Monday 24 September 2012

Analysis of 'Touch Of Evil' Opening Sequence



I watched the opening scene of  'Touch Of Evil'. The Mise En Scene of the opening shot is that it is set in black and white, with it being this colour it gives the film a time setting, which we all know was in olden times. The first thing we see is a close up shot of a bomb that an unfaced man is holding, here it is where the audience know and expect something to happen but the actors do not know. Then there is a moving shot which focuses on a couple linking arms walking through a sidewalk and the man who is holding the bomb is running away and hiding from anybody else. Even though the setting is in black and white we can tell that this scene is at night time, there then is a scene of a man standing in the road acting like a traffic light which we notice that there is none. Which is also another reason how we know its an old movie. There is non-diegetic music as the scenes are played, there is a couple that is focused on throughout the opening scene, firstly when the man with the bomb was at the beginning and we saw the couple linking arms, till the end where we see them talking to the customs officer, then all of a sudden the expected bomb blows. We hear the bomb before we see it. The costume of the actors were what we would expect to see in the olden times as women were in formal dresses and neat bleach blonde hair which represents also that it may have been set the time when Marilyn Monroe, the men were in full piece suits and the workers were in strict identical uniforms.
            Most of the editing of the opening scene is that it is a continuous cut throughout the scene, it makes it look like the camera is walking and following everything thats going on. It is continuous but the camera shows us different points of view, such as when the car is coming out of the car park nearer to the beginning it gives us a birds eye view so that we know the car that would be coming out is the same car we saw before.
With the sound of the opening scene, the most that we hear is the non-diegetic music which is playing most time throughout the scene. There is not much dialogue as the whole opening scene is mostly non-diegetic music and noises of cars, the only dialogue that we hear is when the traffic light men were shouting to cars and when the customs officers were talking to the American citizens, we also hear the sound of the bomb which everybody knew was going to happen some time or another throughout the scene.

1 comment:

  1. Www great work Charlie, I like your attention to detail and the desire to unpick the period through analysis of msise en scene. Good use of terminology and careful viewing which will really help you develop your own ideas. A great start to AS Media.

    Ebi. A this stage only to develop a more complete vocabulary of terminology for analysis - words to consider using: genre, narrative

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