The film Juno
is a film directed by Jason Reitman. He is known for directing edgy unique
films such as 'Men Woman and Children' and 'Sex and The City'.
Juno is a
film, about a quirky teenage girl who becomes pregnant. Juno then decides to give the
unborn child to adoptive parents. Complications begin when Mark (the
prospective father) begins to see his relationship with Juno as more than just
the mother of his future child, putting his marriage in jeopardy in the
process.
Directors use
a selection of camera shots, angles and proximities to show different things. Camera
shots are used to show a perspective on a situation, whether the audience
should see from an omnipresent view or a point of view shot. Camera shots is
key in Juno because quite a lot of emotion portrayed in the film is none
verbal, and to avoid using the same shots that won’t make the film interesting
to look at. Close ups are used to limit what the audience an see so they focus
of a specific area, this is to add the importance of the thing they are looking
at, while proximities are used to show the relationship between two or more
characters, this shot is mostly used in two shots. It is used in Juno a lot,
where Rietman merges a mid-shot in with it so the audience can view the separation,
or the closeness of the characters. For example where Juno tells her parents
she is pregnant – she is close to her friend but distanced from her parents. Rietman
uses interesting camera shots to communicate emotion, and even build up a décor
on certain characters.
The sequence
begins with a close up shot of Juno’s face musing out of the car. Showing the
reflection of the outside on the window. In shooting this shot like this it doesn’t
just show the emotion and the scepticism on Juno’s face but it shows what Juno
is actually thinking. Reitman chose to shoot this shot in this was to show Juno
daydreaming, then to show what she’s daydreaming at – when then audience realises
she isn’t looking at anything, but a street whizzing by, it builds on how
confused and nervous she is of meeting the potential adoptive parents.
This scene
then cuts to a series of 7 long shots of houses, but the first 3 houses are
repeated with the final house being the actual destination. Rietman chooses to
repeat the houses to emphasize on how confused Juno and her father are. Also illustrate
the verisimilitude of the situation because in reality if something like that
was to happen it wouldn’t be out of the expected (getting lost). Looking closer
on this section of scene, the selection of shot used for the houses were almost
used as establishing shots, to give the audience of the location they are in
- that there area is quite wealthy.
I think this
sequence is very interesting, because we see the introduction to the Loring’s
and how they are as people. I think the scene where Reitman chose to do close
ups of Vanessa’s hands illustrated what type of person she is, to the audience
they could have interpreted this to be a perfectionist hands o type of person,
and that is what Vanessa turns out to be.
