Primeval

Before the construction scenes, there’s a medium close up which is above the shoulders of the man who exchanges dialogue with the woman for a couple of seconds with an over-shoulder shot showing the person who is currently talking. The fact that the frame below isn’t completely dominated by the both of them could therefore suggest that the importance of that conversation is low compared to the real situation going on overall. You can tell that the overall situation is more important from the two characters in the background that are out of focus and that they and the background are taking up the rest of the frame. The fact that the woman is below and smaller than the man in the shot could imply that she may not be physically weak but mentally or even emotionally towards a particular idea than the person she is talking to – the guy may believe in the cause more than her.

Soon after the first scene, it moves on to the second scene at a construction site as we begin to see individuals taking up on certain roles for a greater purpose.

For example, this woman is using this machine to dig up ground. What is interesting about the beginning is that this woman hasn’t been portrayed as a stereotypical woman who would fall under the categories of being vulnerable, small and weak. But as you can clearly see here, this woman is taking control and is doing what they’d call a man’s job – in a stereotypical perspective you would

think that construction is usually allocated for men. This idea of making that character non-stereotypical could give the audience a positive effect – woman may feel respected knowing that the movie is saying that women can do anything that they are capable to do unlike being a stereotypical housewife at home.

Before the camera gets close towards the machinery, the camera has tracked from one side to the other making it look as if it’s being zoomed in. This creates a main focus towards the machinery and towards what the women who is operating it and what her actions are.

In this moment the camera tracks forward and tilts downwards to see the object that was placed on the ground and in this moment diegetic sound of music was played in the background to foreshadow some sort of discovery that may take place after this shot. It also seems as if the man that placed that object on the ground placed it carefully which could signify that the object may either be fragile or dangerous. When the camera fully tilts to show a sort of birds eye view on the object, the music gets louder which can also imply that something drastic is going to happen.

Right after that, we then here non-diegetic sound which is created by the digger – we and the character can hear the sound. It’s an addition towards the diegetic sound itself which starts to build impact and suspense towards what is going to happen next.

This is another medium close up which only lasts a few seconds before the camera diverts itself on to what that character is looking at. The reason to the camera changing different shots so quickly is to keep up with the pace of the music and to keep up with the suspense and mystery within that scene.

As you can see, my predictions were right and the characters in the scene discovered a hand which could also be a body underneath the ground. The fact that this shot was also pretty quick is to continue with the flow of shots – each shot supports one another in order to build up the impact towards the situation and story.

Since the two characters are in dialogue but they aren’t standing directly in front of each other and they aren’t both standing, it would be hard to create an over-shoulder shot. So in this case, the shots are shooting medium and medium close ups to show one character either speaking to the other or giving hand signals.

Especially in this scene, the shots are short to show the reaction and the appearance of both the creature and the man who is the victim and has taken shelter in the hole in the ground.

Here again you can see that the woman is using the digger as a weapon against the animal to save the guy. All of these actions are against the perspective of the stereotypical – the roles are more reversed.

To back up that theory, most men are meant to be seen as big and strong from a stereotypical perspective, but as you can see this guy is a man with more feminine features rather than masculine. This shot clashes with a medium shot and a medium close up because he is frantically moving around due to him being attacked by the animal.

Overall this movie and the clip is all based on building suspense and impact to support the mystery of the movie and to use non-stereotypical characters to use that as an addition towards the main situations and operations that the movie is all about.