It Happened One Night - Jen

I chose this shot because of how dark it is, thanks to the high contrast. It means that your eyes are drawn immediately to the brightest parts – the windows – making them the dominant. And because your eyes go right to the window, you can see how it’s raining, which I feel can be tied to the rather stormy atmosphere inside the room. Now, my eyes were drawn almost immediately to the right side, where Peter lays, because not only is the window lit up, but you can actually see his face, which I believe is the subsidiary contrast. I like this shot of “the wall of Jericho” because the camera is just far way enough so that, instead of just looking at one side, the audience gets to see what both actors are doing.

And what are they doing? They’re pretty symmetrical, although he’s awake and she appears to be sleeping. You can’t see much of his face, but it is a full-front view and he’s clearly not smiling, so it’s easy to guess that he looks troubled. The lack of almost all light in this shot is cool, though, because even though the actors are not the dominant parts of this shot, you can still tell what’s going on (this ties back into the rain pouring outside the window; rain rarely bodes well in movies).

There’s a “personal distance” here, although the distance between the two seems to be wider because of the “wall of Jericho.” If it wasn’t for that wall, they might as well be in bed together. If it wasn’t for that wall, they could roll over and look at each other. But instead it’s like they took a larger bed and split it down the middle, shoving it off to two opposite ends of the frame, while it’s still clear that at this point, at least one of the party wants to be closer to the other. Because although they’re separated by the “wall of Jericho,” the symmetry of the shot, combined with how hard it is to see the blanket at first, seem to suggest that the two are more compatible than they first imagined. That could be what is keeping Peter awake.