28 CHAPTER 1LOOKING AT MOVIES
86a7a6b7blooming appearance feels almost aggressive; the
filmmakers are building tension and tickling our
expectations. After all, we’re watching two anxious
teenagers alone in an isolated tent; maybe Ron’s
jealousy was justified after all.
Harry looks down at the offscreen Hermione at
the beginning of the next shot [6a]. The camera
starts on his face, then drifts down to his out-
stretched hand [6b]. We cut back to Hermione [7a],
who considers the offer. This moment brings the
scene to a turning point that is both tantalizing
and disturbing. Several things happen at once to
provoke our expectations: Hermione takes Harry’s
hand. As she stands, the camera follows her into a
cozy composition in which the young witch and wiz-
ard stand face to face to share the frame for the first
time since the scene’s first shot [7b]. Where that
opening image implied distance, this shot empha-
sizes intimacy. Harry removes Hermione’s horcrux
necklace (a gesture that propels us into the next
equally intimate shot [8]). All of a sudden, Harry
and Hermione are holding hands, staring into each
others’ eyes, and taking off each others’ enchanted
jewelry. This turn of events takes even those view-
ers who have read the books by surprise. This scene
does not occur in the original novel. Could it be that
Harry and Hermione are about to hook up?
And something is happening with the scene’s
sound to further stimulate this expectation. The
wind and floorboard sounds disappear. What was
once faint music drifting from a portable radio
rises in volume and clarity until it dominates the
sound track. “O Children” is no longer playing on
the radio; it’s emanating from the movie itself. The
swelling music seems to embody the characters’
escalating emotions.
The potential sexual intensity persists in
the next shot as Harry tosses the horcrux on
Hermione’s bed and leads her, hand in hand into the
foreground [9]. The cut to the next shot [10] pro-
vides a new angle on the couple as Harry coaxes
Hermione to sway along to the still-swelling music.
The pace of the sequence picks up as they begin to
dance over the next four short shots: [11], [12], [13],
and [14a].
Up until this point, the scene has maintained
conventional continuity editing. Eye-line match cuts