Explanation video can be found here

In this basketball game of FINDING FORRESTER there is barely any dialogue, but there is much information thrown at the audience with the visuals. The scene starts with Dr. Spencer and Jamal having a tedious conversation about his plagiarism “forgiveness”. This short chat sets up the mood of the upcoming game. From that point, Jamal sort of disappears from the scene (presence-wise) and his surroundings become protagonist: supporting family members and friends, but also Dr. Spencer, Coach Garrick and most importantly, Professor Crawford.

The editing of the scene marks the pace of tension which is portrayed by the tv-sport-camera-kind movements (plenty of pans, zoom-ins, motion blurr). There are constant shots of the time board, hectic players crossing in front of the camera, a smashed depth of field to get that sensation of exciting and chaotic basketball game. In this part of the visuals, we miss Jamal in almost all the shots; but for a reason.

In the other hand, we have the other kind of editing, static shots, mostly mediums and close ups, that let us penetrate more intensively intro the characters emotions and stress. These shots are filled by a blurred foreground but keep the characters static, staring and following Jamal’s moves.

These two styles get combined throughout the scene in order to follow the peaks of tension: suddenly Mailor-Callow (the school of Jamal) scores, suddenly they are loosing, all of the sudden the game ends…

And there we finally get to fully see Jamal’s face for the first time during the game. After all the different looks during the scene from his worrying family, his caring friends, and the school members watching every move on the school interest. This is the moment where the editor allows us to get a glimpse inside Jamal’s thoughts, but he remains pretty unreadable. Jamal needs to take a decision, whether he will score or not the last foul given shots. This is an important moment, where we see for the first time an extreme close up from Ms. Wallace (Jamal’s mom) and the time stops for a few seconds after having been rushed during the whole scene. There is a huge pause that translates into the reflection of Jamal. Jamal doesn’t score in purpose, and everybody seems disappointed, apart from him? That is the question that remains until later in the movie.

At the end, the pace slows down accompanying the tone and the music that is added in the background, transitioning towards Forrester’s living room TV, watching the match. That simple match cut gives a lot of meaning to the upcoming beats of the story, since it will define whether Forrester helps his good friend Jamal or not.

Movie: Finding Forrester
Film Editing by Valdís Óskarsdóttir

Scene breakdown (video)