Created by: Ricky Wilson
Last modified: 2004-02-16
Location: http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~tales/film/ever_after.html
DVD Chapter: 2
Danielle de Barbarac's father has just re-married to Baroness Rodmilla de Ghent, bringing not only Anjelica Huston but also two bratty step-sisters into her life. Danielle is having some trouble adjusting to these new family members when her father is called away on business, and that's where the clip begins.
Rack Focus: The focus puller, an assistant of the cinematographer who is in charge of making sure shots are all in focus, changes the focal distance partway through a shot thus making things which were out of focus in the background come into sharp focus, or vice-versa. This type of effect can have several possible uses: the most common is to draw the viewer's attention from the background to the foreground, or vice-versa, and in doing so to highlight some surprising or important element in the shot which would otherwise go unnoticed. In this instance, however, the shot is used to convey the confusion and fright felt by Danielle upon seeing her father fall off his horse. Thus, the background behind Danielle goes from in focus to out of focus, or blurry, and in doing so makes it seem like she is moving forward in the shot. Rack focus almost always adds a sense of kineticism or heightened suspense to a shot, and for this reason it is almost always overused by hack directors.
Crane Shot: When we see the crowd huddling over the prone figure of Danielle's dad and the camera lifts up, spinning slightly, this is a crane shot. It is achieved using a modified cherry picker, not an actual crane per-se, and is one of the most technically difficult shots in film. This crane shot is relatively simple, but it is not uncommon for a large production to spend an entire day setting up and shooting one complex crane shot. On a major production the cost of spending an entire day on one shot is in the thousands of dollars, so these can be prohibitively expensive.