Blog 3: Editing Process

A Simple Favor (2018)

The scene that I chose to evaluate is from the movie, “A Simple Favor,” which stars Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively (shown in this scene), and is directed by Paul Feig. This particular video shows Emily (played by Blake Lively) and her sister in a very traumatic scene, as Emily forcefully drowns her own sister.

The scene opens up with Emily’s sister in the water seemingly persisting her to come into the lake. The camera continually gets reaction shots from Emily to Emily’s sister and so forth. Emily takes off her clothes to jump into the lake with her sister, and a long shot is taken of more than half of the lake. It captures some grass from one side of the lake, in addition to the large pine trees on the other side of the lake. Emily and her sister are in the shot as well; however, they are miniscule figures. This long shot was taken to give an idea of the space surrounding, while also showing that nobody is around them. Additionally, the cloudy weather alludes to something ominous about to happen, as there is no sun in sight. Immediately after, the viewer sees a medium shot of the two girls side profile, as they’re floating in the ocean. The camera then focuses on Emily as she goes on and says, “You abandoned me…” The camera then focuses on her sister, to get her reaction. As her sister apologizes, Emily says “me too,” and her hand begins to push her sister’s head in the water, and continually tries to drown her. Another long shot is captured, exactly as before; however, interestingly, it is even more gloomy, and as expected, water is splashing in the back as Emily is drowning her sister. The shots go from this long shot to the medium shot of her and her sister back and forth, until a long shot shows the splashing has stopped. She places her ring on her sister and moves away.

At the beginning of the scene, when Emily is changing in front of her sister, a hierarchy of forms is depicted. Emily is shown as bigger, and higher up than her sister, while she is standing on top of the boardwalk and her sister is below in the lake. This shows that Emily surely has more power, which stands true moments later. In the long shots, Rule of Thirds is applied, as the figures are off at an angle that is appealing to our eyes.