Sin City Shot Sequence Analysis

Shot 1

This shot is a close up but also a high angle shot. It shows a man clutching his ear and aiming a gun past the camera. He is looking up past the camera so we can safely presume there is someone out of our vision behind the camera. He is on a wooden floor which looks damp so suggests either a cellar or a dock. However, due to the lighting it is more likely a dock as it is a high key lighting shot. The fact that he is clutching his ear and looks in pain suggests that he may have been hit in the side of the head by something or even shot. From this shot the director has not given us much insight to what is going on but instead there is an element of mystery and tension as we do not know precisely what is going on.

Shot 2

This shot is a long shot at a high angle with mostly high key lighting but a few natural shadows left. We now see for certain that they are on a dock and see the man who is on the ground is also being aimed at by a character above him. The long coat suggests a typical detective or private police officer so we presume the man standing up is the good guy. We see blood on the floor next to the man which is coming from his arm which suggests it has been shot. The man's body language and facial expression adds to this as he looks in excruciating pain. From this shot we can fill in quite a bit of storyline in our head as an audience as it looks as though the man on the floor could be a criminal that the police man/detective has been sent to bring in but there has been a fight. The director has thought carefully about this as we have multiple ideas of what is going on.

Shot 3

This is a long shot at a normal angle. We see the same scene as before but from a different angle. We can see slightly more of the surroundings and it seems like they are in an old town which isn't very modernised. The whole area looks quite run down. We see a young girl up against a post in the corner. She is put there so that our attention is not immediately drawn to her but it adds to the mystery as we do not know whether the man standing up is an ally of hers or an enemy. Was she being defended or has he come to take her away. This is very clever from the director as the story has many different routes it can take depending on what happens next.

Shot 4

This shot is a long shot but also in its own sense a very long shot. It is at the same angle as shot 3 but has zoomed out a bit. The man on the floor is clearly still alive due to his body posture and language but now the man who was standing up looks in pain and is falling over. There is a new character behind him holding a gun. From this we can assume that the middle character has been shot by the man in the black cloak yet we don't know whether he is on the side of the man on the floor or not. The girl is now in the centre of the frame almost which suggest she has been thrown in the middle of this whole situation. This shot suggests another plot as the man in black could be there to protect her while the other two were fighting over her, or the man in the middle could be saving her while being ganged up on, or thirdly the man on the floor and the man in black could together be saving the girl from the man in the middle. This is a cleverly thought out sequence as each frame adds a new character creating more and more mystery for the audience as we do not know the back story behind the shots.

Shot 5

This shot is a close up. The lighting has still remained high key throughout so that all details are clear. This is the first time we see the girl's face and we see that she is crying and looking downwards at the floor. Behind her we can see that there is rope on the post suggesting that she may have been tied to it. The fact that she is looking down in relation to the sequence tells us that she could be crying over the man in the long coat who was just shot, or over the man who was originally on the floor, or out of horror at all that is happening around her. Yet again the director has used the fact that we do not know the situation and character's well to help us come up with many answers in our head leaving us to decide for ourselves whether or not they are right.

Shot 6

This shot is a long shot at a normal angle but with a vanishing point (meaning that everything is angling towards a certain point so that certain things are more in the foreground than others). The shot uses the rule of thirds well to draw our attention to the centre. We see that the middle man has now walked to the edge of the dock. He still looks in pain and is holding his chest suggesting either a pain in his heart or that he has been shot (which we presume from shot 4). The man on the ground still is lying there having not done much in the sequence. The little girl is now looking up at the man in black either out of fear or because he has saved her. It seems that the man in black is talking to the man holding his chest as he is looking towards him. In the sequence the director would probably start to reveal everyone's roles in the scene at this point as the action seems to have come to a halt and dialogue has replaced it.

Conclusion

This sequence works very well as the first four frames are used to introduce the character's in the scene and let us decide what we believe to be going on and the final two shots are used to try and clue us in more to the actual plot line. The sequence also starts close up and slowly zooms out as it is revealing more. The whole shot is at night time but is very well lit so we have an element of secrecy but at the same time can see what is going on and have a clear analysis of the set and characters.