Trunk Shot

Narrative function

The audience is the object or the concealed body. Two faces appear over a bright lid; they look down at us; the dark rim eats the edges.

Power and curiosity swap: the standing people have the height, the camera has the secret. Tarantino's crime grammar made the car trunk a signature, but any container (a crate, an instrument case) can host the same physics.

A Low Angle on a street has no lid. A Worm's-Eye View on a tower has no one looking into the lens.

If you cannot see the opening, you do not have the shot.

How it works

Put a low camera in a trunk, a box, or an open-bottom set piece. Keep the container edge in frame on several sides.

Stage the lid's movement and aim the actors' eyelines at the same interior point. Daylight or a parking-lamp key from above is motivated by the open lid; the interior stays in shadow.

Prompt: trunk shot looking up from inside a car trunk or confined pit, rim framing the faces.

When to use it

Use it when someone is in the trunk, or when the reveal should come from inside a container. Concrete beat: two people pop a lid and lean in, looking down at the lens, dark rim against a bright sky.

Do not use it as a decorative low-angle on standing gangsters with no car.

Compared with similar shots

Low Angle looks up without a container. Worm's-Eye View looks up at architecture from the dirt.

Object POV can live inside a thing, but usually as the thing moving through the world, not as people opening it. Point of View of a bound captive can coincide with a trunk shot when the occupant is a character we have already met.

• Low AnglePower, monument, or intimidation.
• Worm's-Eye ViewThe subject is a tower. You are dust.
• Eye LevelDefault honesty. Do not look down or up unless you mean it.

In film

Pulp Fiction views Jules and Vincent from inside the car trunk as they look down. Reservoir Dogs stages the same downward look into an open trunk.

Kill Bill and From Dusk Till Dawn reuse the pit-and-lid grammar. Borrow the rim, the lid, and the eyelines into the box.

• Reservoir Dogs 1992Characters are seen looking down into the open trunk.
• Pulp Fiction 1994Jules and Vincent are viewed from inside the car trunk.

Prompt it

The rim is mandatory. Quote: Trunk shot looking up at [Subject] from inside a car trunk or similar confined pit, playful low-angle signature.

Add: dark container edge framing the frame, lid or sky above, actors looking down into the lens, camera not rising out of the box.

From inside an old wooden instrument case, look upward as two conservators open the lid and lean over it. The dark case rim frames their faces against a bright workshop ceiling. Clear lid movement, coherent downward eyelines, no camera rise or reveal of the observer.

What usually goes wrong

The usual wrong cousin is a generic Low Angle in a driveway. Tell: full standing bodies, no lid, no rim, horizon of a parking lot.

Fix: inside the trunk, rim in frame, faces leaning over an opening, downward eyelines. If the camera floats up and reveals the observer, you left the container.

Questions