End of Watch: A Question on Perspective

For this week’s blog post I am looking at these quick sequences of shots from the movie End of Watch, what is really unique about the filming technique of this movie is the constant cutaways to a first person perspective for the audience. This sequence being near the end of the film especially showcases this technique.

For the first shot we have both Taylor and Zavala running down a flight of stairs trying to escape away from the cartel that are after them.

The next shot does a cutaway to a first person perspective where the film seems to try to put the audience in the shoes of Taylor for this dire situation.

The next shot has the camera pan to the left with the hand moving towards to make sure there is no one who is after them from the left side.

We then cutaway to a third person perspective with Taylor facing opposite of the street light from the previous shot once again following the actions from his training to make sure both sides of the entrance they came out of is not surrounded.

We then cutaway once again to Taylor’s perspective where we are seeing the brush in their way with seeing a street light through a hole within the brush; having his vision blocked by that can have a strong impact morale wise.

We finally then cutaway to a first person perspective of Zavala going through the brush with Taylor not only showing his current physical condition from Zavala’s breathing but also we see how exhausted Taylor is as well as they run towards the street light.