The movie Taxi Driver was directed by Martin Scorsese. This scene is about main character Travis, who is a taxi driver, went into the office and asked the office secretary Betsy out to cafe.
In the first shot of Betsy, the director employed shaky camera effect to imitates
the visual effect of the walking people. At the same time, Betsy and her colleague Tom were watching the camera when a combination of dolly and truck shot was used, which creates the vivid point-of-view shot of Travis.
At the beginning of the conversation between Travis and Betsy, Tom was in the scene. The director dolly in the frame to to create a sense of intimacy between Travis and Betsy.
The camera was slowly zooming in on Travis’s face when he was saying “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” It allows the audience to witness his sincerity.
During their conversation, Travis is standing while Betsy is sitting, so director gave a low angle shot for Travis and a high angle shot for Betsy.
In this scene, the director took many shots for their conversation, most of them are medium shots and over-the-shoulder shots, which can better show to the audience their face and body language when they were talking.
The director put Tom into this scene several times even thought he only had one lines. During the conversation, Tom was standing no far from them. He back to the frame and pretended sorting out the file while actually was watching them. Next he walked by them and hidden behind the pillar with his eyes on them all the times. When Travis was about to leave, he walked back to them and watched Travis leave. The director also put him in the centre of those frames to tell us that Tom was an inevitable character.
Unlike the clothes Travis used to wear, the director gave him a nice red suit jacket in this What’s more, he changed to a well-groomed hair and his beard have been shaved. All these details show the director want to shape Travis as the person who really wanted to ask Betsy out successfully and win her heart.
When Travis walked into the office, there was full of noises, including telephone ring, voices, the sound of turning pages. When Travis and Betsy were talking, the director turned down the noises from the office to make their voices clear and obvious.
The director input a romantic saxophone music after their conversation ended to show audience their joyful moods.
Martin Scorsese’s choices in this scene in the Movie Taxi Driver greatly demonstrated each character’s personality and laid the root for the entire storyline for this film.
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