I think one of my top favorite things about phm that I haven’t seen much of anyone talk about is the shots when it looks like someone is actually trying to document the events as they’re happening.
One shot that caught my eye on my second or third watch was in the first lab at the beginning when Ryland shoots a thumbs up and the camera goes out of focus for a second after it pans to the people behind the window, kind of like someone hurriedly panning the camera to get their reaction.
Another one is when the research building explodes and we go from Stratt and Grace talking to each other normally with typical back and forth shots and then quickly go into the chaos via running “with” them before it pans out to them running and the shot of the building on fire.
And then there’s the few other times (my personal favorites) when Grace is in space and it looks like someone is floating in zero gravity at a distance and fumbling around slightly, trying to document the outside of the Hail Mary and idk it’s a very interesting concept to me.
It’s really interesing that these kinds of shots aren’t subjected to past or present, but rather included in both timelines. I feel like each of these shots don’t feel out of place bcus they do such a good job of immersing the audience into the story. Like say what yall want about shaky cam effects, there’s definitely right ways to go about it and they could easily have put too many of those kinds of shots in, but I feel like they absolutely nail it in phm bcus of how involved they make the audience feel :))