Still Analysis - Diary Of A Wimpy Kid

Despite this still not being from a music video I felt it would be beneficial for me to analysis a still of a film, I chose this still from the movie, Diary of a Wimpy Kid

This scene happens near the end of the movie. The movie is, for the most part, set in a school where a ‘mysterious piece of cheese’ has appeared on the playground and anybody who touches it gets ‘the cheese touch’.

In this frame we see a slight high, wide angle, long shot of a large group of children running towards the school while one boy, Greg, is standing alone to the left of the shot. By looking at this frame we are immediately attracted to Greg as he stands out from the rest of the school. He stands out because he is the largest person in the shot, as the other children are far away from the camera they look small compared to Greg, our eye is immediately attracted to him. We are also immediately attracted to what he is wearing, the bright orange t-shirt amongst the dull surrounding makes our eyes attracted to the him first, it looks as though the editors of the movie have increased the saturation on Greg’s t-shirt to force our attention to him. We can see that he is holding something; this may explain why the rest of the school is running away from him.

We assume the rest of school children are running away from him, as he is standing alone. We instantly assume that he is an outcast, a loner, somebody nobody wants to talk or be seen with. As you can see in this still we can only see the back of him, this may have been done to make the audience feel that they too do not want to be seen with him, if the camera shot was of a close up of Greg the audience may feel like they are one of his close friends or a close family member, however due to the frame being taken at a slight high angle and as a long shot, the audience feel like they too are running away from Greg.        

As we can only see the back of Greg, we are unaware of his expression, however we can see that his left arm is to his side, his feet are firmly on the ground, and he is making no attempt to catch up with the other children, we assume that Greg looks miserable and slightly annoyed by what has happened.

The light in this scene is not bright, nor dark. The lighting in this scene adds to the dull atmosphere, this atmosphere is a metaphor for the way Greg is feeling to the whole situation. 

The framing in this scene is loose. There is a lot of free space around the frame and in particularly between Greg and the other characters. This gives the illusion that all the free space was once taken up by children and suddenly all the children are bundled together towards the top of the frame leaving Greg alone. The fact that Greg has not moved towards the other children gives us the impression that this had happened very quickly or that Greg know longer cares and is used to being alone and isolated from the world.