Sunrise- Amanda Carman

This scene conveyed a significant amount of dramatic tension; the wife is waiting patiently for her husband to return to take her out on the lake where the audience knows he plans to kill her.  The scene is excellently well composed in order to convey not only the tension, but also the various shifts in the wife's thought process as she makes the decision whether or not to stay in the boat.  After the husband leaves to return the dog to the house, the wife is shown in a medium shot with the camera angled above her.  The use of medium shot allows us to see with clarity her expressions as they flicker across her face in this tense moment of indecision.  Having her appear closer to the camera gives her greater presence; her husband is gone and she is in control of the moment (this is her chance to save herself, after all).  The downward angle, however, keeps her looking as vulnerable as she truly is in this scene; not only is her husband plotting her death but also she faces a very emotional internal conflict (namely, she knows that something is wrong with him, but she is hopeful that his behavior indicates a decision to love her and honor their marriage rather than a decision to, say, strangle her and throw her into a lake).  When she sees her husband returning, however, the camera shows her at a long shot, maintaining the downward angle.  The downward angle still makes her appear vulnerable, but the long shot adds the effect of making her appear small in the middle of the boat and the lake that spell her doom.  The power she had in the moments shot at a medium distance is now gone, and the long shot serves to visually enhance this difference.

Lighting plays an important role in the film, and that importance is also evidenced in this particular shot.  As Atlee Watson has already pointed out, the wife is always well lit in her scenes, whereas the woman from the city is always shown in darkness.  Even their respective hair colors and wardrobes seem specifically chosen to enhance this difference, suggesting that the use of chiaroscuro is deliberately meant to visually highlight what is good and what is evil.  Looking at this particular shot, the wife, dock, boat seats, and water immediately surrounding the wife are well lit.  The wife, of course, is a driving force of "good" in the film; the dock represents safety (she only has to step onto it to escape her fate), and the seats and water represent the hope she has that this sailing venture will heal their marriage.  The depths of the boat itself as well as the distant water are both very dark, the boat being the tool by which the husband plans to enact his murderous plots and the distant water being her future grave at this point in the film.