Parasite (2019) — descending stairs in the rain
See our character’s iconic-scene parody →In this sequence, the family that has slipped out of the rich house keeps going down stairs and alleys in the pouring rain until they reach their flooded semi-basement home, and the endless downward movement shows their class position to the eye. Borrow it when you want to show a character's fall or ruin through the height of the space.
According to Wikipedia, director Bong Joon-ho called this film a "stairs film", and stairs recur as a device showing the positions of the two families and the basement bunker.
To recreate it: If you build the start frame as a long staircase going from the top of the frame to the bottom, the feeling of descent arises even if the character doesn't move.
The Accented Cinema commentary analyzes that in every shot of the trip home in the rain, the family never climbs uphill and the road always heads down.
To recreate it: Put 'walking down toward the bottom of the frame' as the same sentence in every clip prompt so the direction of descent doesn't flip when the cut changes.
Cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo said in an ARRI interview that in the Kims' semi-basement they hung cheap greenish fluorescent tubes and tungsten incandescent bulbs, the kind usually used as practical lights.
To recreate it: In semi-basement scenes, write the light sources visible in the frame, as in 'cheap greenish fluorescent tube and a bare incandescent bulb', to make the source of the light clear.
According to the same interview, the rain was filmed to look pretty in the rich house, and in the semi-basement the lights were made to flicker endlessly throughout the sequence, making the same rain feel like its opposite.
To recreate it: Generate the mansion cuts and the semi-basement cuts separately and join them directly, and only on the semi-basement side add flicker in editing by dropping the brightness a few frames at a time.
Hong said he started with realistic lighting, then used darker tones as events got more tangled, to build tension.
To recreate it: Even in the same place, if you add a step of 'darker, deep shadows' to each later clip as you generate, the story's descent also shows in the light.
Cinematic multi-shot sequence, 14 seconds total, a descent from rich to poor. Shot 1 (3s): static high-angle wide shot of a father and teenage daughter in soaked clothes slipping out of a hillside villa gate into night rain, a long stone staircase below; Shot 2 (4s): wide shot tilting down to follow them running down the steep staircase, rainwater cascading; Shot 3 (3s): static high-angle shot down a sloping alley as they hurry through ankle-deep muddy water; Shot 4 (4s): static medium shot of them wading into a cramped semi-basement flooded waist-deep, a fluorescent tube flickering. Consistent father and daughter, warm garden lights turning to cold greenish streetlight, dark wet tones, crushing mood.
In a film that uses stairs as a character's class position, stacking shots that keep going down in the same direction makes the audience feel in their body "how far down they live", without any dialogue. The same rain is filmed to look pretty in the rich house and with endlessly flickering lights in the semi-basement, so the same weather feels like its opposite.
High-angle wide shot of a father and his teenage daughter in soaked clothes slipping out of a modern hillside villa gate into heavy night rain, a long stone staircase dropping steeply below them; static camera, warm elegant garden lights, glossy rain streaks, cinematic digital look.
Wide shot of the father and daughter running down a long, steep outdoor stone staircase in pouring rain at night, rainwater cascading down the steps around their feet; the camera tilts down to follow them toward the lower city, cold streetlights, dark wet tones.
High-angle static shot looking down a narrow sloping alley in an old low-income neighborhood in heavy rain at night, the father and daughter hurrying downhill through ankle-deep muddy water toward the bottom of the frame, tangled power lines above, flickering greenish streetlight, dark wet tones.
Medium shot inside a cramped semi-basement apartment flooded waist-deep with murky water, the father and daughter wading in through the door, a bare fluorescent tube flickering on and off above them; static camera, greenish fluorescent and dim tungsten light, gritty dark tones.
Have the character move from the top of the frame to the bottom in every cut (keeping screen direction) to build the sense of continuing to descend, and compress the long trip home by joining short stair and alley cuts (time compression and ellipsis). Lay the sound of rain from start to finish to tie it together as a sound bridge, and put the semi-basement's greenish fluorescent cut right after the mansion's warm colors as a contrast cut.
AI makes rain and water well, but in flooded interiors the water level tends to change from cut to cut, so decide the water level in the start-frame image and generate it as a locked-off shot. Write the descending direction in the same sentence in every prompt, as in 'toward the bottom of the frame', and widen the color difference between the mansion and the semi-basement with color grading in editing. The flicker of fluorescent lights can be reinforced in editing by dropping the brightness for a few frames at a time.
Wikipedia — Parasite (2019 film) · ARRI — ARRI SkyPanel shines in Academy Award-winning film Parasite