Half-Empty Two-Shot

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The Half-Empty Two-Shot is a narrative framing technique usually found in horror and suspense films/shows, in which a shot of one character is composed asymmetrically, as if the character is in a two-shot with an invisible second character. It creates narrative tension by making the viewer expect someone (or some thing) to lunge into frame and balance the composition. In this context, it is also known as the "Bogeyman Shot" (thanks, Roger Ebert).

It's also sometimes used in melancholy contexts: the person that should be in the other side of the frame isn't there because he's dead, or missing, often with an empty chair or a deep impression left in a bed filling in.

Examples of Half-Empty Two-Shot include:

Film

• Made famous by Halloween, with Michael Myers emerging from the closet to attack Jamie Lee Curtis.
• In Tom Savini's remake of Night of the Living Dead, something does lunge into the frame, but from the wrong side.
• In Shrek, this is used twice to show how alone Shrek and Fiona feel after their big fight. Fiona is shown sitting at an otherwise unoccupied table, with the table in the center of the shot. This is immediately followed by Shrek sitting at his table, on the opposite side (from the camera's perspective).
• Silkwood: In the last shot, all we see in the left half of the frame is .... headlights.
• Used to creepy effect in Swimming Pool.
• A melancholy example occurs several times in Up, whenever Carl sits in his recliner, positioned beside his late wife's.

Web Original

• An example of the melancholy sort: In Act 3 of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog there is a scene of Penny sitting in the laundromat with two frozen yogurts, waiting for Billy, who isn't showing up.