Surveillance In Nightcrawler

In Nightcrawler there are a few aspects of surveillance portrayed but they are very subtle. The first one is the use of diegetic sound that comes from the police scanner. Throughout the semester multiple films of the surveillance genre were viewed and many of them introduced a “bug” that was used to listen in on different characters of the film without them knowing. As Lou listens to the police scanner it is relatively the same as “bug”, except the police scanner only listens to police calling in reports. Being that the police scanner is used only to listen to police calls which changes the idea of the bug from being intimate, that it is listening to one specific character, to something more broad and less specific. What this manipulated …show more content…
As the first two conventions mentioned above, this convention can also be found in most surveillance films. When watching this murder scene viewers are left feeling betrayed, because that is exactly what happened when Lou’s partner was shot and killed. What makes this murder scene different from other surveillance film murder scenes is that the murder was not for seeable compared to other movies. For example, as we seen in The Conversation the murder was mentioned before it happened even though it did not pan out as viewers were expecting. However, in Nightcrawler, the murder just happens in a flurry of action with no warning. This murder scene plays well into the theme and with the characters of this film. In the beginning Lou seems sketchy and his interest in night crawling is random and just appears just as the murder occurs. The way this film carries its conventions from beginning to end really brings everything together. The three conventions that I have discussed previously can all be consider semantics of a surveillance film because each of the conventions can be found in all films that fall into the surveillance