Shot Progression in the Intro to Borat

Borat, a film by Sacha Baron Cohen, is a mockumentary that follows Borat, a fictional news reporter from Kazakhstan in his journey across America. Borat hails from a very poor, underdeveloped village. Director Larry Charles shows the village using the standard shot progression formula.

The first shot we see is the long shot. The unpaved road, the overcast skies, the worn down wooden shacks make the village look very downtrodden.

The second shot we see is the medium shot.  We get a deeper look into actually how poor the village is. The clothes hanging on the line indicates a lack of washers and dryers, which indicates a lack of technology. We can now see how worn down the buildings are and the overturned car in the bottom left corner. The village gets more poor each shot.

The third shot we see is the close shot. It is the close up of one of the poor people in the village. His old clothes, dirty hat and scraggly beard are only half of it. It's his face that has seen it all. The worn look on his face shows that he is not living the life of luxury.

Larry Charles used shot progression to show the poorness of the village. He reverses the formula for a comedic effect later in the movie.

We see Borat washing his underwear in a pond seemingly alone. As the shot zooms out all the we see he is actually in a huge lake surrounded by people.