Bathroom Impossible from Bobby Herman on Vimeo.

BLOG POST #4: Relationships Between Shots

The Sequence I selected for blog post four is the bicycling scene from the Stanley Kubrick Film "The Shining" where the young child Danny is seen biking around the hotel on his big wheel. The scene is a three minute long tracking sequence which follows young Danny biking around the Overlook hotel, in the scene Kubrick builds on the isolation we feel as an audience by show how vast and maze like the giant and isolated hotel is while Danny rides around. The scene is mostly music free except for when Danny passes room 237 which is the focal point of horror in the hotel. As Danny bike around Kubrick creates a sense of emptiness and terrifying silence, the only sounds we hear are the sounds of Danny's bicycle moving along different surfaces and his peddling of the big wheel. The tracking shot is mostly shot from behind except when Danny comes to a stop at room 237 and we have a low angle point of view shot showing Danny and the room number in one shot while the eery yet subtle music plays in the background. The complexity of these shots as one watches seems very uncomfortable and off balance, this could be due to the fact Kubrick's shot is impossible. The path Danny takes around the hotel is physically impossible to do in real life, if you look at a map of the hotel you find Danny takes turn that should not be there and jumps floor levels. This was no mistake on Kubrick's he filmed this on purpose to subconsciously throw off the viewers equilibrium and make the movie that much more uneasy and terrifying. The relations between sound and image is what makes this scene most terrifying because of the calmness one feels of the big wheel riding on the carpet and wooden floors but at the same time the emptiness and size of the hotel fills us with terror because we do not know what is going to pop up after ever corner.