Relationships Between Shots

For this assignment, I chose a clip from the 1996 movie Matilda, which has been one of—if not my most—favorite movie for as long as I can remember.  For a bit of insight, Matilda is about a sweet little girl with telekinetic powers that she uses to cope with her nasty family and evil school principle.   The scene that I have chosen to examine, though on the shorter side, is very important to the movie's overall plot.  This particular scene is where Matilda first discovers the full extent of her powers and exactly what she is capable of doing.

The first important aspect that this scene brings to us is its upbeat music.  We can conclude from this that this particular part of the movie is supposed to be positive and happy.  Next, we see a bowl of Cheerios and a spoon that is lifted out of the bowl all by itself.  This is significant because, since there is no hand visible on the spoon, we can see that Matilda is doing this all with her eyes.  The next shot shows the spoonful of Cheerios floating in midair before entering Matilda’s mouth.  The song gets more and more upbeat as the scene continues to play out.  We see Matilda moving by simply pointing a finger and snapping her fingers and dancing all around the room.  The shots are quick and sort of (intentionally) all over the place.  The scene ends with an overhead shot of things “exploding” all around Matilda.

This clip—and the entire movie, really—shows great editing.  Obviously, we know that spoons can’t float and lights don’t turn on by just pointing our fingers at them.  This is all the magic of editing.