Grace's Film Studies Blog

In this essay I will be analysing a scene from the 2013 American thriller film, Prisoners, directed by Denis Villeneuve and staring Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal. The scene starts off with the camera panning towards Jake Gyllenhaal's character in a mysterious way and he appears to be in a kind of roadside Chinese restaurant. The lighting inside the restaurant is neutral and the camera stays at eye-level with Jake Gyllenhaal's character. The mise-en-scene in this part is very typical of a film in the thriller genre because all throughout the whole scene it is pouring down with rain, when the camera is panning towards Jake Gyllenhaal you get a sense that someone is creeping up on him but it is revealed that it is just the waitress going over to the protagonist. When the waitress has left the protagonist, the camera cuts to a wide shot of the restaurant which could be showing how the protagonist feels isolated and alone from everyone else in the movie. The sound in this part ...

https://youtu.be/54Go73Cyi3o This link goes to the opening scene of the 2013 movie 'The World's End' starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. The scene opens with a blank screen and non-diegetic sound is used because there is music coming from an unknown source, however as the scene carries on there is a mixture of diegetic and non-diegetic sound because Simon Pegg starts narrating to introduce us to the main characters of the film and to tell us about the night they first tried the 'Golden Mile'. Also, the music adds factual dimension to the scene because the song that is playing is "Loaded" by Primal Scream which came out in the 1990's and it is used cleverly because this part of the film takes place in the 1990's. As the scene continues it uses more diegetic sound because the main protagonist sets off the fire alarm and you hear the alarm going off.  The music in this scene makes me feel happy because the music is upbeat but as the scene end...

In this essay I will be analysing a scene in the 2015 movie 'Crimson Peak' by Guillermo del Toro. In the scene I have been given, the character Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) has been awoken in the dead of night to be attacked by a 'monster'. In the beginning of the scene the protagonist (who is portrayed by Mia Wasikowska) is disturbed in her sleep because of stomach pain and her dog is barking and as she gets out of bed the lighting changes from low-key lighting to side lighting to suggest that there could be something hiding in the shadows and the camera then tracks the woman as she searches the corridors, the way the camera tracks her creates the effect that she is being followed by something unknown. At the first look of the scene, the mise-en-scene is used to give you a visual sense of when this film is set (early 1900's) because the costume that Mia Wasikowska's character is wearing is very dated and she uses a candelabra to light her way which shows ...