For this sequence analysis blog, I will be analyzing shot-by-shot the opening scene of "The Last Black Man in San Francisco." This film is arguably the most beautifully shot film of this year and should be getting more recognition for Joe Talbot's directorial feature debut. The full opening scene is a little over three minutes but I will be analyzing the first minute from 0:00 to 1:05.
We first open with a wide/long tracking shot of our main character Jimmie Fails skateboarding against a city view as our establishing shot This shot becomes an open frame when his best friend, Montgomery, runs in from frame right. We hear an off-screen non-diagetic voice-over narration from the preacher who we meet at the end of this montage where we get a face to the voice. The orchestral music keeps building and building and building. The preacher’s voice keeps yelling over the soundtrack: “This is our home! This is our home!” Almost symbolizing or personifying the voice of the city come to life as the very first "character" we meet in the film, the city of San Francisco, which I would say is alive in a way that it is the central backdrop to the entire film and the voices and peoples that inhabit it are speaking for it and therefore making it an omnipresent character in it sort of like in the Great Gatsby, the bespectacled eyes painted on an old advertising billboard, served to symbolize the eyes of God watching the events unfold in the novel. We have a deep focus on everything in the foreground, middle ground, and background as we have everything we need to know to establish who's important, where they are, and the relationship between the where and the who. From the voice-over narration, we figure out that this is home and home is a radical thing to defend when a home is being taken away from you.
We next cut to a medium shot of the two characters in a slightly low angle view. We are still tracking these characters as they haven't moved out of the frame. This low angle view signifies a kind of ownership and sense of pride for the place that they come from, for San Francisco.
We move out again to our establishing long shot but a shot of an industrial area with telephone wires and machinery has entered the frame contrasting against the sunrise coming over the bay. Along with the voice-over narration, this machinery or maybe the presence of the machinery and construction has poisoned the waters and is establishes the imposing problem in the future of San Francisco.
We cut to a steady crane shot maybe or just a steady camera shot with a long lens of the two men skating across the frame as they move through their city with ease. I think the deep focus of the frames in these shots is important in showing the digression of the state of San Francisco and the imposing force that is coming into the bay. We have two large ships in the background and those ships with the exhaust and waste that it releases poisons the air quality and water quality which matches the story of the preacher narration.
Now we have a series of slow-motion tracking shots of the people of San Francisco. This shows the movement and life that exists in the city and the types of people that live there before the presence of gentrification. We have a shallow focus on each frame of these shots of the people of SF because this isn't about the city in this montage, it's about the people that live there and have lived there for many years.
After the montage of the people in SF, we cut to Jimmie and Montgomery on the skateboard. We start of in a wide shot and then dolly in or maybe with the use of a crane because that is better for tracking with movement, it becomes a medium shot. We move to deep focus again to get a sense of the background and the construction workers building new homes in the background behind them. All of this movement is almost being used as a time-lapse of the stillness and untouched stillness of the bay to the presence of builders and construction crowding each frame that comes next.
We cut to a crane shot moving from the right side of the frame where we have the homes that are already been lived on to the left side of the frame where the new homes are being built. We have Jimmie and Montgomery skating towards the camera and before we cut to the next frame, they are in the middle between the past and the present of SF.
We have a soft focus of the background of SF almost like a haze that could signify pollution or the soft-focus could also have a romantic element to it as this movie is very much a love letter to San Francisco. It is a wide shot of Jimmie and Montgomery climbing the mountain that the camera is perched on with the presence of industrialism behind them. Then it cuts to tracking shot with a very low angle following the two characters from behind them up the mountain with the city skyline of San Francisco peaking in between them. The camera moves in between them and becomes a subjective view of the city through the eyes of Jimmie and Montgomery as well as an establishing shot of where this story takes place, the city of San Francisco.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Oy_HiDFfVo
