Vicky and Sam – Analysis on Cinematography

I will be analysing the first few minutes of the 15 minute short film “Vicky and Sam”. This film uses similar comedy that we plan to utilise in our own film.

The scene opens with a close up shot very low looking at the ground. The camera tracks along the floor and written on the floor is the title “Vicky and Sam”. As the camera pans up, we see a long shot of a video store, with a young man walking a bike toward it. The store is lit up very well to draw attention to it, clearly saying “Video” in graffiti in the window. Then there is a cut to the boy putting his bike down at the entrance, the boy is slightly to the left of the shot, with the door being in the center. This could be to focus our attention on his intentions of entering the store. Then there is a jump cut to a medium shot of his arm opening the door, before seeing a long shot of the building from directly ahead as he walks in. Then there is a cut to a medium-long shot tracking across the side of shelves. A woman is stacking DVD’s onto the shelves, then as the camera passes another shelf, the young boy is looking at a DVD. Then we cut to a medium shot from behind the boy, he is in the center of the shot to show he is the focus character.

The scene is moving very slowly, we then cut to a long shot of the woman walking toward the camera, the boy the walks to the side and bumps into her. There are two bookshelves either side of the characters, it’s possible that this was shot like this to enclose the two characters together, forcing the attention onto them. There is then a close up of the boy looking at the girl smiling, then a close up of the girl smiling shyly back. This type romance is something we parody in our own short film. We then cut to an establishing shot of people in a café, this shot is used to explain and establish that the café will be an important location in the scene. The first line we hear is “You’ve got to be kidding me, right?”, this is in reference to the scene we have just watched. Then the same man says “It’s flipping cliché”, this is what we are going to aim for in our film, showing the lack of realism in a cliché romantic comedy film. This way we are creating something different that fits within the same genre. The 3 sitting at the table are all writing a romantic film, and in doing so are explaining to the audience that a film can be romantic and funny, without the cliché romance, this is what we want to convey in our own short film.

This film has used generic shots and romantic music toy convey and portray a romantic film in a cliché fashion. They have then used a more TV show like style to accommodate the comedy aspects, showing the writers writing the characters, showing the audience how unrealistic the generic romantic film can be.


Vicky and Sam from Nuno Rocha on Vimeo.