5 Insert Shots I Love

Recently on Vimeo, Josh Forrest compiled a super cut of all the insert shots employed by director David Fincher and his editors for the fantastic "Zodiac." This, as it had to, got me to thinking about my own favorite insert shots. Because insert shots, when utilized to the fullest extent of their function, can yield a kind of momentary poetry, an incision of of insight not merely into the film's mind but into the filmmaker's mind. This is because an insert shot - which are quite often those sudden close-ups you see in the midst of wider shots enveloping all the characters in their entire locale - can get right down to the true bizness in a way those Everything In The Frame shots can't.

The problem is that I have - and this is a rough estimate - 17,487 favorite insert shots. So I decided to engage in a blogging exercise. I decided to sit down with a pen and paper and scribble whatever five insert shots I love that first jumped into my head. The five that follow, I swear, came rattling right out before any others even threatened to worm their way in. Make of that what you will. Forward march.

5 Insert Shots I Love

Pulp Fiction

Well, duh.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

John Hughes' unforgettable ode to teenage rebellion is chock full of memorable insert shots, but the hilarious non-forebodeingness of who and what this one signifies has always been the first that involuntarily leaps to mind. Before you even see his face you know his cheese is about to get left out in the wind.

 Out Of Sight

Jack sits down opposite Karen at the Motor City hotel bar. He sets his beloved Zippo beside her glass of beloved bourbon. Nick passes out.

United 93

There is a simply remarkable moment in Paul Greengrass's simply remarkable "United 93" when the first jet has crashed into the World Trade Center and it is then relayed to the Chief of Air Traffic Control Operations at the FAA that the tapes having caught the hijackers' voices on tape are heard to say: "We have some planes." "We have some planes?" the Chief repeats, emphasizing the plural. And as he does, the film cuts to the above shot, a display of every flight currently in United States airspace, every goddamn one of them another potential hijack to the FAA. It's a split-second that effortlessly embodies the terror and confusion of that horrific day.

Die Hard

Per CigarettesInCinema.com there have been 7.8 million cigarettes smoked in the cinema. And of those 7.8 cigarettes, roughly 500,000 of them have been stubbed out. But no cigarette stubbed out on the silver screen has echoed with such charismatically haughty evilness as Hans Gruber in "Die Hard", the exceptional thief's exceptional designer shoes contrasting with John McClane's ravaged bare feet in the background.