc. How is the color palate and lighting contrast of the shots also used to support such themes?
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