Overview: During the reign of the eighth shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate, the Yunagaya Domain in the Tohoku region is a small han. But at the han, there is a gold mine. Suddenly, Masaatsu Naito of Yunagaya Domain receives an order to perform Sankin-kotai within 5 days.

Sankin-kotai is a custom that requires the daimyo to visit the shogun in Edo. Unfortunately, the time needed to visit the shogun in Edo for Masaatsu Naito is 8 days. Masaatsu Naito also learns he received the order because a high ranking government official wants the gold mine. Also, the expense for Sankin-kotai is high and the Yunagaya Domain is such a small han that it seems impossible to complete. Nevertheless, Masaatsu Naito begins an unexpected operation to complete Sankin-kotai in 5 days.

Scene #1

This running shot in about one of Naito’s samurai running through the corridor and stop in front of Naito’s room. This shot is only about 4 seconds. As we can see from the last frame, the camera is setting at the front of Naito’s room,the camera pan from the one side of the corridor and stop when the samurai kneels down in front of Naito’s room.  In this case, the focal length will be to change during the panning so the focus will always on the running samurai.

On the other hand, for the shot construction, the running actor is always in the middle of the frame. The background and the pillar are quite blur, the depth of field is deep and the aperture must be quit small.  In this way, audience’s attention will focus on the actor.

 

Scene#2

This scene is about 50 seconds, there are 14 shots.

Shot#1  a extreme long shot, the camera pans from left to right and tills up at the same time. This is the opening shot of the whole scene, director uses a extreme long shot to establish the location and some other details, such as the number of the members and environment of Yunagaya Domain.

Another establishing shot, using a long shot, camera pans slowly from left to right. In this shot, we can see a more clear image of the troops, we also can tell the different between the samurai and the ninja who dresses differently and running at the end of the troops, the audience would realise that he is not really a part of the team. The characters are placed in 1/3 of the bottom of frame which  is a good construction.
This shot changes from a full shot to a medium shot while the troops running closer to camera. We can see that Naito is at the front of the troop, and the ninja is running at the side of the troop.

A series of medium shots showing the face of each samurai.
An interesting thing in these series of medium is, except the first shot of Naito leading the troops and the shot of ninja and the last samurai, they introducing all the other members from the back of the troops, starting from the last third person.

All the shot pan from left to right.
For the last 2 shot of these series of medium shots, these 2 person appear in the frame individually. I reckon that director might want to highlight these 2 characters  for some purpose.
A close up shot of the ninja’s feet, showing the movement of ninja.
In the following 2 shots, we can see that ninja run over the whole troop, and become the leader of the troop. It is kind of establish the relation of ninja and samurai is change. But there is a bug in these 2 shots. In first shot, the small house is at the left side of the troop but it is at the left side of the troop in the second shot. So these 2 shots is not film in the same position. But the shot construction is still quite good.
Using extreme long shot to show how far they run. In the last shot, the background is mountains, but in this shot the background is sea.

 

Scene#3

a steady medium-full shot of the troop running pass. Then the camera follow the troop move towards right. The movement of the camera refers to the movement of people in the frame who are wondering about the troop.

a long shot of the troop running above the camera

a long shot remains that the troop running pass people.