The opening shot in the film Punch Drunk Love gives us hints to the protagonists personality. Barry Egan played by Adam Sandler sits at his desk on the right side of the frame in an empty warehouse space. The shot is taken from about 30 feet back giving it a large depth of field. The shot reveals that Egan is neurotic, lonely and perhaps detached. The director was giving hints of his personality by focusing on the emptiness of the space. The drawn-out shot last for the first 45 seconds of the movie giving the audience plenty of time to decipher what exactly the director is trying to highlight and foreshadow based on the frame.
A second shot happens a few shots after the opening where a harmonium is dropped out of a racing truck on to the side of the street where Barry works. Though Barry is standing around 100 feet away, there is a shot of the harmonium from his perspective that slowly zooms in until the harpsichord is in playing distance. This foreshadows to the role that the instrument will play in the film and also attributes ominous and dark qualities to the harmonium because of the threatening way in which it is displayed. It's shot as if it were a scene from a western film where the slow zoom focuses on each cowboy as they draw their weapons, almost giving the harmonium human like qualities.
About 12 minutes in to the movie Barry goes to his sisters house for dinner and in an act of unprovoked rage he kicks down the sliding class doors as his family is sitting down to dinner. The shot is filmed from outside of the house with Barry's back to the audience and his sisters facing him. This framing is meant to make the viewer sympathize with Barry as he is attacked and ridiculed by his sisters while he stands there seemingly ignorant to what he has done. It demonstrates that his anger is random and unintentional. I like to call it a "monkey in the middle" shot where the protagonist is positioned halfway between the characters posing a threat and the camera giving a feeling of autonomy to the audience to make judgments about the characters.
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