Deconstruction of Continuity Sequence

I decided to look at a film that is one of my favourites ‘A Cinderella Story’ however, having watched it many times I don’t think I’ve ever looked closely into the editing and shot types. Therefore I’ve chosen to deconstruct a scene from Cinderella Story focusing particularly on the techniques that have been used to make a good narrative flow.

Firstly they have used an establishing shot therefore we are able to see that its in a locker room. This is taken as one long shot that tracks Hillary Duff as she passes through the locker room. This is taken from a LS which informs the audience of the characters position and where she is relation to location and to other people. We are also made to be the onlookers so we are able to watch what she is going to do.

We then see the technique of match on action as we follow Hillary she turns the corner and then we turn to watch her back following behind her. This shot is now a MCU and we are able to see where she is walking to and more of the characters physical appearance. We are tracking her as she walks forward. We then have an MCU of the front of her and the camera has turned around so she is now walking towards the camera.

From this we have gone from a Long shot to a medium close up to a close up in order to take us the audience across physical space steadily. A long conversation then happens where the technique of shot-reverse-shot is used between Hilary Duff and Chad Michael Murray. This places the audience in the action and makes them feel involved in there argument. This would have been filmed twice to do this once just filming her and then once filming him and then edited to make sense to the audience.
A high angled shot is used when filming Hillary in the conversation to make her look vulnerable and hurt. And Chad looks more filmed on a LA to make him look quite powerful. This conversation uses the 180 degree rule so the viewers perspective is kept on one side

Finally we get a shot of her walking away again this is a LS so we are able to see where she is and see she is walking away from him. It then cuts to a MCU of him, which is a reaction shot we can then see his emotion.