Understanding Micro Elements In Film Openings

By Fahim Alim

UNDERSTANDING MICRO ELEMENTS IN FILM OPENINGS

CLOSE UP

This is a close up of a man in a mask about to rob a bank. The reason why the director used a close up shot of a man in a mask is to connect the man with the viewer and hides the emotions because he is wearing a mask. This disconnects all emotions with the viewer to try and say that they are bad people who will hurt anyone who gets in their way.

MEDIUM SHOT

This is a medium shot of a man whose pointing a gun at people, trying to shoot them. You can see the emotions in his face and they show that he has a powerful face and he knows what he’s doing. His clothes also resemble that he works there, because it is smart.

LONG SHOT

This shot is a long shot, where you can clearly see the setting of the movie opening, which is a bank. It is significant because They are wearing masks and their body language shows that they are robbing the bank. This would make the audience feel agitated because they know what the general movie is meant to be about, people doing wrong at the start and a hero, which is the Batman, saving the day. They must wonder how long the robbing is going on for and when the Batman is going to show up.

EXTREME LONG SHOT

This is an extreme long shot of a man whose holding a gun as well as reloading it because he shot someone. This is ambiguous because in this camera shot, it shows him getting ready to shoot someone, which therefore might make the audience think that he’s bad. Although, he is really trying to protect the bank and get rid of the robbers by shooting them.

TRACK SHOT

A track shot is where the camera is mounted onto a rail, but the camera itself doesn’t move, but the rails it is mounted on does. This scene is where the camera moves forward and pivots towards a vault, to show the robbers POV (point of view). This would connect to the audience because it shows the audience that the vault is the robbers initial target.

PAN SHOT

A pan shot is the camera moving horizontally. This shot shows the front to the side of the face of a robber, which identifies the emotion in the character, even though the character is wearing a mask. This connects to the audience because they would want to see the emotions of a person robbing a bank, to see why they are doing.

TILT SHOT

A tilt shot is where the camera moves vertically instead of horizontally. In this scene, the tilt shot is to show that the masked robber is putting an item in his pocket and picking up his bag. This is significant to the audience because they would want to know why the robber is picking up the bag and what is inside the bag. We can also tell that the robber has heavy machinery in the bag due to there being ropes on the side, like a pulley mechanism.

ZOOM

A zoom shot is when a camera is static, but the image goes in and out. This signifies that the shot being zoomed is important, which also shows more detail. It also gives the audience the idea at how important the character actually is, and that he will show up later in the upcoming scenes.

CUT

A cut in editing is when the director shortens a scene by deleting the film sequence. This is used to cut out unimportant parts of the movie that doesn’t have any significance to the film. In this scene, the scene was cut from people sliding across from one building to another. They cut out the parts where they all aligned in a row because it didn’t have any significance to the film.

PACE

Pace is the rhythm in a film. It is how much activity goes on in the film. Batman: The Dark Knight has a lot of pace throughout the movie opening, to build suspense and make people feel like they are in the movie, even though they aren’t.

PERFORMANCE

Performance is the physical and vocal expressions where the characters react with each other. In this scene, the men are talking with each other about the shares of money. They seem like they’ve already done this before because their vocal expressions are calm and they don’t seem to feel agitated within their voices.

HIGH ANGLE SHOT

This high angle shot shows that the person in the shot isn’t very important because the camera is above him. This is to show that he isn’t very important, and that the audience are more important than the person in the shot.

LOW ANGLE SHOT

This shot shows robbers landing on top of a rooftop, which shows that they are powerful and everything comes down to them in their plan. The audience would feel less powerful to them because they would have to look up on them, and they would feel that they shouldn’t due to the masked men being robbers, therefore criminals, and criminals are frowned upon in societies norms and values.

DIEGETIC

Diegetic sound is the sound visible on the screen or implied. For example, in the above scene, the man is shooting his shotgun. I know this is diegetic sound because it is clearly in the screen and the director clearly implied that there is meant to be a man with a shotgun shooting. Also, the people in the bank are able to hear the sounds because they all flinched when the blasting sound went off. Most sound effects are added post-production, which they try to make as real as possible to engage the viewer.

NON-DIEGETIC

Non-diegetic sounds are the sounds where only the audience/viewers can hear. In this scene, the music builds up higher and higher to create more tension between the viewers and the characters in the scene. The music stops because the person is saying something important as well as something may alter his intentions.

MISE EN SCENE SETTING

The above picture is the first setting of the movie, The Dark Knight. It shows an extreme long shot of the city ‘Gotham’ which I know is Gotham City because all the Batman movies are set in Gotham City. It also helps the viewer understand where the scene is taking place and where the events are also taking place.

MISE EN SCENE DECOR

In this scene, there is a normal man doing his normal work. I know this because you can see in the left background that criminals are running around un-harming the civilian. Also, there are phones, papers, computer screens, which show that there would be more people in the office and that they wouldn’t be very important because they would have to share an office. It also shows that the people are just normal people leading their normal lives.

MISE EN SCENE PROPS & COSTUME

In this scene, the props are a mask and a bag. The mask resembles that he’s going to hide his face later on, because he’s not wearing it at that time. The bag might resemble tools to open something or to enter a building illegally. I know this because with the mask in one hand and a bag in the other, it seems like the man will commit a crime, as well as the man in the middle might be one of the main characters because it shows the character directly in the middle. The mask also resembles the costume because the person in the middles posture bad, meaning that he’s going to do something wrong. The man in the middle is also wearing a suit, which means that he will be able to blend in the bank in the next few scenes without alarming anyone.

MISE EN SCENE FIGURE EXPRESSION

This scene shows a woman frightened because a man is pointing a gun at her and it has never happened to her before. Also, the woman is an ordinary woman whose probably never had anything like this happen to her. This can relate to the audience because people have probably never experienced being robbed at a bank, so it shows that even normal people like them would be able to get robbed at a bank.