20 Monday Dec 2010
Posted in shot by shot
00:01:28 – 00:01:28
The bills, now folded crisply, lengthwise, are placed along the inside edge of the jewelry box. Or is it some other small stack of paper? The photographs, maybe? I am probably not paying as much attention as I should. I am probably missing all kinds of important points.
16 Thursday Dec 2010
Posted in shot by shot
00:01:25 – 00:01:28
The most interesting thing about this shot is not contained within the shot itself.
The most interesting thing about this shot is the transition between this shot and the one previous, or, rather, the lack thereof. In that shot, the two gloved hands were diving down toward the table to pick up some paper bills. In this shot, the hands have already picked up the bills, and are in the process of folding the stack, once, then again (showing how it got that peculiar curviness to it, incidentally).
The director has spared us the actual picking up of the bills, probably because we’ve seen so much picking up of things so far already, and he has finally figured out that we’re getting tired of it.
Praises be. Praises be.
Note that I make out at least five bills now, maybe six. It’s a fairly thick stack.
15 Wednesday Dec 2010
Posted in shot by shot
00:01:24 – 00:01:25
Both hands reach down for a pile of money, paper currency, with the words “Bank of England” printed in large letters along the top. I am supposing that these are … what … pounds? Quids? Something like that? They are not flat and new, but wavy, literally curled in shallow, regularly spaced waves, like a Medieval woodcut of the ocean. I make out at least three bills. The top one is denominated at 250 pound/whatevers. Or is it just 50, with a squiggle before the numerals? All of them with the same curling, so they have lived together in this particular stack for some amount of time, and were, prior to their appearance here, in a tighter circumstance, probably in someone’s money clip or (given the rolling pattern, rather than a set of folds) up someone’s nose.
14 Tuesday Dec 2010
Posted in shot by shot
00:01:22 – 00:01:23
More picking up of stuff! Pick, pick, pick. Up, up, up. This is interminable! It’s been months now since that box was opened! We’re almost a full minute and a half in! I mean, come on! When is this shit going to go down, you know what I’m saying?
Two safety pins are picked up in this shot, as well as whatever else was already in the process of being picked up when the shot began. By the hand, of course, the gloved hand. Or a couple of fingers of it, anyway, which are all that we see. Etc.
Jesus Christ on a popsickle stick!
13 Monday Dec 2010
Posted in shot by shot
00:01:16 – 00:01:20
The title, ‘Following,’ in an elongated typewriter-y, almost maybe italic font, light-light gray (theoretically white) against an otherwise dark-dark gray, theoretically black, screen. Starts smallish, but not so small as to be unreadable. Grows larger, but not so large as to fill the screen.
I would note that it is the same font as the company name “next wave films,” which appeared pre-movie, except that I said I was going to ignore the pre-movie logos and stuff. I would also note, if I hadn’t limited myself in this way, that the title of the film is in all-caps, while the name of the company was lower-case.
30 Tuesday Nov 2010
Posted in shot by shot
00:01:10 – 00:01:14
At first we can’t tell what the hand has picked up.
The hand takes it up, whatever it is, manipulating the object in a loop-the-loop, up, around, down, waving his other hand behind it all, the way a magician exaggerates the act of picking up even the slightest thing.
The object comes into focus on the outside of the down-curve, a stack of index cards, or business cards, held together with a twisted rubber band. Both hands grasp the stack at this time, tilting it up and down a bit. The first hand we saw, the right hand, the active one, the one in the foreground, that one, squeezes the edge, tidying the cards together, lining them up more perfectly together, pressing four times.
Alternate reading: the right hand has picked up a single index or business card at first, and, in the course of the loop-the-loop, added it to the pack, which had been held in the left hand, wedging the new card down inside the rubber band.
Either is possible. The latter explains the complicated movement. But it’s difficult to tell. Maybe we will learn more later in the course of the film about this index card or (I am pretty sure it is a) business card.
29 Monday Nov 2010
Posted in shot by shot
Tags
00:01:08 – 00:01:10
A seahorse!
Another short, short shot.
A dried-out, dead seahorse! Hand picks it up by the tail, turns it over, then flips it sideways, puts it down.
16 Tuesday Nov 2010
Posted in shot by shot
00:00:57 – 00:01:00
Downscreen, closest to us, a little blurry, a string of pearls — or some kind of white bead; they are maybe too squared off to be pearls.
The rest of the floor of the jewelry box (“floor” is the right word — a lacquered wood, showing its age with streaks and cracks) is home to a set of photographs, placed and spaced more symmetrically than is possible inside a box that has been bumping around in the world, as most boxes do. It’s like a magazine layout: photographs, margins between them. It’s like a graphic design. Maybe they are glued to the bottom of the box? In fact, when the gloved hands remove the first photograph (the gloved hands will be picking up three of the photographs, total, in this shot, out of the five we can see), it seems they have to peel it a bit from the surface. It takes two hands. So maybe. But no: the edges of the other photographs curl away from the floor of the box, so they are not likely to have been glued there. And the other photographs come up more quickly, too: flip flip, like cards.
The arrangement of the photographs, that careful layout, implies that this box has been stationary its entire lifetime, or at least ever since the photographs were put inside it.
