My name is Shaka King. Im the co-writer, director, and one of the producers on Judas and the Black Messiah. This scene happens pretty early in the movie. William ONeal, played by Lakeith Stanfield, has just used a fake FBI badge to steal a car and get arrested for that. And here, he meets FBI agent Roy Mitchell, played by Jesse Plemons. So the first shot that we saw earlier was of ONeals feet and blood seemingly falling from where you dont know. It could be from his face. It could be from his hands. And its a time jump. You havent seen the assault that occurred on ONeal. And with us, we were trying to, as early as possible, just establish that this is a film that is not going to give you a lot of exposition. its not going to kind of hold your hand through this experience. We want you as a viewer to fill in the blanks with your imagination as much as possible. Because ideally, we believe that it puts you in the perspective of the person in the movie. This scene is one of the most important scenes in the movie, because it highlights a key factor that were trying to get across to audiences, which is, in a lot of ways, this scene is about the danger of being apolitical. We really wanted to hit home the old phrase, if you stand for nothing, youll fall for anything. Were you upset when Dr. King was murdered? What? Were you upset when Dr. King was murdered? I dont know. We see William ONeal questioned by Roy Mitchell about how he felt after Martin Luther Kings assassination. ONeal admits that it bothered him somewhat. And then, when Mitchell asked him how he felt about Malcolm Xs assassination, and ONeal says, I never really thought about it. And you see Roy Mitchell, in response to that question, smile a little bit, because hes found the person that he thinks is a perfect informant. In terms of how we employed the close-ups, I knew we wanted to save our most extreme close-ups for ONeals look up at the end. That is a pleading look of, like, get me out of here. Ill do anything to get out of here.

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Video: 'Judas and the Black Messiah' | Anatomy of a Scene - The New York Times