N.33 | "Metropolis" (humans as machine cogs through blocking, composition and staging) plus more

JOURNAL ENTRY

BROUGHT TO YOU BY: the film storytelling library

Mar 30, 2025: I’m writing a 10-15-minute short. The plan is this: I said several times I’d like to make a bunch of very short films/videos to practice — even if they’re horrible. But, I want to practice with the scenes from this short I’m writing. I’ll film one scene at the time. If I’m satisfied, good. Else, I’ll shoot the scene again and again.

Film school is almost over. I decided not to be part of the editing team to finalize the film. My PC is not that powerful to handle very large raw files anyway. There’ll be a screening somewhere when we receive our certificates.

FILM STORYTELLING

Metropolis (humans as machine cogs through blocking, composition and staging)

The crowd shot is when you have dozens, hundreds and sometimes thousands of people within the frame. The human brain processes that image as a mass of people. People are not individuals anymore — they’re just part of a whole.

This whole can be an army, a sect, a group of prisoners, a group of workers and more.

But, the crowd shot is not just about putting a lot of people together in front of the camera. The crowd shot is the filmmaker’s asset, to tell the story. The director’s challenge is to block the scene, think of composition and staging.

In the opening scene of Metropolis (1927), we have a masterful example of the crowd shot by Fritz Lang : watch 1 min 19 secs clip here.

These are the first human beings shown in the film. We come right after a few shots of moving pieces of what seems to be a big machine.

Notice the following points:

Their arrangement, composition and movement are purposely designed to portray humans as generic cogs in a machine. The crowd shot is just perfect for this, because it strips the identity out of its parts (the humans). We, the audience, perceive them as a mass.

Plus, director Fritz Lang uses a brilliant motion strategy to differentiate between the humans entering the machine (who move faster) and the humans coming out (who move slower). The former are “fully charged”, while the latter are “depleted of their energy.”

The movement and composition of the two groups keep them as distinct groups in our mind — even though they have the same clothing.

The director does something here that is incredibly brilliant. He doesn’t do too much or too little. He just does enough. And he crafts an unforgettable meaningful scene.

Source: From the film storytelling library.

FILM STORYTELLING

Game of Thrones (an example of the establishing shot)

The establishing shot (ES) is a common visual element to open a scene or an entire film.

It's wide enough to establish the geography, the time of day, the project tone. It shows the scale of the subject(s) in relation to their environment. It's also often used to transition between scenes, to mark the transition to a new location or introduce crucial details about the location or world.

Source: From the film storytelling library.