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Film Viewing Practice Essay

Agent Carter is a television series that takes part in the Marvel universe. The protagonist is Agent Carter, who is struggling to work her office job while she assists Howard Stark. The series takes place in New York City post World War II. The extract from the show utilizes film elements such as sound, mise-en-scene, composition, and camera movements and to convey meaning.

To begin with, the opening shot utilizes sound to create drama. Captain America is speaking to Agent Carter has he is about to make the tough decision of sacrificing his life. The editor uses non-diegetic sound in the form of strings and vocals to create a sad mood and to raise intensity. The scene cuts to an office setting, presumably in the future, where Agent Carter works. The sound is most apparent in the scene as sirens are going off. The sirens are digested sound, and are used to create a sense of chaos within the work environment. Immediately after the sirens are going off, a man picks up the phone and the audience is able to hear what is being said through the phone. This is synchronous sound because the audience and the director can both hear the person on the phone. The sense of chaos from sirens carries over as the audience and the director is informed of an enemy being spotted. 

The non-diegetic sound of the strings intensifies again and sets an ominous tone. 

The mise-en-scene of the extract, including costume, acting, and blocking help communicate the themes and recognizable details of the series. Since the time period is post World War II, the costumes are an important in signifying that to audience. The protagonist, Agent Peggy Carter, is wearing a navy blue  pencil skirt and blazer with padded shoulders. Her makeup is minimal. The  modest business wear helps clue the audience in that the time period is the 1940s. The other men in the workplace wear traditional grey suits and ties. The lack of color in Agent Carter's outfit and the men's outfits are meant to convey a feeling of gloom to the audience. The muted color palette is representative of Agent Carter's frustration and despair because she is not being taken seriously at work. Her superiors do not recognize how smart and capable she is just because is is a woman. The acting enhances this theme as the men say things to her like "How are you holding up sweetie?" and "War's over. We'll handle the rough stuff." Agent Carter's frustration is also shown through her acting. She approaches her boss and asks why she hasn't been given an assignment. She also makes comments about how expertise is in field code breaking and data analysis and how she is bored with the work she is given. Lastly, the blocking mirrors how under appreciated she is. Agent Carter's office is placed away from the men. At 2:10 you can see how her superiors travel up a flight of stairs and past rows of empty desks to finally reach Agent Carter. This strategic placement shows how the men do not let her get involved in any of the meaningful work. Instead she is placed out of the way where is forced to act as a secretary instead off an agent. 

The camera angles also convey meaning, especially during the fight scene when Agent Carter is looking for Zodiac. The director uses a full shot as Agent Carter approaches the building. The audience can see her full body as she confidently strides to the entrance. The director chooses a tracking camera movement to show the three men react to the screaming of the fourth man.  This movement invites the audience into the action that is about to come. As the men run to go help, the audience is along for the ride. The camera movements switch to what looks like handheld shots while Agent Carter fights off the men. The hand held camera creates a sense of chaos and helps create drama within the scene. 

Graphic Organizer

Mise en Scene

I decided to write my mise-en-scene analysis on the pilot episode of the HULU Original, The Handmaid's Tale. I chose this episode because the costumes and the props are important for distinguishing between Offred's flashbacks and the present moment. The costumes are also key for understanding the class system in Gilled. The handmaids wear the iconic red dresses and with bonnets that frame their faces. The red symbolizes fertility. The Commanders wear classic black suits to symbolize power. The Commander's wives wear a bluish green to symbolize Virgin Mary. I chose to analyze the Handmaid's Tale because I am interested in Margret Atwood's themes of feminism, complacency, and political manipulation.  From what I can tell, the television series stay faithful to the book, with only minor changes to reflect the current society. 

The episode opens up with Offred's flashback. She, her husband, and child are escaping the to border of Canada. The scene takes place on an empty highway during sometime in the fall. The lighting is low-key to convey a sense of sadness as the family tries to escape the country. The lighting remains low-key as Offred is separated from her husband and child. The scene cuts to future when Offred has been taken by the government and transformed into a handmaid. The director utilizes shallow space to to convey how trapped Offred feels. The shallow depth of field is especially noticeable when her bonnet is on. The viewer can only see her face while the rest of the background is blurred out. This shallow depth of field represent the limited vision that Offred has when she wear the bonnet. The bonnet is a form of control over her since it limits her vision.

The acting becomes crucial when the episodes progresses to the scene where Offred meets the family at her new station. Offred and the Commander's wife have a conversation that sets the tone of the episode from the point forward. The blocking of Offred and Mrs. Waterford is very distant. The wife is standing in the doorway while Offred is sitting on the windowsill. The distance represents the tension between the two characters. Mrs. Waterford's acting reflects a woman who is trying to assert her dominance over the handmaid. Mrs. Waterford's tone is cold when she asks Ovid if she knows the rules. Mrs. Waterford then goes on to talk about how the training the previous handmaid was like training a dog, only "not a very smart one". 

Master Edits with Audio

https://youtu.be/8rtrBCRq2Dg

Music - I added music to convey leitmotif. I took the Lone Ranger theme, William Tell Overture, to express a sense of urgency as the students race through the hallways as they try to get to class on time.

Direct Sound - I kept the direct sound in the simultaneity scene. I kept the sound because it accurately conveyed the echoing of the footsteps on the stairs and it allowed the audience to hear Lia and I stop and say hi to each other.

Voice Over - In the contrast clip, Lia and I added voice-overs. We wanted to show the difference in thought processes between a student who is working hard and studying and a student who is lazy and texting during class.

Post Synchronization Dubbing - In the parallelism clips, we added audio of a person drinking a water bottle. In the original clip of Lia drinking the audience could not hear her drinking because the camera could not detect it. In post, Lia and I added the audio back in so that it would appear to be as if Lia were drinking loudly.

Week 7:

Simultaneity - Christopher Nolan's movie, Inception, uses simultaneity to show that there are multiple dream states that are occurring at the same time. In each layer of the dreams, Cobb and his team are trying to plant an idea into Robert Micheal Fischer's subconscious. In the clip, the team has to drive the van off the bridge to give themselves a "kick", which will wake them up and take them out of the dream. The scene then cuts to the team dropping down an elevator shaft to "kick" themselves awake. This is simultaneity because of the act of free falling expressed in both cuts are happening at the same time.

Parallelism - The cartoon, Bojack Horseman, uses parallelism as a transition. Todd Chavez and Princess Carolyn are in the woods. They are being attacked by clowns that are infected with rabies. The screen is covered in blood but then cuts to Todd squeezing ketchup out of a bottle. in a restaurant The squirting of blood/ketchup is parallelism.

Symbolism - The apple in Snow White is a biblical reference to the Adam and Eve story. Eve is tempted by the devil disguised as a serpent into eating a forbidden apple. Similarly, Snow White is tempted by the evil queen disguised as a hag into eating a poison apple. The apple in Snow White is a symbol of Snow White's sin of talking to strangers when she wasn't supposed to. 

Contrast - The TV series, Reign, ends its final episode with a scene of Queen Mary Stuart at the end of her life. She is old, in tears, and preparing for her execution. Just as the blade is about to come down, the scene cuts to Mary at the prime of her life. She is young and reunited with her husband, who passed away 27 years before she did. This is contrast because she goes from being old and at the end of her life to her being young and happy. 

Leitmotif -  Jaws is a classic example of leitmotif. The theme song provides continuity by acting as a recurring musical idea. The song only plays when people are in the water. The music gives the audience anxiety as the camera cuts to a first person perspective from the shark. The music is dark and threatening make the audience fear the shark. 

Master Edits: Weeks 5 and 6

Link: Master Edits

Symbolism - Lia and I chose to film a poster of a Trojan because that is the Lely mascot. The next shot is of some Lely students talking in a hallway. The Trojan is the symbol for education and scholarship. It signals the viewers that the events are taking place at a high school.

Contrast - The first scene shows a student who is diligently reading an AP Macroeconomics textbook. The next scene shows a student who is wasting class time by texting. The last shot shows both students in the same room, but they are doing completely different things. There is a contrast between the work ethics between the students.

Simultaneity - The film sequence shows Lia and I walking up the stairs at the same time. The camera switches from an aerial view of Lia, to a medium shot of me, and finally to a two shot of Lia and I bumping into each other on the stairwell.

Leitmotif - Lia and I decided to use the William Tell Overture as background music to two scenes of students running to get to class between bells. For both scenes the music is supposed to indicate a sense of frenzy and panic to the viewers.

Parallelism - The first scene is of me drinking from a water fountain. The next shot is of Lia drinking from a water bottle. Both shots are connected by the act of drinking water, but the occur during different times an places. The two shots highlight similarities between Lia and I while acting as a transition.

Assignment 3 Part 2

Review of Camera Angles from Ex Machina (2014) Dir. Alex Garland 

Last year I did my Laureate presentation on the question: Should governments encourage automation in the workforce? My research led me to the movie, Ex Machina. In essence, the movie follows a programmer, Caleb, who is invited to spend a week with his company's CEO. Caleb discovers that he is actually apart of a Turing test. His CEO designed a humanoid, Ava, that has artificial intelligence. He wants Caleb to test if Ava has independent thoughts and consciousness. 

This shot is from the beginning of the film. It is an extreme long shot where the subject, the helicopter, is in the distance. This scene is when Caleb is taken to is CEO's mansion via helicopter. The extreme long shot is used to show the audience how secluded the CEO's house is. 

This is a close-up shot of Caleb's cell phone. Again, the director chose this shot because he is trying to make a point of how secluded Caleb is from the outside world. This shot is foreshadowing that Caleb could potentially in trouble without any way of getting help.

This is another close-up. Here Caleb is exploring the CEO's house. His is aware that he will be testing the humanoid but he has not met it yet. Caleb stumbles upon the humanoid testing room. The crack in the glass is warning that there is something suspicious about how the humanoid behaves, perhaps even dangerous. 

This is an over the shoulder shot. It shows Caleb's point of view. This is his first time seeing the humanoid, Ava. An over the shoulder shot is crucial here because Caleb's first impression of Ava sets the tone for the Turing test. This shot helps the audience sympathize with Caleb's curiosity towards Ava.

This is an eye level shot of Eva. At this point in the film, she has talked to Caleb a few times. With each day she is becoming more curious about the outside world. The director most likely chose an eye level shot to convince the audience that she has human desires. The audience can see in her eyes that she longs for more.

This is an over the shoulder shot from Ava's perspective. She and Caleb are getting to know each other. The audience is clued in on the feelings that they have for each other, despite her being a humanoid. The over the shoulder shot shows how Ava percieves Caleb, which allows the audience to see Caleb from her eyes and understand why she likes him. 

This is a two-shot. It shows one of the many conversations that Caleb and Ava have during the course of the Turing test. I believe the director chose this framing to show that maybe Caleb and Ava are not so different after all. Their poses reflect each other like a mirror.

Caleb begins to go insane after a few days. He discovers that his CEO made many attempts at creating life-like humanoids. Caleb questions whether or not he is a human or a robot. He tries to cut himself to reassure himself that he is a human and a not a humanoid. This close-up shot focuses on the wound that Caleb gives himself. It makes the viewers feel horrified but forces them to suffer along with Caleb.

The movie ends with a long shot of Ava finally getting to experience the outside world. For her entire life, she was trapped inside of the CEO's house, which had no windows for her to look through. This shot is essential to the end of the movie. It makes the viewer question what she is going to do with her freedom. How far can a humanoid get in the real world? Does she actually have her own consciousness? Overall, the audience is left feeling bittersweet. We want to feel happy that she is finally free, but we also wonder about the fate of the human race if humanoids, such as Eva, could exist. 

Assignment 3

I commented on Mickey Poling's blog. The extreme long shot impressed me because it made me feel disconnected from Cooper. The shot was successful because it made me want to know more about what the subject was feeling. I also liked his boom shot because I really felt like I also in the hallway along with the subject. The establishing shot was impressive. I could see how it would be used to set the tone for the beginning of a movie. I liked the close up shot because I could see the water fountain in the foreground and the rest of the background was blurred out. It made me feel like the fountain was significant in the clip. 

I commented on Lily Rosenblum's blog. I enjoyed her reaction shot. The timing was perfect. It really looked like Erin was surprised by something that happened off camera. Similarly, her close up shot clearly see Josh's emotions and could relate to him. The point of view shot was nicely done. It looked like I was standing in the room as she was shaking her mom's hand. I felt as though I was in the action. The follow shot was also good because the camera was not shaky at all. It made me curious as to where Erin was going.

Assignment 2

This is the cameo shot. Rose is featured against a white wall, which is supposed to act as a neutral background. 

This is the dolly shot. The camera moves towards Rose's phone as if it were on tracks.

This is the cutaway. The camera quickly focuses on a car leaving the parking lot but then returns back to the subject. 

This is the flash. Rose attempts a brief jump scare. 

This is the follow shot. I follow Rose up to the Starbucks entrance. 

This is the point of view shot. The shot was taken from the perspective of Rose while she sits down. 

This is an eye level shot. It was taken at Rose's eye level. 

This is an establishing shot. It shows the viewer that we are at a Starbucks and that we are sitting outside.

This a head on shot. Rose throws her keychain directly at the camera. 

This is a long shot. The subject is at a distance and you can see its surroundings. 

This is an extreme long shot because the subject, the zip liner, is a great distance away from the camera. 

This is a pan shot because the camera is moving horizontally around the landscape.

Overall, I realized that there are many different types of shots that seem similar, but have a different effect on the viewer. For example, long shots and extreme long shots are similar but one makes the viewer feel more disconnected from the subject. In the future I am going to try to be more conscious about choosing camera angles and composing my shots.