Author: cbrown4

In Hands Up, Chin Down, Matt Houghton uses split screens throughout his piece to show how Jerry Mitchell, the amateur boxing coach and protagonist o  f the film, has two sides to his coaching: aggression and care. Watching two perspectives of his coaching at once is what invites us to hold two conflicting truths in our mind about who this man is.

Houghton starts the video with a big close up on the left and a medium long shot on the right, both rock shots (as with all the shots in this video), both of Jerry Mitchell. Match action editing between shots on the screen creates the impression that this is parallel action, different perspectives of the same thing happening simultaneously. On the left, we see the intensity and focus of his eyes watching the boys practice, a shot that demonstrates devotion, yet in the image on the right, we see that from behind, his body posture is slightly hunched and ready for combat, denoting aggression.  Houghton does this repeatedly throughout the film, positioning different shots of Jerry taken from different distances and angles beside each other to connote his two boxing personas. At 42 seconds, he pairs a shot on the left, a close up of Jerry in which half of his face is cut off as he boxes, with a medium shot on the right, a kinder half of Jerry conversing with a boy. The crop on the left shot feels intentional – a way to visualize that what you see there is only a part of Jerry. He does this a third time at 1:42, but pairs two close-up shots of Jerry shot from opposite sides, one that looks more serious with another that looks more playful.

It becomes apparent about 20-25 seconds in that the audio doesn’t match the visuals. This is disorienting at first because what you’re hearing is similar enough to what you’re seeing, both taken from similar scenes, just mismatched.  While confusing, mismatching the audio and the visuals enables Houghton to juxtapose the two sides of Jerry against each other, one in the audio and one in the visuals. For example, around 1:29 the audio of Jerry laughing and teasing a boy for being out late the night before, is paired with a visual that shows him seriously coaching another boy. This technique also makes the viewer do more work to make sense of the story, and in doing so, the piece feels more abstract, more artistic.

While this piece is full of punching sounds that Houghton could have easily cut his shots to, most of the time he doesn’t cut on the beat. This sets Houghton’s style apart from most action sports videos. I wonder if Houghton does this to intentionally pull the focus of the video away from pure aggression. Only one time does he do this overtly (47 seconds), matching the sound of a punch and Jerry yelling “hit me” with a cut to two shots of people boxing (one where the bag is the focal point, another medium shot from the side, of Jerry boxing with a student). Only doing it here, elevated the moment above others. He breaks his own rule, and it has an impact.  

Throughout the piece, Houghton creates the illusion of matched action sequences. At the 35 second mark, we see a punching bag swing on the left. Then a medium long shot pops up on the right that shows students’ with their backs to the camera, while in the foreground a punching bag swings. The cadence of the swing nearly matches the swing in the shot to its left, but just as we realize this might be an illusion, he cuts to a new shot. He does this again at 53 seconds, when he adds in a cutaway of a bucket of bloody Kleenexes to show the tough side of boxing. To its left is someone throwing punches at a bag – both the bag and bucket shake at a similar rhythm, suggesting matched action. Putting these both on screen also provides a bit of foreshadowing, giving us a suggestion of what might be this boxer’s fate. Finally, I also love how he contrasts this bucket shot with the shot that replaces it, of one boy wrapping another’s gloves for him – a pure juxtaposition of aggression vs. caring.

At 1:12, Houghton plays with using composition and depth staging to show two sides of Jerry. To the left we see a medium shot of Jerry from below, while on the right is a medium long shot of him from above. By framing the left shot from below, Jerry towers over most of the frame, signaling to us that Jerry is large and in charge. However, the right shot taken from above makes him seems small. By using depth staging here, Houghton is able to obstruct the jump-roping figures in the background in the first shot so that we only see Jerry, while revealing them in the second.

 

Artistically, I love what Houghton does next, where he continues with the jump-ropers on the right in a match action sequence, now only showing their feet from a medium shot taken near ground level. He pairs this with a shot on the left (also just feet, same perspective), but of what looks like figures boxing. The two shots are mirrors of one another in terms of composition and framing, though they are taken from two different scenes (conceptual match cut?). One scene suggests tough play, while another innocent play.

I was drawn to what Houghton did at 1:25, when he took one shot of Jerry and mirrored it against itself on the screen, demonstrating Jerry’s dual personalities. Houghton has also played with depth staging here to create a bit of magic. We can see in the mirror a man being coached by jerry, but that person lives only in the mirror, absent from the rest of the shot because of how the shot has been split. I love this technique, because it almost suggests Jerry is speaking to a ghost, or maybe to his other half.

Houghton ends the piece with a shot of Jerry sitting alone at what looks like a bus stop (2:21). He uses a conceptual match cut here between the two shots on screen. On the right, we see a car’s headlights in the distance coming toward Jerry, while to the left we see a close up shot of the lit windows of a bus or train whizzing by. The two complement and play off of each other nicely. The train exits the screen to reveal what must be Jerry’s window, through which we see a silhouette boxing late into the night. Similar to the bloody napkin cutaway earlier, Houghton uses the two frames on screen to play with time, simultaneously showing us Jerry waiting for a ride home, alongside a shot of him already home and boxing.

Ora Dekornfeld’s New Yorker video, Fighting Cuba’s Boxing Ban, is a beautiful example of how to effectively use pacing and camera movement to mimic the boxing experience and transport the viewer into the sport. The result is that the video feels lively, creative, and keeps the viewer on their toes. It makes you feel a part of the story, and in turn, like you can truly get to know and empathize with the characters.

After a few contextual shots at the beginning, Ora introduces us to our main character, a girl joined by her brother. She follows them down the street with her camera from 10-30 seconds, and rather than use a stabilizer, she uses the camera movement to help us feel like we are there walking with them. As the girl starts to punch toward the camera, you start to feel like you as the viewer are ducking punches. Since this is our first intro to these characters, Ora gives us three medium close up perspectives of them walking – front, side and back, cutting on the action. This allows us to get to know them and also get a sense of the neighborhood, providing context for where the story takes place. She does this again later in the film around the 6:35 mark, replicating the same shot from behind, but now with her mom, creating a visual thread between the moments she shares with people who support her.

 

Ora starts playing with audio at around 30 seconds, using a J-cut to fade in the audio from the next scene of a man playing drums on his bicycle. She quickly cuts to other medium and close shots of the neighborhood while the drumming continues in the background. In this way, Ora makes us feel the fast-upbeat culture of Havana. She does this again from 3:10-3:23, cutting quickly between jump cuts of boys getting ready to box, matching the beat of a drum, making you feel the exhilaration they feel as they get ready. Again, at 6:45, she pulls this in, cutting between different angles of medium boxing shots, some even shots of different people punching into the camera. Combining all of these angles allows you to see the entire scene, and makes you feel like you are in the action. Finally, at 3:30-4:30, she cuts again between match action shots of the girl boxing, while cutting in interview shots of her punching toward the camera, bringing to life the girl’s quote “it’s really fun.” She even ends this scene with a quiet moment that jumps right back into quick match action cuts before the match ends. This way of slowing down and speeding up replicates the uneven pace of boxing.

I love what she does at 44 seconds, linking two scenes together through music. She brings us into a new scene, following a man as he puts in a CD and turns up the volume on his stereo system. At the same time, she raises the volume of the drumbeat that has been playing over other footage. Though we know this beat is coming from somewhere else, she magically makes us question its source, making it seem as though he has the control.

 

Ora strategically uses conceptual match cuts from 48 seconds to about 1:40, to make us see boxing differently. She switches back and forth between a sequence of boxing and a sequence of dancing to bring to life what the man in the audio is saying about how important dancing is to being a good boxer. She switches between close and medium shots (instead of wide), so we as viewers are forced to look at boxing and dancing differently, strictly focusing on how their body parts move so we can draw comparisons between the two. The fact that Ora also cuts this sequence over a melodic Cuban ballad also helps us see boxing as more like dancing.  

From the 2-3-minute marks, Ora plays with different types of camera movements to add variety to her shots. Around the 2-minute mark, she uses a beautiful mounting move, moving around the girl’s head to reveal rays of sunshine. This nicely mirrors another moment at the 5-minute mark when she does this a second time with a different character. Later, around the 2:55 mark, Ora uses a motivated movement, following boys as they move off-screen behind a wall. She cleverly uses this movement as a transition to the next scene, where a motivated movement in the opposite direction follows a new character onto screen. In this way, two completely different scenes blend into one another. Finally, she uses motivated movements again from 4:30-4:50, by tracking the girl and her coach with a medium shot, which makes you feel like you, the viewer, are in the ring with them boxing.  

Ora ends the film pulling together all of the editing techniques she’s introduced so far, to make the viewer feel exactly what the girl is feeling as she approaches her big competition. First, we see the girl walk to her match, as Ora jump cuts between shots of the girl walking, to make us feel that time is passing and that we are getting closer and closer to the competition’s start. She jump cuts between medium and close up shots of the girl and other kids getting ready for the competition, matching her cuts to the sound of the girl’s inner mantra. This makes us feel like we are there getting ready with her, practically in the girl’s head. At 8:28, Ora uses depth staging, with the boys out of focus in the foreground and the girl poised in the background, to make us feel the challenge our main character faces as the only girl fighting. Finally, Ora cuts back and forth quickly at 9:40 between archival footage of the girl’s dad training her and shots of her fighting in the competition. The cuts speed up as the intensity of the match speeds up, so we feel it. All of this combined makes us feel like we are in the girl’s thoughts, thinking back on all that has led her to this moment, which makes the viewer really understand how important this is to our character.

 

Alex Lockwood’s 73 Cows is a beautiful portrait of a close love between a man and his cows, in which the director uses POV and composition to give each sequence of shots both a literal and metaphorical meaning.

He starts the piece with a match action sequence of Jay, the main character, making his way from his farm into his home. These shots move from wide, to medium, to close within the first minute – starting at a distance with Jay as a speck on his large farm plot, and finally zooming in on a photograph of his father in the kitchen window beside him. This sequence instructs the audience how to take in the rest of the story: Jay’s farm, this big plot of land that surrounds Jay, closely impacts him on a personal level.

The next few minutes introduce us to the primary conflict of the piece – Jay is in the business of beef farming, which harms the very animals he loves. Lockwood cuts back and forth between medium shots of Jay lovingly nuzzling his cows and close ups of the cows’ eyes. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, and Lockwood uses these closeups to show us the humanity that Jay sees in these cows, making the audience empathize with Jay’s resistance toward killing them. Lockwood includes a wonderful wide shot at 1:50 to visualize the moment Jay says he can’t disconnect his feelings for the cows from his work. In the shot, Jay and the cows stand on opposite sides of a fence, Jay speaking to them lovingly despite the divide. This divide acts as both a physical and figurative one – despite Jay being human, and them animals, their love transcends the species divide, and endures the harm he causes them.

At 3:30, Jay talks about the guilt he feels for betraying the cows on the day he sends them off to be slaughtered. While he speaks, Lockwood shows us match-action shots of Jay preparing the transport wagon, oscillating back and forth between shots of Jay from inside the cage and from outside the cage. Visually, Lockwood tells us the story of Jay’s struggle between his need to make a living (outside the cage shot), and the feelings of the cows (inside shot). He also introduces close-up shots of Jay’s eyes as the story digs into the effects this is having on him, paralleling the earlier close-ups of the cows’ eyes, and again bringing to life this connection.

At 2:20, Jay uses composition to visualize the role of a new character, Katja. She has come to the farm to help Jay find a path out of this work and into something less emotionally challenging. Lockwood introduces her with a simple wide shot as she rounds a building and walks in the direction of two arrows that sit on signs by the building’s exterior. Not only is the shot gorgeous, but the movement toward these arrows acts as a nice metaphor for Katja’s purpose in helping Jay find his path.

Minute 6 marks a clear transition in the piece. The screen fades to black, after the two have decided to sell their cattle and start fresh. Beneath this narration, a crack of light appears on the screen, the door to Jay’s shed being cracked open. Lockwood was uniquely creative with this transition in a moment when many directors might just fade back into the next scene. I loved inching back into the next chapter as the door opened to reveal the next frame.

Finally, in the last chapter of the piece, Lockwood introduces mounting movements and camera movements for what feels like the first time. The shots at the beginning of the piece were simple, letting the characters move within them. Now, the camera makes motivated movements, in many cases utilizing drone footage (e.g. tracking Jay as he walks across an empty field looking for answers, moving past the two from overhead as they get to work on a new garden).  Again, Lockwood does this with intention: as Jay and Katja begin moving forward along a new path, Lockwood moves with them.