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blindmanbaldwin · 4 months

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Perhaps it was seeing it on a premium large format screen, perhaps it was my mood that day, or perhaps it is because I'm always drawn to the stories of people trapped inside of their contradictions — but I was impressed with "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" last year, especially with its cinematography and editing. I thought bits of the film, particularly the climax, had shots/rhythm evocative of the great Terrence Malick only to find the film's editor Mark Yoshikawa is a frequent collaborator of Malick.

Now I could talk at length about those comparisons, or the sense of gaze of the film (Tom Blyth's eyes are fascinating to track when he's in close-up/medium shot), or the relationship the wider series has with the medium of television. But I'd rather talk about the beginning of one scene near the beginning of the third-act as an example of effective pacing building dramatic tension and establishing character.

Start on this wide shot at a low-angle. "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" uses low-angle shots frequently, which makes sense in a story about insecurity about power/class gaps. Low or high angles means we see something at an unnatural eye-line — which creates a visual power imbalance.

In the background we have a man just barely peaking over the horizon. This is Coriolanus Snow, our boy from the Capitol who comes from a noble family that lost everything in the war. In the first chunks of the film, we learn that Snow wants to restore his family's former glory. He wants to get that power back. The power gap that we see.

But this isn't the Capitol. This is District 12. This is place he was sent because of his failure. He cheated at the titular Hunger Games to win them for his tribute. So what could he be looking for out here to help him with his desire?

POV shot now. Cutting from that low-angle wide to seeing through Snow's eyes. While it isn't the subject of this post, the POV shot is the most direct expression of gaze. Think about cinema's greatest voyeurist Alfred Hitchcock and all his iconic POV shots ("Vertigo"). Nothing gets inside of a character's head like literally showing what they see.

Snow moves toward something — a something we now know was the (relative) perspective of the first shot.

Or, rather, not a something. But a someone:

Now back on Snow. Only this time he isn't obscured in the background but near the center of the frame. The camera pushing in before to emulate his movement seen now in his movement. Going toward the someone seen in the previous shot. Someone we couldn't really see before — but now are getting closer to finding.

Close enough to see her guitar.

Of course, if we were listening we would already know that this is Lucy Gray Baird. For her voice echoes through the forest and calls to Snow. But we're sticking to the visual — where we see him pushing toward someone. Pushing toward her.

Baird was his tribute in the Hunger Games. Living (but not hailing from) District 12, she had the lowest odds to win the Games. But through her own determination and a little bit of a push from Snow, she succeeded in winning the Games.

More importantly — she succeeded in winning his heart, as he did to her.

Go back to earlier: the beginning of "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" establishes Snow's desire as reclaiming his family's lost power. Story is conflict, conflict is character, and character is desire. Think mathematically for a moment: Character is action that is a function of desire. But desire cannot remain static. Pull any book or movie off of a shelf at a library. What a character wants at a start will not be the same thing/only thing they want at the end.

Snow began wanting to reclaim his family's lost power. But through this desire — him cheating the games and getting exiled to District 12, the lowest and poorest district in all the land, runs contrary to this desire. He cannot get more power being among the powerless. Why would he act in such a contradictory manner?

Because once he laid his eyes on Lucy Gray, young Coryo had a new desire in his heart. He didn't want to just reclaim what belonged to him, but he also wanted to protect her.

Like all functional drama, this creates a problem — he wants two things that are mutually exclusive. To protect her requires working against the Capitol which means pushing his family further down the social ladder. But to work on restoring his family means throwing her to the odds, and he can't stand thinking of her brown eyes dying out there.

Speaking of brown eyes...

Now we're on Lucy Gray's face. Focus on her and her playing (notice her eyes looking down and not hyperaware of her surroundings), but with another element in the background. Snow coming on the horizon.

Adapting a work from one medium to another always creates new restraints, but also new modes of expression. Condensing a 450-page novel into a ~2.5 hour film requires conveying the emotional arguments of the work in different ways. As such, "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" focuses more on Snow's desires/contradictions than Baird's (even more than the novel) but we still have to some sense of her internal desire to create a compelling character that isn't just an object for Snow's character journey.

Of course, there is the real basic desire of surviving the Games, but that is lackluster and doesn't create real emotional bite. No, her central desire (at least in the film) comes through that one point mentioned earlier — she lived in District 12, but she did not come from District 12. Baird is a wanderer, or at least before the war was part of a wandering culture. Now she is trapped. Her desire is to get back what she lost; she wants to fly as a bird once again.

Look at the above shot. There is no distress on her face. While Snow got exiled for his actions in the prior chunk of the film, Baird got no punishment. She went back to District 12 and could play her music again. Not free to fly high but freer than she was at the start when she got called to fight in the Games.

This natural landscape Baird and Snow find themselves in during this scene is (metaphorical) paradise. It is the closest place to Baird's desire of freedom. The latter bits of the film's third-act use this idea to great dramatic effect.

Baird and Snow's desires both overlap and conflict. Both want to get something that they lost from the war — Snow his status, and Baird her freedom. But their desires operate in opposite direction. Baird wants to go up (free) while Snow is concerned with what's happening down on the ground among the social community. What Snow wants at the start can only be found in having people beneath him, while Baird's is found in having some space to be in.

But recall — Snow also wants to protect her, and this desire comes through a genuine feeling toward her. At the start it may be boyish attraction to her brown eyes and voice, but what his gaze perceived turned into something more. They both want the same thing of undoing loss.

And it's that sameness that pulls Coryo to Lucy Gray. That sameness that pulls him down the social ladder (he has a famous last name, she has no name) and down the society's hierarchy (he is Capitol, she is District) to risk his future for her. That sameness that pulls him to throw his own life and his chance of getting his past back away. That sameness that keeps him walking.

That sameness that makes her bring this strange man into her world. That sameness that makes her trust him with her everything.

Her personal space out here, far from the suffering in District 12 and the tyrannical bloodshed in the Capitol, now has the presence of that strange man she let inside.

Viewing this natural space as her paradise, she had won this peace but found that her ghost still lingers. A ghost that she doesn't really want to let go of — as evident by her attention going to him, and the unconscious act of her voice calling him here. Remember: nothing in conventional narrative is coincidence or happens spontaneously. Every action a character does is an expression of desire.

Why does she sing? Becuase that's her life. She is a performer. She performed on stage in District 12's bars. She performed when got selected for the Games, which is what first caught Coryo's eyes. She performed for the whole nation to survive in the games. And she performs for Coryo — because she wants to perform for him.

And through this her desire reveals its contradiction. She wants to be free and untethered; to fly like a bird. But she has the same feeling for him that he has for her, and this feeling creates an attachment — a tether. The wanderer found a home.

She could tell him to go away. She could tell him to leave. She could tell him to do whatever. Her words don't matter.

Film is a language of image. Sound (music and dialogue) matter, but ultimately is it a moving picture. A film establishes a character through visual actions. Lucy Gray identifies Coryo, and she stops playing so she can talk to him. So she can go to him. He is pulled into her world — but she is pulled toward him.

Think about the sequence of shots, specifically the POV shots. It is basic movement: start far from the object, and move toward the object. As the character whose POV the camera emulates gets closer to the object, the film cuts back to the opposite side to establish the geography of the scene. But it also creates a little bit of tension — these two forces are coming together and one of them doesn't know it, so what will be the reaction when they come together?

A few frames of static. Coryo stands in anticipation. Waiting to see what she will do.

Go back through these ten shots. Notice they all are of the same vantage point. We see Snow approaching from the horizon, and we see Baird playing her guitar on a rock with Snow coming behind her. While the scene progresses by composing more of the frame around the subject as they get closer together, the core angle remains the same: one shot from him walking and one shot of her point in space. We don't change this basic idea.

Until the scene begins with them coming together to have their first conversation since the Games — which also ends the scene as it shows the distance that remains between them.

They are pulled together, except Coryo stands above her. They both want to be together but they both occupy different places in the social hierarchy that they can never escape. The contradictions of their desires expressed in the blocking of one shot.

#the ballad of songbirds and snakes #snowbaird #tbosas #coriolanus snow #lucy gray baird #film theory #character theory #film analysis #tom blyth #rachel zegler #gifs #didn't revise this at all so i bet there are typos a plenty #it is late #too late

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enteringdullsville · 1 year

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Fuchsia Beyer-Guma, the Fuchsia Drewman

Be Tough

Rank: B+ (Season Two Major Character)

Character Bases

Gritty in Pink

Fuchsia’s tiny, pink, and cute, but sugar and spice can kill you. The strong, silent type, Fuchsia really isn’t the sort to open up to people. If anything, she’s more of the “will open you up for pissing her off” kind of girl. Fuchsia isn’t all that bad, mind you. She’s just a terrifying introvert with a short fuse.

Fun Facts

Fuchsia is one of several characters to change names and colors in development, starting off as Mallow (mauve), Anthea (amaranth), Reese (cerise and the name she goes by throughout Rough Sketch), Scarlett (scarlet), Crimson, and Carmen (carmine). No concept art exists of Mallow, Scarlett, or Carmen and Anthea is completely identical to Reese, but her time as Crimson gets special mention as her hairstyle from then onwards was inherited from a prototype design for Sage, who was also named Crimson at one point in development. In turn, Fuchsia’s color was used by Cree (cream), Coral, and Orchid in the past. Fuchsia currently has the most unused color palettes of the entire cast despite technically only having three designs.

Fuchsia’s surnames are a play on “gummy bear”, tying into the sweet theme to the characters’ last names and forming a theme with her boyfriend Tyler’s surname.

Fuchsia was originally a more malicious and rascally character before mellowing out significantly later in development.

Fuchsia’s hairdo is meant to evoke the look of horns when seen from the side.

Fuchsia, as Crimson, was originally meant to have a scar over her left eye.

Fuchsia’s actually a naturally shy person. Her general personality is her way of dissuading people from talking to her if they don’t have to. It works.

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