For this module I had no clue what we were going to be looking into as I was never introduce to film analysis, thankfully through Ryan’s lesson I was able to take notes and do my own research to gain more knowledge in the area of cinematography, Mise-En-Scene, Sound and Editing are used to push further narratives or make the viewer feel when watching something on screen. I was put into a group with Eoin, Al, Amy and myself but it was clear that Amy was never part of this course so our number jumped from 4 to 3. This wasn’t any problem at the start until communication with each other died slightly half way through the weeks. Anywho, This was the short film that we looked into:
For this short film I looked into the group who made it so I can find why. There wasn’t much information online through the IStart Digital website and the description of the video anywhere. Since we know this is a remake of Lord of the Rings but replaced everything into a modern setting and with the characters replaced with mice and rats, I looked into why people make remakes of movies, most of which are positive reasons. I personally believe it was that the group thought they could summarise the franchise into a short film, they also liked it so much that they wanted to retell it in their own way, it’s slightly humorous with the concept but the overall product makes it serious by just how good the quality is.
This short starts with us presented in an establishing shot, showing where we are clearly in an underground subway kind of situation. As the camera pans towards our characters putting us in a mid-shot, we are now put into their perspective, we don’t get the full image of the subway but now it appears much more like a cave setting, the cold blues in low lighting creating a dark and damp look, the stones and gravel are now look much larger. The wall has an orange light to the right, this is where the mice was heading in before coming up close to the camera. This spot playa into the foreshadowing of where the object or treasure these mice are searching for, in this case is a gold pull tab. The colour means success so whoever might have this pull tab will have greater power or have control of something strong. It’s also the only object that’s quite bold so naturally our eyes will be dragged towards it.
In the next scene that I focused on is where the camera flicks from the reveal of the owl to the mice again surrounding the pull tab. We now see more of the environment, before it was a close up and now it’s a long shot. The environment looks like a long hallway. The use of low key lighting creates an unsafe and tense atmosphere. To me this is basically setting up for a chase scene where there’s only one day to run either forwards or backwards depending where the danger comes from. In this case, the rats are running towards them from the direction they were originally travelling towards, this makes them turn around and go back on their path. This clearly means that these mice were unaware of the danger of this area, they took their sweet time searching and admiring the pull tab and only started panicking when the rats showed up.
When these mice run through this tunnel, it changes to a high up platform with many wires and obvious red waring lights for trains. The height and wires reminds me of a jungle, the wires being vines and the overall height they’re at just makes me think of tall jungle trees, again this is just like before where they made the environment look like a cave and making us believe they’re in somewhere more adventurous than just some crusty damp subway. We can take the red lights and say that this means danger or warning to the mice that are trying to run away but when the camera flicks back to the mice who crossed safely and didn’t risk their life biting the wire, there’s a very light green rim light. With the red and green, also the fact they’re going through a public transport space. It reminds me of the traffic light rules where red means unsafe to cross and green meaning safe, this could possibly mean that where they’re crossing is a safe zone.
I also looked into the main 3 mice’s design, we know the main character is the mouse with two tones of fur, the camera is also always focusing of following this character. The grey mouse is the mentor, grey being related to old age and this plays into the role of ‘the older the wise‘ as most mentors in shows are pretty wise trying to teach the main character new things. The orange mouse is more of an ally, in colour psychology we see that it means fun and down to earth, these being some of the most common tropes in shows for ally characters.
Overall, I tried focusing mainly on Mise-En-Scene through the whole film but when our group number reduce to 2, there wasn’t enough to really to speak about to fill the remaining 5 minutes from the 10 minutes limit we were given. I decided to speak with Eoin on splitting the middle scenes so we can extend out time longer making it less awkward if we only spoke for a few minutes, when we finally got to presenting it, I got pretty nervous as I usually do when presenting but overall, it was enjoyable. I was also proud of how our slides came out, most of which aren’t text heavy and hopefully easy to understand when we presented. It’s really disappointing when I was interested in learning about Film Analysis to then be put in a group just to have extra problems come up along the way. Still it was enjoyable and I’m just glad it’s over.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Contis, Eva. (November 15, 2022). Types of Shots in a Film: The First Tools to Building a Shot List. Available at: https://www.careersinfilm.com/types-of-shots-in-film/#s_what_are_the_7_basic_camera_movements
Deguzman, Kyle. (March 20, 2022). What is Low Key Lighting — Definition, Examples in Photo & Film. Available at: https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-low-key-lighting-definition/
Fusco, Jon. (June 24, 2016). The Psychology of Color in Film. Available at: https://nofilmschool.com/2016/06/watch-psychology-color-film
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Lane, Chris. (May 12, 2016). In Defense of the New Ghostbusters Movie — 4 Reasons Not All Remakes Are a Bad Thing. Available at: https://www.houstonpress.com/arts/in-defense-of-the-new-ghostbusters-movie-4-reasons-not-all-remakes-are-a-bad-thing-8397147#:~:text=In%20the%20case%20of%20a,source%20material%20is%20so%20good
McCarter, Reid. (September 27, 2018). Here’s The Lord of The Rings, but it’s CGI mice in a subway now. Available at: https://www.avclub.com/heres-the-lord-of-the-rings-but-its-cgi-mice-in-a-subw-1829360795
Miyamoto, Ken (November 4, 2019). Lord of the Rings and the Heros Journey. Available at: https://thescriptlab.com/features/screenwriting-101/12313-the-heros-journey-breakdown-the-lord-of-the-rings/
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