Tuesday, September 24, 2013
The subject, Chief John Anderton, in this image is seen in an "untamed," painful change. Lead by the cross section in the rule of thirds, our eyes are drawn to his left eye. We also get to focus on his mouth, giving a facial expression that can lead us to assume he is in pain. Over on his right side sits another spider, this gives the viewer the idea that the government, Precrime, is constantly around, and has a lot of power to seek out people. While John is in the foreground the other spider stands above him, looking down to him and scanning into his eye. This gives us the impression that the government has the power in this situation, he is surrounded and "dominated" by these spiders.
The lighting int his scene comes from the top of the room. The spiders shine in the light, the metal glowing gives off the idea that these spiders are "professional" and "official." However, the light doesn't hit Chief Anderton the same way as it does on the spiders. The lower half of John's face is covered by the shadows caused by the spider. This spider stands above John and takes the light away from his face. The director does this to show the power these spiders have. The only things lit on John's face are his eyes and teeth. Since his teeth and ghastly eyes are the only thing shown on him this gives the viewers the idea of his "mutations" from a respectable chief to an outlaw. There is nothing lit up on John in any way that shows he is "ok" or neutral, anything lit on him is a sign of agony and pain.
This shot is a close up. We can tell this by noticing how only John's face is shown in the image. This shot really captures the reaction on John's face. This is important because if this were to be a long shot, we might be able to still see his body tense up as his eye is scanning, but we wouldn't catch his facial details. From this close shot he looks as if he is fighting to keep his eye open as the light from the scanner pierces into his eye. It's important for the viewer to see these details because it builds a more developed form of sympathy and scare for John, where as the viewer typically feels safer, and feels less emotion being "further" from the dramatic situations. Instead the director really wanted the viewers to have this frightening scene put up in their face to build these emotions.
The bandage around John's eyes develop the sense of him having an operation done. The background although, isn't what we normally expect to see when someone has these types of bandages on. We would expect to see John in a hospital or at a Doctors office. Instead, we see his hair wet, slicked back with his face expressing agony. This brings us back the the first scene where John is buying a drug off the streets called clarity, this was the first time we saw John in his "unprofessional" state. After that, we only have been seeing him as the professional man, and Chief of Precrime. Now that we see him again, we draw the conclusions that he is doing something "bad" again because the only other time we've seen him outside of being a Chief was at a drug deal. These bandages are just like the drug dealer's glasses, they both associate with law breaking, and they both have their eyes removed.
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I liked how you saw the symbolism in the spiders and how the Precrime unit is powerful and dominant. Also how his eyes and teeth are showing his agony and that's what our eye is drawn to. What does the theme of water have to do with this image that we can see?
ReplyDeleteI like your point about contrasting John;s "unprofessional" state. Very observant. Other than a close up shot or a long shot, do you think any other type of shot could do the scene justice?
ReplyDeleteNice job developing your ideas in this post, Luke. This is such an "Oedipal" shot with the emphasis on identity and eyes.
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