I AM LEGEND
directed by Francis Lawrence
2007
The genre of the film is not quite clear at the beginning as there are few typical conventions. The gun and the car are signifiers of action and the empty city has a touch of mystery. In the opening there’s no sign of the horror element yet.
Mise-en-scene is used to show us where we are and what happens. From the shape of the city and the famous places shown like Union Square and the UN building we know that we are in New York City. The silence and especially all the streets crowded with cars which are left alone leap to the eye and connote that the city is deserted. The weeds growing everywhere and the wet dirty tarmac add to this connotation as well as the few birds flying around. The director Francis Lawrence wants the audience to understand that every human life has gone. From the posters of Wicked and Mamma Mia and all the shops like H&M we are aware that the time everyone left was about 2007, the current time of the audience in the cinema. This is when we see an interview on a television screen like we were really watching it on our own one. A doctor has found a way to cure cancer. The current time in the film is given by the words “three years later” over the first image of the deserted New York to let us know that it’s been some time between the interview sequence and the new one. We make the connection between the interview and the new images so we are hooked and want to know how all of this had happened. Police and armour barriers and the cars lined to leave town help us to understand that an evacuation was going on, which signifies something dangerous was about to happen. Some houses are even packed in plastic cover, a sign of protection. Seeing one single man in this huge deserted city where everyone else is gone raises many questions. For example why isn’t he gone too, why is he alone and again what has happened to all others then? But like that we realise that he is the main character. He wears a black outfit which together with his equipment and gun makes him look like a professional. The dog sitting next to him must be his own, because we see it in all of the scenes with him. Also there are no names of actors throughout the beginning. This is unusual compared with other openings and adds to the feeling of emptiness. The title is shown at the end of the opening sequence, not disturbing the audience’s thoughts about the images seen. Thereby we have time to read the connotations properly, e.g. the professional sniper rifle of the only human character in the city combined with the scene of the running deer as a sign of his intention to hunt them. Lawrence uses natural light for his first images showing the city and sunny weather. This takes away a bit of the strangeness of the sequence whereas a thunderstorm would have connoted a current danger. But like that the lovely weather seems to be natural and gives the scene a more peaceful feeling. The warm light is used to highlight the time of the day which is the beginning of dawn.
Camera distance, angles and movement control speed of the action e.g. the tracking on one side of the car rushing past other things or static cam and slow pan up or down are used in ELS or MS to give the audience the opportunity to study the whole image and the effect of calmness. The ELS shots are used at the beginning showing the town from different places when there is no main action going on yet. This changes when the main character gets introduced. This happens with an overhead ELS tracking along a street between buildings when a car moves into the image from the bottom. The following shot is a CU so we are dragged into the action with two different camera distances. Also the windscreen of the car is used to frame the shot showing what is going on in front of the car. This gives the audience the effect of actually being in the car by themselves. The CUs of the main character’s face following draw us emotionally nearer to him, especially seeing his face deciding not to shoot the lion’s family and leave his prey he has been hunting so long behind. Lawrence lets us look over his shoulder and we see the gun aiming on what he focuses, panning left and right, like a POV shot. The character’s shape is blurred whereas what he’s focused on -in this case his prey and the lions- is sharply focused. Handicam is used when we follow the main character while hunting the deer. He runs, bends down and hides behind a car. The director uses a CU of him hiding with the car filling the background, and then panning left he reveals the deer, blurring our character once again to switch focus. We have a POV shot when hunting the deer with the car. The camera placed in front of the Ford Mustang gives us the effect that we are the car following the escaping deer.
There is almost no non-diegetic sound used except a mysterious tone when the car comes to a halt at one of the barriers and we see all the other cars just left there. There is no soundtrack during the opening and no dialogue, simply because there’s only one person. In the background you here natural sounds e.g. rustling of the trees, grasshopper humming, birds flattering and singing, seagulls screaming or the waves of the sea, but nothing human until we here the powerful motor of the Mustang. This lack of non-diegetic sound highlights the emptiness of the city and anchors the images of the deserted places. When our character hears his watch’s alarm the visual as well as the audible focus change from being concentrated on the lions to an ECU of the watch. At the same time the distance changes the volume of the alarm raises too.
The only human character in the opening is introduced only through non-verbal language because he has nobody else to speak to. The way he walks and looks around connotes he is a survivor and hunting the deer we see he does everything on his own, even getting his food. The gun and the red Ford Mustang he drives signify a tough character. But we see that he’s still touched by not shooting the lion family who took “his” prey to let them survive. The dog he’s accompanied by shows that he is not entirely alone and that he must have a very deep relationship with it being the only living creature being with him. We realise that he must be a man determined to take risks when we see his highly dangerous hunting by car. So we learn a lot about him without listening to a dialogue. It is very important for the director to let a big star like Will Smith play the main character, because he is the only actor playing.
There are leading lines and rule of third used throughout the opening. For example vertical lines of the skyscrapers and the streets disappear with distance and the lines of the pavement leading towards the main focus. When the survivor hides behind the car to shoot the deer, his prey is in the top left corner in the background whereas he is placed in the bottom right corner of the foreground. In post production Lawrence has edited the images using jump cuts, for example when the car races to the other side of the tunnel the deer is running through and a long take in the scene where the main character hides behind the car watching the deer to give the scene the effect of happening in real life time.
The narrative is structured in the order that everything happens. Right at the beginning we have a jump from the interview to the new New York City. Between those two points on the timeline there’s a gap of three years. The director uses the scene where our character spares the lions’ lives as a technique of identification so we like him. Tension is created by showing the deserted city and maintained by keeping this picture of a catastrophe in mind, for example seeing all the mysteriously left cars, the posters and all the sign of former human living.
As there’s only one human in the opening you can’t tell much about social groups, and you can’t tell much about this person’s background because there’s no society left, it’s the same with any social structure. The ideological discourse with reference to gender is that the only person who survived is a man, so we see him as the one strong hero. He is muscular, black and tall so physical strength connotes power and it challenges racism, choosing a black actor. Killing non-human live to survive is reinforced like the old model of hunter and prey, whereas unnecessary killing is challenged. Since there are no female characters or children at all you connote there aren't any left which makes men look more powerful than both women and children. This is a common ideology in many films, for example all superheros like Batman, Spiderman and Superman are as their names denote male.
The target audience are basically male teenagers and men favouring action, mystery and horror who are able to put the connotations together to a story that makes sense. The preferred reading is that human race has been vanished for some reason having to do with a cure for cancer discovered 3 years earlier. The audience can hardly miss that there is only one person left in New York City that has somehow survived. This character is tough and has managed to stay alive all the time. The reading can be influenced by different factors, for example the target audience has probably seen other films with Will Smith so they know what kind of film it must be and may suspect what could happen in different situations. The director wouldn’t have paid that much attention to the hunting scene where the survivor hides behind the car if he had just wanted to let his character shoot the deer. Showing this scene we get to know the character’s mind when we see how he acts.
directed by Francis Lawrence
2007
The genre of the film is not quite clear at the beginning as there are few typical conventions. The gun and the car are signifiers of action and the empty city has a touch of mystery. In the opening there’s no sign of the horror element yet.
Mise-en-scene is used to show us where we are and what happens. From the shape of the city and the famous places shown like Union Square and the UN building we know that we are in New York City. The silence and especially all the streets crowded with cars which are left alone leap to the eye and connote that the city is deserted. The weeds growing everywhere and the wet dirty tarmac add to this connotation as well as the few birds flying around. The director Francis Lawrence wants the audience to understand that every human life has gone. From the posters of Wicked and Mamma Mia and all the shops like H&M we are aware that the time everyone left was about 2007, the current time of the audience in the cinema. This is when we see an interview on a television screen like we were really watching it on our own one. A doctor has found a way to cure cancer. The current time in the film is given by the words “three years later” over the first image of the deserted New York to let us know that it’s been some time between the interview sequence and the new one. We make the connection between the interview and the new images so we are hooked and want to know how all of this had happened. Police and armour barriers and the cars lined to leave town help us to understand that an evacuation was going on, which signifies something dangerous was about to happen. Some houses are even packed in plastic cover, a sign of protection. Seeing one single man in this huge deserted city where everyone else is gone raises many questions. For example why isn’t he gone too, why is he alone and again what has happened to all others then? But like that we realise that he is the main character. He wears a black outfit which together with his equipment and gun makes him look like a professional. The dog sitting next to him must be his own, because we see it in all of the scenes with him. Also there are no names of actors throughout the beginning. This is unusual compared with other openings and adds to the feeling of emptiness. The title is shown at the end of the opening sequence, not disturbing the audience’s thoughts about the images seen. Thereby we have time to read the connotations properly, e.g. the professional sniper rifle of the only human character in the city combined with the scene of the running deer as a sign of his intention to hunt them. Lawrence uses natural light for his first images showing the city and sunny weather. This takes away a bit of the strangeness of the sequence whereas a thunderstorm would have connoted a current danger. But like that the lovely weather seems to be natural and gives the scene a more peaceful feeling. The warm light is used to highlight the time of the day which is the beginning of dawn.
Camera distance, angles and movement control speed of the action e.g. the tracking on one side of the car rushing past other things or static cam and slow pan up or down are used in ELS or MS to give the audience the opportunity to study the whole image and the effect of calmness. The ELS shots are used at the beginning showing the town from different places when there is no main action going on yet. This changes when the main character gets introduced. This happens with an overhead ELS tracking along a street between buildings when a car moves into the image from the bottom. The following shot is a CU so we are dragged into the action with two different camera distances. Also the windscreen of the car is used to frame the shot showing what is going on in front of the car. This gives the audience the effect of actually being in the car by themselves. The CUs of the main character’s face following draw us emotionally nearer to him, especially seeing his face deciding not to shoot the lion’s family and leave his prey he has been hunting so long behind. Lawrence lets us look over his shoulder and we see the gun aiming on what he focuses, panning left and right, like a POV shot. The character’s shape is blurred whereas what he’s focused on -in this case his prey and the lions- is sharply focused. Handicam is used when we follow the main character while hunting the deer. He runs, bends down and hides behind a car. The director uses a CU of him hiding with the car filling the background, and then panning left he reveals the deer, blurring our character once again to switch focus. We have a POV shot when hunting the deer with the car. The camera placed in front of the Ford Mustang gives us the effect that we are the car following the escaping deer.
There is almost no non-diegetic sound used except a mysterious tone when the car comes to a halt at one of the barriers and we see all the other cars just left there. There is no soundtrack during the opening and no dialogue, simply because there’s only one person. In the background you here natural sounds e.g. rustling of the trees, grasshopper humming, birds flattering and singing, seagulls screaming or the waves of the sea, but nothing human until we here the powerful motor of the Mustang. This lack of non-diegetic sound highlights the emptiness of the city and anchors the images of the deserted places. When our character hears his watch’s alarm the visual as well as the audible focus change from being concentrated on the lions to an ECU of the watch. At the same time the distance changes the volume of the alarm raises too.
The only human character in the opening is introduced only through non-verbal language because he has nobody else to speak to. The way he walks and looks around connotes he is a survivor and hunting the deer we see he does everything on his own, even getting his food. The gun and the red Ford Mustang he drives signify a tough character. But we see that he’s still touched by not shooting the lion family who took “his” prey to let them survive. The dog he’s accompanied by shows that he is not entirely alone and that he must have a very deep relationship with it being the only living creature being with him. We realise that he must be a man determined to take risks when we see his highly dangerous hunting by car. So we learn a lot about him without listening to a dialogue. It is very important for the director to let a big star like Will Smith play the main character, because he is the only actor playing.
There are leading lines and rule of third used throughout the opening. For example vertical lines of the skyscrapers and the streets disappear with distance and the lines of the pavement leading towards the main focus. When the survivor hides behind the car to shoot the deer, his prey is in the top left corner in the background whereas he is placed in the bottom right corner of the foreground. In post production Lawrence has edited the images using jump cuts, for example when the car races to the other side of the tunnel the deer is running through and a long take in the scene where the main character hides behind the car watching the deer to give the scene the effect of happening in real life time.
The narrative is structured in the order that everything happens. Right at the beginning we have a jump from the interview to the new New York City. Between those two points on the timeline there’s a gap of three years. The director uses the scene where our character spares the lions’ lives as a technique of identification so we like him. Tension is created by showing the deserted city and maintained by keeping this picture of a catastrophe in mind, for example seeing all the mysteriously left cars, the posters and all the sign of former human living.
As there’s only one human in the opening you can’t tell much about social groups, and you can’t tell much about this person’s background because there’s no society left, it’s the same with any social structure. The ideological discourse with reference to gender is that the only person who survived is a man, so we see him as the one strong hero. He is muscular, black and tall so physical strength connotes power and it challenges racism, choosing a black actor. Killing non-human live to survive is reinforced like the old model of hunter and prey, whereas unnecessary killing is challenged. Since there are no female characters or children at all you connote there aren't any left which makes men look more powerful than both women and children. This is a common ideology in many films, for example all superheros like Batman, Spiderman and Superman are as their names denote male.
The target audience are basically male teenagers and men favouring action, mystery and horror who are able to put the connotations together to a story that makes sense. The preferred reading is that human race has been vanished for some reason having to do with a cure for cancer discovered 3 years earlier. The audience can hardly miss that there is only one person left in New York City that has somehow survived. This character is tough and has managed to stay alive all the time. The reading can be influenced by different factors, for example the target audience has probably seen other films with Will Smith so they know what kind of film it must be and may suspect what could happen in different situations. The director wouldn’t have paid that much attention to the hunting scene where the survivor hides behind the car if he had just wanted to let his character shoot the deer. Showing this scene we get to know the character’s mind when we see how he acts.
1 comment:
Phil, this is a significant improvement - well done! You use technical terminology accurately and although at times you tend to describe the sequence, you do make some valid observations using semiotics.
You attempt to discuss ideology and representation, although it is very brief.
However this is much better, more depth. My only concern is how this film ties in with the genre that you will be doing for your own opening.
Level 3+ B
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