Mis-en-scene: Director of Photography for "Now You See Me" (2013)

Now You See Me (4/11) Movie CLIP - Robbing the Bank (2013) HD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx9EOI4RyBs

In this scene of the film "Now You See Me," there is a bunch of different ways the Director of Photography uses different camera angles and lighting to create the best possible scene of the bank robbery. In this scene, the Four Horsemen magicians "rob a bank" for a magic show. The scene is set up to look like a real magic trick. 

Right off the bat, Fong uses a number of lens flares and manipulates lighting to show authenticity in the camera design, as shown below. The lighting in this scene makes it feel like you are actually watching a show in Las Vegas.  

An establishing shot of Paris without the Eiffel tower shows his creativity in setting the scene.

More lens flares:

Later in the scene, Fong uses creative camera movements to follow the subject of the scene, making it feel like the audience member is actually following her.

The focal point of the scene (money flying around) is achieved with a little bit of CGI, but the camera remains focused on the man and his emotions, rather than the money flying around. This makes the CGI additive seem subtle and unnoticeable because all the focus is on the character. 

During the entire scene, camera movement never stops. It alternates between wide shots and close shots of the performers on the stage. He captures this motion with a high speed cameras that couls move 35 mph-- most commonly used in football games.

The Director of Photography had to create the scene to look like a cross between a heist scene and a magic trick. First of all, according to the job description, the Director of Photography "is the chief over the camera crews working on a film, television production or other live action piece and is responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image."
The Director of Photography for "Now You See Me" is Larry Fong, whose other film credits include "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice," "300," and "Watchmen." These films boast big budgets and elaborate sets with lots of action. Fong used his experience working with big films like this to make the action in this scene from "Now You See Me" pop.