Wednesday, 1 October 2008

Elephant, Gus Van Sant, 2003, USA

(Elephant - Everybody knows its there but wont admit it)
Genre: Crime, Drama

CINEMATOGROPHY (What i notice about it)

Scene opens with fixed shot of clouds and time passing by. Camera tracking follows trees to show movement, we are going somewhere. This is shown by the car which we are following from behind in another tracking shot. The next interesting scene invloves the camera stuck onto the car as he turns on the engine the camera rumbles. Then the camera must have moved to the right a bit.

We get a great view of the settings and surroundings from the wide landscape shots used. We see this a few times for a park woods, the sports field etc. But the story is also vague even with these understandings of the settings. (weird)Camera to follow characters is used a lot like you are the 2nd person with the characters. (Lots of diagetic noise) so more natural feeling.

> Lots of slow mo scenes which at 1st seem random but are actually relevant to key points in the story where different characters cross paths without knowing.
>Very natural scenes (light reflecting off of him like its our eyes/his eyes)
> Same scene but reverse camera angle again and again. (key points in story)
> Irony - Music of beethoven with guy playing shooting game. (strange characters)

1 comment:

Donald said...

You pick out some interesting features. What did you make of the film?