Monday 24 September 2018

The Prisoner Film Sequence Analyisis

The Prisoners Film Sequence
The film clip begins with rain on a car in front of a diner. The use of the bad weather and pathetic fallacy begins to create a dark and sad atmosphere, it gives us an idea that this sequence will be sad and dreary. The whole shot is in focus and there is lights on in the diner, this is the only light that is in the scene to light up the car. The car in the foreground is not at all lit up and therefore it gives us the impression that it is an important part of the scene. There is then a cut to a man sat in a chair inside the diner and it is still raining however the sound of the rain is quietened. The diner is completely empty besides the man which shows that the weather is so bad that people aren't out and that it is really late at night further emphasizing the point of the weather creating a bad mood, this is the conventions of mystery as this creates an enigma code as we begin to question why he is out so late and who this man is.

We get a close up of the man enjoying his coffee however we are still unsure about this character as we haven't been given any information about him. As he drinks his coffee his phone goes off and this is where we get our first clue about what he is like, he receives a police report through his phone about a motor home that is found in a parking lot. The next shot jump cuts to him outside next to his car. The next important shot is of a car windscreen, looking out of it however as the focus shifts it focus' into the car and then finally it focuses on the man in the car wearing glasses. Enigma code is created here as we try to understand who this person and in fact this small cut leaves us with loads of questions such as, who is this person. We are lead to believe that this man is an important character as otherwise he would not have been focused on as heavily as he was.

A long shot is used to give idea of what is going on in the shot as we move to a new scene and can see the motor home and the approaching police cars to greet the person in the shot, of whom is moving towards the motor home. This is used to help the audience understand the setting of the shot but also it is used to create a size difference between the motor home and the man walking towards it. We then get a quick cut of a silhouette in a car once again, further highlighting that this man is important and the use of low-key lighting begins to help us understand that this man may possibly be a bad character and that he is the antagonist. The next shot is a point of view shot using a reflection to capture a shot of the man in the car watching the inspector go towards the motor-home of which the apparent character seems to be inside. This shows us that this character is acting in a way that is suspicious and that he has the police’s attention, further creating an enigma code and highlighting the questions we have.

Almost immediately after acting suspicious it cuts to a tracking shot of the investigator that was approaching the motor-home and he jumps backwards as the person in the van begins to act erratically, they use fast cuts and jumps to show that it is fast paced and high energy. The van then runs into a tree and we get a long-shot from in front of the van, this shows both how small the man is compared to the van but also it shows the damage that the trees did to the van. The focus is on the RV however you can see in non-focused zone the investigator approaching with extreme caution. 

We get a close up of the area in the RV where the driver would be however there is no-one there and instead the windscreen is completely smashed through, this makes us curious to see where this guy had gone that we had seen a few times. By creating mystery we want to watch more as we want to know what is going happen next. Once the inspector goes inside of the RV they find a person inside the RV, there is a close up of 2 hands coming out of the curtain however we do not see the person right away and so we have no idea if that is the person who may have been driving the motor home. 

When we finally see the person who we may think was driving the motor home he looks confused and scattered as if he didn't know where he was or what he was doing, when the investigator pulls him out and shouts to him about girls he doesn't understand, he looks scattered and confused. The audience is lead to think that the investigator has a personal problem with the person who may have done the crime that he is shouting about. This creates enigma code as we want to understand what he is talking about too due to our lack of understanding. Reaction shots are used to show the audience the man’s face and to display the true confusion and to highlight this emotion. 

All of the shots are over the shoulder shots to show us what each of the people can see in the different views. By doing this it emphasizes the fact that the person doesn't know what the police officer is bugging him for as the police men look very intimidating. By aiming the camera down at the man it shows that the police clearly think nothing of him and they think he is nothing and insignificant whereas by looking up at the police it shows that they are higher and mightier than the man that they are intimidating.

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