Online Film Analysis

Clip E
While watching this clip from Amadeus I experienced a feeling of melancholy. The clips use of backlighting on the aged man next to the piano brings a darkness to his figure so that he looks mysterious and almost troubled. This is in stark contrast to the cleric whose face is illuminated from the window across from him. This natural lighting provides him with an innocence which the pianist does not have due to a lack of lighting. Once the pianist recalls a memory of his greatest moment as a musician we see what he sees. This mental subjectivity brings us into the characters mind to reveal the pride he has when remembering his accomplishments of long ago.

Clip B
During the clip from Strangers on a Train the main technique used to heighten the action and suspense was crosscutting. Many suspenseful events such as the two men fighting, the old man crawling dangerously under the merry go round, and the crowds utter astonishment at it all come together in this clip to intensify the story. As all of the action unfolds near the merry go round the camera switches between each event to lengthen the event in the audiences eyes and therefore build tension. Besides crosscutting,diegetic music also greatly effected the action of the story. As the merry go round sped faster the music aboard also got faster. With a quicker tempo the otherwise cheery music turned distressing further exaggerating the action of the scene.

Clip F
From the clip from the film Zerkalo we see the dominant use of camera movement to bring the audience into the scene as if they were there. When we first see the children run by on screen the camera zooms back to reveal the setting inside the house. The camera then looks through a mirror to see the children standing in the doorway observing something. Then the camera pans to see a young boy walk outside where the camera soon follows. All of these motions of the camera give this clip a more realistic feel as if the audience were involved in the scene. Finally, as the camera rests on the porch of the house the shot itself uses deep focus composition with the mother in the foreground, father in the middleground, and burning house in the background.

Clip C
In the scene from Silence of the Lambs in which the police gather outside of a house that appears to be the killer's many techniques are used to mislead the audience into believing that the police are at the killer's house when they are actually not. By crosscutting between the police outside of a house and the killer inside his house the audience immediately assumes that the two locations are the same. The extreme long shots outside of a house show the police force gathering tensely while the long and medium shots inside of the killers house show where he keeps his next victim. The pace of this scene increases as the cuts become more rapid creating anticipation in the viewer. The rhyhmic relations created by the editing results in suspense and excitment until the final reveal.