(a) An analysis of a film extract – 1500 words (Mise en scene for opening scene)
Equilibrium, Kurt Wimmer, 2002, US.
I am going to review the Mise en Scene used in the opening 10 minutes of the film “Equilibrium”. The film is set in a futuristic world where a strict regime has eliminated wars by suppressing emotions. Feeling different emotions is a crime punished by death. The film stars Christian Bale as the main character called Preston, who is a top agent that is responsible for those who do not follow the rules. However, when he misses a dose of Prozium, the mind-altering drug that hides and suppresses emotion, Preston, who has been trained to enforce the strict laws of this new regime, suddenly becomes the only agent/man capable of overpowering it with his unique skill.
The film begins with a black screen that slowly fades into past videos of real life events relating to war and corruption with short titles summarising what is being said. A mans voice is narrating and summarising what these videos are relevant towards. He then explains that a new law has been installed which is set up to stop mankind from creating another war by taking away thoughtful emotions.
The video is now of what looks like a soldier training like a ninja and then lots of soldiers attacking a building. As the opening description slowly unveils the basic plot, an image of a painting is used which then turns out to be the start of an actual scene from the film.
So far we can learn that the setting of the film is in the future and by the dialogue/voice of the narrator can guess it may be set in future America. After the intro we may believe this to build up to be a serious film throughout which suggests violence and murder of some sort since speaking about a past war where everyone is now “controlled”.
An actor then appears and gives orders to a group of men who pick up artwork and grab guns; they then begin an assault on the law soldiers from a building with lots of windows and a massive gunfight breaks out. The scene follows where many men are shot and windows are smashed. Christian Bale is off camera not to be seen. When the soldiers advance in the building a car pulls up. Which the viewer can only see the very top of due to the camera positioning. This is done so we do not know who may exit the vehicle, creating suspense. To our surprise Christian Bale exits the car with another high profile actor, Sean Bean, wearing long black robes (Matrix style) and enters the building walking down a dark corridor with lots of bullet holes through the wall creating lots of shining light through effects.
From this next scene we can depict that the opening scene contains lots of props such as guns, cars, broken glass, costume of armour, black robes, black jackets and paintings followed by a large gun fight where many people get shot fighting on either side, which help to once again suggest what type of film this may be.
Down to personal opinion on how to look at a film, we can suggest that the film has to be fairly decent because two really good actors are together on screen at once. Playing what may be the main characters. They are also wearing interesting black robe suits and have stern faces like they are from a cult or organisation.
The lighting comes to effect because most of the filming is in a room and outside the building for this opening scene. Which normally you would expect natural lighting except maybe for the painting room scene. However, the director has once again given that eerie feeling to the film and pointed out that it may be serious by having some scenes very low tones of colour. For example, when the police pull up and get out of their cars is maybe to show significance?
The film in general has also quite dark lighting. Another film that I noticed that seemed to do this was “Superman returns” maybe trying to portray a new serious Superman film? For this next scene however the camera tracks the two main actors walking through the dark corridor with bright bullet hole lights shining through. This is a different type of lighting used in film that we do not see too often.
The camera then spins around the two actors and the 3rd actor speaking.
The camera then continues as if it were the eye view of the actors moving towards this door at the end of the corridor. A close up is followed on Christian Bale who, with a determined look begins running fast towards the door with 2 handguns in each hand. He then running kicks the door down and the camera follows this by going straight through the wall. Bullets are fired and the scene goes black accept with gunfire blazing across from left to right. Silence then occurs and after a few seconds the screen goes grey with a quiet whisper in the background. Gunfire then restarts but it is Christian Bale who begins firing. Killing lots of enemies whilst the camera has a 1st person view of Bales perspective and shows the end of a gun killing these men in the dark, the men then fall back in pain.
The use of editing here is useful and well done because it shows lots of killings going on in seconds with this 1st person view to get the feeling that Christian Bale is wiping out a lot of people easily. The lighting is once again a part to play as the room stays dark but the use of effects coming from the guns lights the room to allow seeing the characters in this fast motion track, quick changing action sequence (through lots of editing). Once black the scene then slowly lights up with two small bright lights at each side of the camera. These turn out to be the light from the hotness of Bales guns. Which slowly illuminates this figure of him in a stance then slowly fades back to black. Bright white lights in the forms of torches are then shunned. Creepy chanting music can then be heard in the background. Lots of lighting and diagetic sounds follow. The scene then shows Bale and Bean standing there with the camera constantly slowly moving to the right and fading to black like a slide to show the gap from one room to the next.
More props then come as more paintings are uncovered, this one showing the famous ‘Mona Lisa’ and other electronic devices are used. The camera is on this special effects for 2 seconds. A zooming in of Christian Bale’s bold look and the Mona Lisa’s face take turn. We are wondering what the purpose of all the past fighting scenes were for. Where the seemingly bad guys trying to rob some paintings? Or do the organisation has there own plans for them? All of a sudden Bale reveals that the painting should be burned! The camera then zooms out and 2 men in fire protection suits use a fire extinguisher to burn the paintings, another prop. Significance is shown as a quick zooming in on the burning rare painting and then Christian Bale’s facial expression with the fire in front of the camera. He walks off and Bean looks worriedly at the burning fire whereas Bale did not. What is Bean thinking?
We are treated to a completely new scene of a ruined city and a car driving away.
The ruined city shows that the stories 3rd world war clearly had some effect on this place helping to get an understanding of the environment. Bean reveals a book he kept (another prop) after Bale mentioning why he kept it and not gave it to others.
Another diagetic narrative takes place as the camera gives us a huge panning of the city whilst tracking the car. The lighting is still dim as they are now outside and the sky is rather pale blue. Another panning view of the city is used and shows timed stopping of all the actors used in the city using another prop and choreographed actors doing martial arts.
This is the detailed analysis of the 1st 10 minutes of the film ‘Equilibrium’ using the ideas of props, setting, lighting and characters to portray when and where they are and what might happen.
Equilibrium, Kurt Wimmer, 2002, US.
I am going to review the Mise en Scene used in the opening 10 minutes of the film “Equilibrium”. The film is set in a futuristic world where a strict regime has eliminated wars by suppressing emotions. Feeling different emotions is a crime punished by death. The film stars Christian Bale as the main character called Preston, who is a top agent that is responsible for those who do not follow the rules. However, when he misses a dose of Prozium, the mind-altering drug that hides and suppresses emotion, Preston, who has been trained to enforce the strict laws of this new regime, suddenly becomes the only agent/man capable of overpowering it with his unique skill.
The film begins with a black screen that slowly fades into past videos of real life events relating to war and corruption with short titles summarising what is being said. A mans voice is narrating and summarising what these videos are relevant towards. He then explains that a new law has been installed which is set up to stop mankind from creating another war by taking away thoughtful emotions.
The video is now of what looks like a soldier training like a ninja and then lots of soldiers attacking a building. As the opening description slowly unveils the basic plot, an image of a painting is used which then turns out to be the start of an actual scene from the film.
So far we can learn that the setting of the film is in the future and by the dialogue/voice of the narrator can guess it may be set in future America. After the intro we may believe this to build up to be a serious film throughout which suggests violence and murder of some sort since speaking about a past war where everyone is now “controlled”.
An actor then appears and gives orders to a group of men who pick up artwork and grab guns; they then begin an assault on the law soldiers from a building with lots of windows and a massive gunfight breaks out. The scene follows where many men are shot and windows are smashed. Christian Bale is off camera not to be seen. When the soldiers advance in the building a car pulls up. Which the viewer can only see the very top of due to the camera positioning. This is done so we do not know who may exit the vehicle, creating suspense. To our surprise Christian Bale exits the car with another high profile actor, Sean Bean, wearing long black robes (Matrix style) and enters the building walking down a dark corridor with lots of bullet holes through the wall creating lots of shining light through effects.
From this next scene we can depict that the opening scene contains lots of props such as guns, cars, broken glass, costume of armour, black robes, black jackets and paintings followed by a large gun fight where many people get shot fighting on either side, which help to once again suggest what type of film this may be.
Down to personal opinion on how to look at a film, we can suggest that the film has to be fairly decent because two really good actors are together on screen at once. Playing what may be the main characters. They are also wearing interesting black robe suits and have stern faces like they are from a cult or organisation.
The lighting comes to effect because most of the filming is in a room and outside the building for this opening scene. Which normally you would expect natural lighting except maybe for the painting room scene. However, the director has once again given that eerie feeling to the film and pointed out that it may be serious by having some scenes very low tones of colour. For example, when the police pull up and get out of their cars is maybe to show significance?
The film in general has also quite dark lighting. Another film that I noticed that seemed to do this was “Superman returns” maybe trying to portray a new serious Superman film? For this next scene however the camera tracks the two main actors walking through the dark corridor with bright bullet hole lights shining through. This is a different type of lighting used in film that we do not see too often.
The camera then spins around the two actors and the 3rd actor speaking.
The camera then continues as if it were the eye view of the actors moving towards this door at the end of the corridor. A close up is followed on Christian Bale who, with a determined look begins running fast towards the door with 2 handguns in each hand. He then running kicks the door down and the camera follows this by going straight through the wall. Bullets are fired and the scene goes black accept with gunfire blazing across from left to right. Silence then occurs and after a few seconds the screen goes grey with a quiet whisper in the background. Gunfire then restarts but it is Christian Bale who begins firing. Killing lots of enemies whilst the camera has a 1st person view of Bales perspective and shows the end of a gun killing these men in the dark, the men then fall back in pain.
The use of editing here is useful and well done because it shows lots of killings going on in seconds with this 1st person view to get the feeling that Christian Bale is wiping out a lot of people easily. The lighting is once again a part to play as the room stays dark but the use of effects coming from the guns lights the room to allow seeing the characters in this fast motion track, quick changing action sequence (through lots of editing). Once black the scene then slowly lights up with two small bright lights at each side of the camera. These turn out to be the light from the hotness of Bales guns. Which slowly illuminates this figure of him in a stance then slowly fades back to black. Bright white lights in the forms of torches are then shunned. Creepy chanting music can then be heard in the background. Lots of lighting and diagetic sounds follow. The scene then shows Bale and Bean standing there with the camera constantly slowly moving to the right and fading to black like a slide to show the gap from one room to the next.
More props then come as more paintings are uncovered, this one showing the famous ‘Mona Lisa’ and other electronic devices are used. The camera is on this special effects for 2 seconds. A zooming in of Christian Bale’s bold look and the Mona Lisa’s face take turn. We are wondering what the purpose of all the past fighting scenes were for. Where the seemingly bad guys trying to rob some paintings? Or do the organisation has there own plans for them? All of a sudden Bale reveals that the painting should be burned! The camera then zooms out and 2 men in fire protection suits use a fire extinguisher to burn the paintings, another prop. Significance is shown as a quick zooming in on the burning rare painting and then Christian Bale’s facial expression with the fire in front of the camera. He walks off and Bean looks worriedly at the burning fire whereas Bale did not. What is Bean thinking?
We are treated to a completely new scene of a ruined city and a car driving away.
The ruined city shows that the stories 3rd world war clearly had some effect on this place helping to get an understanding of the environment. Bean reveals a book he kept (another prop) after Bale mentioning why he kept it and not gave it to others.
Another diagetic narrative takes place as the camera gives us a huge panning of the city whilst tracking the car. The lighting is still dim as they are now outside and the sky is rather pale blue. Another panning view of the city is used and shows timed stopping of all the actors used in the city using another prop and choreographed actors doing martial arts.
This is the detailed analysis of the 1st 10 minutes of the film ‘Equilibrium’ using the ideas of props, setting, lighting and characters to portray when and where they are and what might happen.
1 comment:
A very good analysis. Try to conclude each paragraph by summing up the meaning that the director is trying to convey in the things you've just mentioned. You make good points about lighting and camera movement as well.
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