Focus in on the smallest detail. Now, blow it up.note
This screenwriting technique is seen a lot in "realist" films of the seventies and eighties, with a kind of rebirth in the nineties. It involves cutting to a still object. It might be a stalk of grass, a branch with dew, or a child's toy. Sometimes the trope involves fading in and out of focus, as was done a lot in the 70s, or holding steady, sharp focus. It might be a close up of a Christmas ornament while the drunken parents are arguing, perhaps showing how the child finds it too painful to look at directly, and instead fixates on something steady and reliable. The whole scene of a dinner might focus on a bowl of soup rather than the person eating it.
In some cases, the technique is also used in action films or scenes; while a car or other vehicle carrying members of the film's cast goes by, the camera might focus on an object lying next to or in the road, like a discarded candy wrapper or a dandelion growing on the verge.
This trope more often than not has a melancholy or painful tone to it. It often feels emotionally detached or wistful. Effects are often achieved through shifting Depth of Field.
The technical term for this in cinema is Associational Montage, or Intellectual Montage. The Grammar of Film & Television
writes:
The juxtaposition of short shots to represent action or ideas; Intellectual montage is used to consciously convey subjective messages through the juxtaposition of shots which are related in composition or movement, through repetition of images, through cutting rhythm, detail or metaphor. Montage editing, unlike invisible editing, uses conspicuous techniques which may include: use of close- ups, relatively frequent cuts, dissolves, superimposition, fades, and jump cuts. Such editing should suggest a particular meaning.
What it is not: Shots of an object with major significance to the subject (the Ring in The Lord of the Rings, the Coffee and the Cigarettes in Coffee and Cigarettes, Rosebud...)
See also Motif for use of objects as a motif, usually a recurring motif.
This is a specific type of Montage. Related to Aspect Montage, among others.
Examples:
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Poetry
- William Carlos Williams, "Red Wheelbarrow" illustrates this trope with a poem.
So much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
Anime
- In Death Note, there is a panning shot of a rack of bikes on campus while Light and L are conversing.
Comics
Film - Animated
- The Lion King (1994): as Simba climbs Pride Rock to take his rightful place as king, there is a brief shot of a wildebeest skull being washed away in the rain, as if to indicate that the land is being cleansed of the excesses of Scar's regime.
- The Rescuers Down Under opens with close-up shots of several insects crawling among plants and rocks with the background out of focus before shifting to an Epic Tracking Shot across the Outback.
Film - Live-Action
- American Honey features frequent close-ups of the grass and insects of the open fields in the American Midwest.
- During David's first transformation in An American Werewolf in London, the film cuts briefly to a smiling Mickey Mouse figurine, then back to David completing the transformation.
- As Barton Fink slowly loses it in his Hell Hotel, we get a lot of these showing details of his room. One long, slow zoom right before a particularly nasty scene takes us into the bathroom, up to the sink, and down the drain.
- Visible in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in a Fade In/Fade Out of a tree branch with dew, set to "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head".
- Rosebud does not apply in Citizen Kane, but the snowglobe possibly does. In fact, snowglobes in general.
- Many shots in Dancer in the Dark are examples of this.
- Daughters of the Dust includes several close ups of the reeds and the wildlife of St. Helena.
- Seen in most Dogme '95 films, such as The Idiots.
- Soviet propaganda film Earth (1930) is about a farming village that's converting from individual farms to a collective. It includes many close-ups of the products of the earth$fruit on the vine, sunflowers, melons, wheat. These are juxtaposed with close-ups of the peasants, suggesting that they also are part of the land.
- Many of the shots during musical sequences of Easy Rider.
- A classic, almost definitive example can be found here.
- A classic, almost definitive example can be found here.
- Karina Hill writes about Eisenstein: "His associational montages use dialectic elements to activate audience emotions. Generally, his associational montages are used to sadden or disgust the audience. Intellectual montage is the colliding of two unrelated shots in order to arrive at an understanding of an abstract concept or message. The Soviet system within which he worked emphasized the social utility of film and he believed that film could be used to reeducate the public. Therefore, Eisenstein used montages to incite physiological, emotional, and intellectual responses in spectators, with the ultimate goal of motivating them to take action."
- To illustrate, here are some examples from Battleship Potemkin: A shot of an officer tapping the hilt of his sword is followed by a shot of a priest tapping his crucifix, to imply the connection between the Church and the oppressive tsarist government; an officer is dumped overboard and a shot of the water churning after he falls is compared to an earlier close-up of the maggot-ridden meat that let to the revolt; and the famous three successive shots of lion statues in progressive stages of standing up, symbolizing the people standing up against oppression.
- Used to particularly creepy effect in Eraserhead by David Lynch.
- Many examples are silent or musical, many have dialogue, often painful dialogue, going over. High Hopes by Mike Leigh has quite a few "overlong" shots of doors, an elderly lady's dentures, a series of shots of gravestones, often used to reflect a malaise of the characters.
- A clever variant in Kong: Skull Island that foreshadows the juxtaposition of size throughout the film. As the crew's helicopters arrive at Skull Island, we follow a shot of them as they pass the forest canopy. As the shot moves from wide focus to close, we see that one of the helicopters is in fact a dragonfly, landing on a foreground leaf.
- This may include the film La Jetée, which is made up of all still shots with one motion shot.
- In A Little Princess (1995), Sara and the camera briefly focus on a balloon when Miss Minchin tells her what happened to her father.
- Terrence Malick is fond of this trope.
- Badlands: As Kit and Holly hide out in the woods after he murdered her father, living an idyllic existence in a crude hut, there are several closeups of bugs and flowers and other flora and fauna.
- The Thin Red Line. Body blows up — cut to blade of grass. Man slowly dying — cut to birds preening in the trees. Narrator asks "why is nature at war with itself?" — cut to a crocodile swimming.
- In Taxi Driver, there is a scene where Travis is at a table with some cabbie colleagues, and while the conversation is going on around him, the camera cuts to a slow push into his glass of water with alka-seltzer in it. It's a great way to illustrate his increasing social and emotional isolation.
- Used several times in Walkabout to show the bugs and lizards of the Australian outback that the main characters are wandering through.
Literature
- In the second The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants book, Tibby is taking a college film course for the summer and makes her project a bitter portrait of her mother, tricking her by only asking to interview her when she's busy, so that all the shots she gets are of her mother looking harried and telling her she can't talk right now. The Jerkass-but-talented kid she's trying to befriend at the college suggests that she add in shots like a patch of dead grass in the yard so that it doesn't "get predictable."
Live Action TV
- The Biggest Loser often does scenery cutaways as transitions, but in Season 9, episode 17, there was a bizarre close-up of a single wild rose, wet with dew, sandwiched between two of the scenery shots. The rose had nothing to do with anything.
- The Office (UK) often divides scenes with a still shot of a random office object, such as the water cooler. The same handful of shots are used repeatedly throughout the show.
