Analysis: The Anatomy of a Scene - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Caution - Spoilers ahead.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 2007 (David Yates)

Scene Chosen: 1:50 - 4:44

Cuts:

The cuts create the beat of the scene. Every time the tension of the silence or stillness of scenes is about to be broken, the consistency of cuts increases:

When Sirius appears:

Moment when silence and stillness ends

Trigger for the tension in the next scene

Long take to add a few more moments of tension before the subject of their stares are revealed.

There is a delay in the pace of the cuts to play on the visual component of tone; creating a small moment of affinity after a large contrast of going from dark to bright. This shot below is longer to allow the audience to adjust to the white:

Following this shot, the cuts are faster; however the tone is still in the white sector. Therefore, the cuts can be allowed to be shorter as there is still white in the shot. Yet, the shortness of each shot still  creates the tension needed for the upcoming fight; whilst retaining the affinity of tone to show that the people in shot are the support that Harry and his classmates need

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For the moments in the fight, the pace of the cuts is very quick; for the intention of showing the audience that there are a lot of different actions happening to different people; all at the same time. And in the height of the chaos, lots of cuts switching between the different action shrinks the audience's time to think as it would if they were caught in the middle of a conflict:

Looking up at the battle

Audience is among the group looking up at the battle

At the same time, in an ambiguous form of space, several other fights are also taking place.

At certain points, there are jump cuts that cut closer to the subject to amplify the reaction of Harry as he's caught in the heat of the fight:

At the moment when Sirius passes through the archway after the fight, the cuts are more exposed and create a fragmented scene as Harry is in despair. This however works as the moment is meant to disorientate the audience and shock them; making them feel Harry's emotions in the moment, shaken up and broken by it:

Rhythm:

The rhythm varies in the scene. In my opinion, it's designed to not allow the audience to settle down. When there are slow moments e.g before Sirius appears, they are immediately followed up by fast moments e.g when the fight begins. However, right at the end, after Sirius passes through the archway, not only are the cuts slow, the shot is also slowed down to bring the audience out of the shortness and sharpness of the fight and into the elongation of Harry's sorry. Director David Yates has deliberately done this in order for the audience to absorb all the despair in the moment.

Other:

Furthermore, the scene after Sirius goes through the archway, the sound is out of sync with the visuals. Harry's cries are echoed rather that directly blasted from him in shot. There is an empty echo sound overlaid above his cries along with the introduction of slow violins. All of this is intended to slow  everything down in a short sequence after the fight scene. Otherwise, the audience will not absorb the pain of Harry, due to the fact that they would be recovering from the intensity of the fight. Therefore, slowing this sequence down with the out of sync audio gives the audience time to recover and to take in what's  being shown.