WAYS OF LOOKING AT MOVIES 27135a
245bcreaking floorboards, the radio is all we hear. The
reception is spotty and the speaker is tinny, but we
can just make out the song “O Children” (by Nick
Cave and The Bad Seeds).
Now that the mood and the state of the relation-
ship have been established, the next shot [2] con-
centrates on Harry. He is large enough in the frame
to allow us to easily read his defeated expression,
and to register his stare at the offscreen Hermione.
The camera creeps in on him, gradually increasing
his size in the frame and thus lending significance to
his expression. Something is on Harry’s mind.
The next shot [3] confirms it. The scene shows
us what Harry is thinking about, and looking at:
Hermione, bigger in the frame and still hunched
over Ron’s radio, which is still playing “O Children.”The song’s melancholy tone reinforces our
characters’ mood; the radio’s thin sound and bad
reception convey their isolation.
When we cut back to Harry [4], he reacts to
what he (and we) just saw in the previous point-of-
view shot. It’s difficult to know exactly what he’s
feeling, but he seems agitated—a feeling reinforced
by the intensifying effects of the creeping camera,
the back-and-forth cutting, the progressively
tighter framing, and the crackling radio.
The pattern continues as he stirs and the scene
cuts back to a tightly framed, high-angle shot of
Hermione. A moment after the shot begins, Harry
steps into the foreground, momentarily obscuring
Hermione [5a] before she reemerges and looks
up to meet his implied gaze [5b]. Harry’s sudden