Film Techniques In Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island

Martin Scorsese is an extremely intelligent and experienced director who has created many award winning films over his long and illustrious career which spans more than 45 years. Some characteristics of his directorial style include the use of camera angles including specific use of close-ups, panning to portray the characters emotions and the use of lighting to symbolise characters. I have chosen Scorsese’s 2010 masterpiece Shutter Island and the highly anticipated academy award winning 2006 film The Departed to analyse. Each of these films has scenes that incorporate Scorsese’s specific characteristics and help me clearly understand his distinct directorial style.

Scorsese uses lighting very well in the movie “Shutter Island”. Scorsese uses …show more content…
The scene from the departed I have chosen to analyse is the car chase scene. Again scorsese uses the dark lighting. In this movie scorsese uses the dark lighting in the scene to symbolise the characters. In the scene Frank Costello and Billy Costigan are driving in the car while being trailed by undercover police. In this scene scorsese uses the dark lighting to once again to show the faces of the two characters and how mysterious they are, while in the car it changes from Frank 's face to Billy face in the scene when the lighting is in Frank 's face you can only see half of his face as the other half is in the darkness as the lighting is only on the one side by doing this Scorsese shows the mysteriousness of the two characters and adds to the intensity of the scene this makes the audience wonder what is he really like and who is this character scorsese also uses the dark lighting on Billy 's face but you can see slightly more of his facial expressions and how he is a really strange character but he is more identifiable than Franks. By using this dark lighting like this scorsese makes the scene more mysterious for the audience and leaves the audience wondering what they 're up to and are the characters really as they seem as the dark lighting makes it quite mysterious and the darkness makes it …show more content…
Scorsese uses all different camera shots but none are more widely used than the close up. The shots are used to show more of the characters emotions and allows for the audience to understand more of each character and allow the audience to really understand each character and to identify with them. In the scene where Teddy Daniels is walking towards his wife even though the lighting is very dark the camera still moves to a close up of teddy 's face and then it moves to a close up of his wife 's face. By using the two close ups scorsese has given a good look of teddy 's face and his wife and all their features and emotion. In the first close up of Teddy 's face the audience really sees his expression with the worried look on his face and the cut on his head and the worried smirk. However as the scene continues and moves to a close up of his wife 's face it shows her seemingly emotionless face which doesn 't really have any comparison to Teddy who looks more unsure about it. By using the close ups the audience gets more of an understanding of each character by seeing how they both reacted to seeing each other and really gets the audience to sympathize with the two characters as by using the close up you see how unsure they both are. Scorsese makes good use of the close ups as we can see Teddy as more of a mysterious character up close with his worried scared look and his wife which seems like the total