Crash Zoom

{
 "output": "Full-screen hand-drawn 2D Japanese anime shot from the animated chapter of Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), in a 2.39:1 scope frame filled edge to edge from its very first frame: one continuous shot with no cuts. Traditional cel animation: bold black ink outlines, fine hatching strokes on the skin, flat painted colours; a dark crimson background, soft and out of focus; warm peach-orange skin, deep blood red and near-black palette that turns hot amber-orange after the zoom.",
 "characters": {
  "S1": {
   "name": "O-Ren Ishii, a hand-drawn animated character",
   "look": "anime face in fine black ink lines: warm peach skin, large dark-brown eyes with heavy black upper lashes, thick black brows, straight black hair falling past both temples, a small closed mouth; streaks of dark red blood smeared sideways across both cheeks under the eyes, drips running down from them, one long drip under the eye on the right side of the frame, small red spatter on her forehead and nose; the skin of her nose and lips stays clean",
   "voice": "silent: she never speaks and her lips never move"
  },
  "N1": {
   "name": "The Bride, played by Uma Thurman",
   "look": "never seen: heard only as the narrator's voice over the picture",
   "voice": "cool, low, even female voice, American English, a calm storyteller's voice-over, close and dry"
  }
 },
 "shots": [
  {
   "shot": 1,
   "camera": "Crash zoom in, made with the zoom lens alone: the camera is locked off, straight on at eye level, square to her face, and never moves, pans or tilts. It opens on an extreme close-up of S1's face, centred and large: her face fills almost the whole width of the frame, with only thin slivers of dark red blur at the far left and right edges; the top edge cuts across her forehead just above the brows, the bottom edge just below her lips. It holds that framing perfectly still for the first half of the shot. Then, halfway through, one crash zoom in that is almost instantaneous, over in the length of a blink, just three or four frames, with no easing in or out: the focal length jumps from normal to very long and the picture slams in straight toward the point between her eyes, the in-between frames smeared into radial zoom-blur streaks; because the camera itself stays put, face and background scale up together, flat, with no parallax and no change of perspective. The zoom stops dead on an extreme close-up of just her two eyes and brows, which fill the whole width of the frame edge to edge, the top edge just above the brows, the bottom edge just below the lower lids, and the frame then holds perfectly still again to the last frame: no drift, no creep, no settle, no second zoom.",
   "action": [
    "BEGINNING: alive from the first frame, S1 stares straight into the lens, brows knitted hard down toward her nose, eyes wide open, dark-brown irises each with one small white highlight, mouth closed with lips pressed together.",
    "THEN: she holds the stare, completely still: no blink, no head movement, lips never move; only the red light on her face deepens for a moment, like firelight.",
    "THEN: the lens slams in on her eyes in one violent jolt; inside the blur smear her dark irises catch fire, so the very first sharp frame after the zoom already shows flames in both irises.",
    "END: extreme close-up of only her eyes under heavy black brows angled down in fury, eyes wide open, staring straight into the lens, never blinking; orange, yellow and red flames flicker inside both irises as if a fire burns in them, a thin horizontal white glint streak across each iris, small blood drops on the skin between her brows and on the bridge of her nose; the whole picture now glows hot amber-orange."
   ],
   "dialogue": [
    {
     "speaker": "N1",
     "on_screen": false,
     "when": "right after the first frame, while the face holds still",
     "delivery": "cool, flat, matter-of-fact voice-over",
     "line": "<d>[English] Lucky for her,</d>"
    },
    {
     "speaker": "N1",
     "on_screen": false,
     "when": "after a short pause, starting a moment before the zoom, so the lens slams in while the name is being said, and finishing over the hold on the burning eyes",
     "delivery": "same calm, unhurried voice-over",
     "line": "<d>[English] Boss Matsumoto was a pedophile.</d>"
    }
   ]
  }
 ],
 "sound": {
  "ambience": "a hushed, heavy room tone, dark and still",
  "speech": "exactly these spoken phrases, each said once, in this order, by the off-screen narrator; S1 on screen never speaks",
  "never_spoken": "no narration and no voice-over except The Bride's two lines above: the descriptions, performance notes and step words of this prompt are never spoken aloud",
  "music": "a film score under the scene, always below the voices: a low, ominous synth drone with a faint high whine that swells into a sharp sting as the zoom snaps in",
  "subtitles": "none"
 }
}Copy