Establishing shot

conviction of five African-American and Hispanic teenagers from Harlem, who were falsely accused and later convicted of brutally raping and inhumanely beating a white woman in New York’s beloved Central Park. Ken Burns, the director, seeks redress to prove the innocence of the completely dehumanized five, who were held accountable of a brutal crime by cruel detectives and prosecutors. Ken Burns uses archival footage, interviews and camera shots as conventions of documentary to acknowledge authority’s corruption and prove the boys were a victim of an unjust and venal system. He also aims to compel New York citizens to rectify their grim mistake against the five wrongfully accused innocents. The documentary critically tests the legal system and acts solemn and sympathetic towards the five youths who were struggling for freedom when convicted against this appalling rape case. Burns’ documentary highlights the emotional trauma and innocence these boys have lost as a consequence of being apart of a criminal and unjust system. Burn’s establishing shots of the youth correctional facility, where four of the five youths were taken once convicted of the ruthless felony, speculates the treacherous and harsh environment the young boys were forced to grow up in. The barbed wire surrounding the complex, represents…

this sequence, we are able to feel the uncertainly and the unsteadiness that Nina feels around Bloom. The camera is able to capture her face as she looks into the eyes of Bloom when she tells him that she only went on a date with him as a professional move and not for anything romantic. When the camera moves over to Bloom, the viewers are able to see how he is trying to convince Nina that he is the reason the news station is improving and that more people are watching it. We are also able to see…

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…

“Better Together,” which was a song off his first album. Mind you, all these songs are so relaxed, they’re a little upbeat, but mellower than anything. I’ve heard people say that the best time to listen to Jack Johnson is when they are smoking marijuana and just want to relax. I guess you can’t really take that to heart, unless you have done that before, but that’s just what I’ve heard. Anyways, Jack finally started to play songs off his new album after getting the crowd all ecstatic with his…

The Giant’s fighting scene from Spike Lee’s Mo’s better blues is a really interesting scene in terms of lighting scheme, camera composition, etc. The sequence opens with an establishing master shot #1 of Giant going to the restroom. Shot #2 is a medium close up shot of Giant. Behind him are two men peeking from the stalls. This foreshadows the trouble Giant might be facing. The director uses the division of surface in order to show the conflict between the men and Giant. The focus of the shot…

walk into the lab. The camera pans left in a POV shot, like from the perspective of a horrified spectator, from a screaming woman to Stan performing the memory operation. The background is plastered by a large film of the woman’s memories projected onto the wall. Howard speaks of the procedure in the background. With dynamic camera movements, attentive editing, unique approaches to mise-en-scene, and sound alteration, the eight-minute sequence represents the stark cognitive changes Joel…

William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. Recreations range from plays to movies, and each one adds its own level of darkness. One recreation is the 2000 version of Hamlet starring Blair Brown, Roscoe Lee Browne, Campbell Scott, Lisa Gay Hamilton, and Jamey Sheridan, and directed by Campbell Scott and Eric Simonson. This version of Hamlet that we watched in class gives its own twist and darkness that the story needs. The opening shot of the movie is a close up of many different statues and their…

watching his mother spoon soup into her mouth, and then cuts to a close-up from the point of view of Amelia looking at her hand as she spoons soup out of the bowl. This close-up gives significance to the soup. Drawing our attention to the spoon that now, unknown to Amelia, holds a shard of glass on it. Kent cuts to a mid-level two shot of Samuel and Amelia sitting in the kitchen. This is a confining shot, as both people feel walled in by their surroundings. The table is black, and the wall a…

Medium close up. This shot is exactly the same as shot number 2, except that it can be categorized as a reaction shot from Ginger as she slows down and realizes how frantic she was; however, she soon aggressively speeds things up again that ultimately leads to fear and anxiety from Jason. These last three shots are rather slow placed relative to the rest of them because tensions are low, the scene is still relatively calm, and Ginger’s transformation into the monstrous feminine is not yet…

Though Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future is extremely successful in being a fun, blockbuster film, it does a very job in how it crafts the relationships between specific characters. Though Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is facing a struggle to get back home, there’s another struggle occurring in the movie between his father, George (Crispin Glover), and town bully, Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson). By tracing their acting and relative staging of these two in certain shots, a narrative between them…