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Visual motifs and storytelling

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Storytelling is more dynamic when you can follow something. This “This American Life” doc about Mike Phillips, part of the episode “Escape,” has plenty of unanswered question to handle in its story of a young man with a degenerative disease coming of age. But without a lot of obvious visual zing, no art or pretty colors, and not much movement, how to keep the audience interested? With motifs. The first two shots of the doc establishes one such motif – a closeup of a ceiling fan that we quickly learn in the second shot is what Mike sees as he lays in his room. The tightness of both shots suggests the smallness of his world as the movie begins (and, just maybe, a reference to the Kubrickian motif of eyes taking in the new, seen in “2001” and “A Clockwork Orange.”)

The fan visual is repeated at 3:03, to end a sequence of flashbacks and imply that we are back with Mike in his present-day misery. Note that in this shot, the computer screen is more visible than in the opening shot, suggesting that Mike’s personality and ability to express himself are on the rise and the mundane is being diminished.

The closeup of Mike’s eye is mirrored throughout the piece in another repeated image, an extreme closeup of the thumb he uses to type, first introduced at 0:27. The audio track refers to “how delicate and tenuous his connection to the world is sometimes,” but I would add “small,” too, as these super-tight shots carry with them an aura of claustrophobia.

56 Comments

on “Visual motifs and storytelling”
56 Comments on “Visual motifs and storytelling”

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