Watch: A Visual Love Letter To The Simple Beauty Of Reaction Shots

Sometimes a perfectly-timed reaction shot might prove to be more powerful than the dramatic moment a filmmaker’s trying to convey, and might turn the focal point of the scene into a more emotionally compelling experience. Vimeo channel Must See Films’ 5-minute instructive video about the importance of reaction shots provides a quick lesson to novice film buffs on this subject. Of course there’s a lot more to learn about the use of reaction shots in film history than a short supercut like this can provide, but hopefully it’ll spark some interest for further study by young movie lovers.

During the video, the narrators points out different methods in pulling off reaction shots, whether through cutaways, pans, or even ingenious ways of including the action and the reaction within the same frame. We also get an amusing vintage clip where Alfred Hitchcock basically explains The Kuleshov Effect to the audience. I wonder what Tippi Hedren would have thought of Hitch’s expert portrayal of...