We Are Only Ghosts

Joss Whedon knows a secret. A secret passed down from one generation of filmmaker to the next and once you know it you can manipulate the audience's emotions in a way few mediums can. This secret, this technique rather, is the use of handheld camera one-take sequences. The sequence at the beginning of "The Body" is all the more jarring due to the fact that our eyes never leave Buffy. We, just like the camera, follow Buffy as she scrambles through the house. There's a not a glance to the door, cutting from the action. There's no cut to show the telephone in frame as she picks it up. There's no rack-focus to show her face up close as she kneels on the floor about to vomit. We see it all as if we're right next to her, a helpless ghost only able to watch as Buffy's world crumbles around her.

Our lives aren't ruled by a series of camera angles and jump cuts. We experience our days and our hours as one continuous flow. Most often in films and television we are given the pleasure of seeing a story play out through intricately woven camera angles and lighting designs. We expect a certain template when watching a movie and when that template of cut after cut, angle after angle is changed to a single camera shakily following the action on screen our suspension of disbelief is suddenly warped into a sense of panic and reality. No longer are we protected by the traditional editing flows. Joss Whedon wanted us to relate with Buffy's confusion and sorrow on a level deeper than a traditional cinematic sequence would allow. He tapped into the secret beauty of continuous one-take sequences and combined that with a shaky realism in the camera movement that ripped us from the comforts of soft pans and trucks and planted us directly in the flow of the moment.