"- And the Oscar goes to...
Brad Pitt."
Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood"
is a film packed with memorable scenes.
But if one were asked to pick out the sequence
with the most tension
many would choose the scene when Cliff Booth arrives at Spahn Ranch.
And takes a long walk through suspicious territory.
All he wants to do is to make sure of his friend George is safe.
"- Well, is there anything wrong with me saying hello to an old friend?"
But Cliff Booth just might be stepping into a trap.
Tarantino used many directing techniques to craft this tension
and we'll highlight them in this episode of
"The Director's Playbook."
♪ The Director's Playbook Intro ♪
The suspense in the sequence is relatively light on dialogue.
"- Come on."
And heavy on visual storytelling.
P.O.V.
Screen direction.
Framing.
Camera angles.
"- Came a long ways.
Don't know when I'll get back this way again."
And sound design.
If you're planning a scene with elaborate blocking and staging,
it's helpful to use a storyboard to map it out.
We're going to use StudioBinder
to map out highlights of the Spahn route scene.
"- Ready when you are."
Let's take a stroll with Cliff Booth.
To keep the audience in step with Cliff
Tarantino uses P.O.V. throughout the sequence.
This P.O.V shot establishes the house as his goal
through its dead center framing.
He is suspicious from the very start
and we are meant to share this suspicion.
The stretch of dusty land provides the perfect opportunity
to slow things down with a long walk up to the house.
Something's off about this situation.
"- Come on."
Cliff's first steps towards a house
are framed in an extreme wide shot
making him smaller and vulnerable out in the open.
Screen direction has a strong effect on an audience member's subconscious.
And in this section,
the camera jumps across the 180-degree line.
Changing the screen direction
keeping us ever so slightly disoriented.
"- Where the hell is everybody?
Hey, where's Gypsy?
- She's down by the chop shop.
- Thank you for giving our precious Pussy a ride home.
- Think nothing of it.
- We love Pussy.
- Yes, we do."
After some pleasant conversation with a couple of new characters.
"- Come on over here and say hi to Cliff.
- Howdy, Cliff. - Tex.
- What part of Texas you from? - Oh, a place you never heard of.
Copeville."
Cliff attempts to resume his track to the house.
"- Hey, does George Spahn still own this ranch?"
Tarantino features the house in the background,
center-framed to keep our goal in mind.
The house is also included in the reverse
on the Manson girls.
In these matching profile shots,
their defensive alignment visually communicates
their opposition to Cliff's goal.
"- Does he still live right there?
- Yeah."
As the conversation becomes more of a confrontation.
"- Well, is there anything wrong with me saying hello to an old friend?
- You can't see him right now."
Tarantino changes up the shots.
Instead of profile views,
we see our opposed characters head-on.
The shift is dramatic and inherently more aggressive.
All of the empty space behind Cliff
is now filled by a large bus
and more Manson followers who box him in.
His reluctant hosts fill in the bottom half of the frame
slowly swarming like zombies.
Cliff finally makes it to the front porch.
"- You the mama bear?
- Can I help you?
- I hope so.
I'm an old friend of George's. Thought I'd stop and say hello.
- That's very nice of you,
but unfortunately, you picked the wrong time.
George is taking a nap right now."
But then a short interrogation begins.
"- What's your name?
-Cliff Booth."
And once again Tarantino marks this shift in tone.
We jump to tighter dutch angles,
which accelerates the tension even further.
"- How do you know George?
- I used to shoot Westerns here at the ranch.
- When was the last time you saw George?
- Oh, I'd say about...
eight years ago.
- Oh.
I'm sorry I didn't realize the two of you are so close.
But when he wakes up, I'll let him know you came by.
- Look, Red, I'm coming in there.
With my own two eyes, I'm gonna get a good look at George.
And this...
ain't stopping me."
And when Squeaky snaps open the door
listen carefully to the sound design.
"- Okay.
Suit yourself."
The environment, the wind, the television.
Without a word spoken
the sound in these moments enhances the tension.
We return to Cliff's point of view
for slow shots that linger over the filthy interior.
We may as well be in a horror movie.
And the captured mouse is a perfect metaphor for Cliff
walking into his own mousetrap.
Squeaky changes the TV channel to a program with ominous music.
Tarantino borrows this cue from the master of suspense himself
Alfred Hitchcock's "Torn Curtain."
"- He back there?
- Door at the end of the hallway."
♪ John Addison - "The Radiogram" ♪
Once Cliff enters the hall
Tarantino keeps the camera behind his back.
The vast open and bright exterior of the house
has been reduced to a dark cramped space
with nowhere to run.
♪ John Addison - "The Radiogram" ♪
"- George, you awake?"
Finally, Cliff reaches the bedroom.
"- George?"
And despite all the evidence to the contrary.
George is alive and well.
"- Hi, George.
- Uh... Who are you?
- It's Cliff Booth.
Just stopped in to say hello and see how you're doing.
- John Wilkes Booth?
- No, Cliff Booth.
- Who's that?
I used to shoot Bounty Law here, George."
When creating suspense in your own work
a good suspense sequence isn't about what happens in the end.
"- What the fuck is the matter with you?
First, you'll wake me up
and now you're pretending that I didn't tell you
I was fucking blind!"
It's about getting there.
What might happen will almost always be more interesting
then what does happen.
"- Tarantino, you are original.
You are one of a kind.
And I love ethos you gave Cliff Booth."
Tarantino threw a lot into the sequence.
He used P.O.V to keep us tied to Cliff.
He broke the 180-degree rule to disorient us.
He used framing and composition
to keep Cliff isolated and outnumbered.
He followed dialogue-heavy moments
with ominous and detailed sound design.
He used production design to saturate the interior with foreboding details.
All to keep us on the edge of our seats.
For the complete storyboard
including shot specs, follow the link in the description.
What did we miss in our breakdown of the Spahn route sequence?
Keep the conversation going in the comments.
And don't miss out on the rest of "The Directors Playbook" series.
Watch how Coppola pulled off this iconic moment from "The Godfather."
Or how Scorsese blocked and staged
this long take in "The Wolf of Wall Street."
Make sure to subscribe to be kept in the loop.
And we'll see you in the next one.
♪ ♪