Within the opening sequence of 'No Country For Old Men' the editing seems of some significance- even though it is not easy to understand as to why we are being shown wide establishing shots of this landscape but at this point have to make the assumption it is of some importance. The editing is therefore used to capture the 'important bits' highlighting what we believe to be a relevant location in for this film. This way the audiences attention is focusing towards the preferred meanings that has been encoded in the shots. The pacing of how long is left to linger also embeds a tone to the feeling allowed for the audience to interpret. A scene quickly edited denotes action, violence, emergency etc, whereas a scene with slower edits usually has less connotations to do with fast paced action. However, after the slow cuts through the landscape, it then cuts to a police officer making an arrest, leading us to believe this slow opening with not many connotations, will lead to a faster edits and a more action-packed film.
The lighting in the opening of 'No Country For Old Men' is a significant component, helping set the scene. The screen stars black with no footage, then as the narrative dialogue is heard on top, the setting (of what we assume is a dessert rock) appears. The lighting is dim as we see the sun raise in the horizon over the rock in blue, orange tones. As the establishing shot changes to yet another establishing shot, the sun appears stronger. The dim desert sun changes to a brighter yellow as the shots continue. In one shot, the sun is seen peering through the top of some dusty rocks creating a glare effect, this lighting helps us to understand just how desolate the setting is. The idea of watching the sun rise gradually compliments the idea that the story is about to unfold, the start of both the film and the day creates anticipation for the audience as they don't know what to expect. The lighting reaches full day light, and the natural lighting reflected on the desert's rocky ground creates a stillness. It is almost an eerie atmosphere as we scan the different locations, as if the audience is meant to try and see something, almost like a criminal stakeout. The warmth of the lighting parallels the idea that the desert is commonly associated with heat. In the fist scene where characters are introduced (a man in handcuffs being led by a Texas officer) we can see that the police siren lights are still flashing as the car is pulled up to the side of the road, adding emphasis to the status of the police force, reflecting what the narrative voice had previously described. At first, we are only aware of the narration, obviously a man with an American accent, rather gravelly in tone, he lets us know straight away that he is a Sheriff and tells of old time policemen and a past case. However, as you become attuned you then hear the background noise of wind, it is constant and obviously blowing in an open space. This is reinforced as the sun comes up and a bird is heard singing, the setting is in open country. Apart from these three sounds, it is absolutely quiet, this must be a long way from any buildings, there isn't even any sound of traffic, just a squeaky wind generator. The wind is always there but even the bird has stopped singing, it is just the narrator, but suddenly the sound of footsteps on a stony surface shows that there is at least one person around, the fact that there are two people is not obvious as their footsteps are synchronised perfectly as they walk to the car. The sound of the car door being opened is quite sudden and propels you into the story, then the metallic bell like tone of the strange canister being put into the front seat leaves us with a question, what is it? The car is started and revved up to a high speed straight away, the policeman obviously wants to get his prisoner back in a hurry. In order to create visual variety in our film opening we had to consider some interesting shots that are applicable to a film noir. We tried out a couple of ideas before actually filming on set in order to save time effectively, ruling out the camera angles or filming compositions that didn't work. We practiced using a dutch tilt as we had decided that it can be used to create a hypnotic or chaotic mood due to the tilted, unusual angle. We thought that perhaps it could be placed into our opening as a way of breaking up the long match on action sequences, as they can become quite repetitive. We hadn't used a dutch tilt in our preliminary and so this technique was new to us all, however we had observed how to film them on YouTube. Our dutch tilt can be found at 1:40 After researching the typical camera angles used in thrillers - Film noir thrillers to be concise, we decided that an extreme close up was necessary for our production. We first found this type of shot applied to Hitchcock's 'Vertigo' and so then we decided to practice replicating the shot style. Having concluded that the close up can be used to break down long sequences and express the characters vulnerability placing emphasis on her eyes, we filmed and edited it into our main task. Our Extreme close up can be found at 2:21 Issues that we found from practicing the shots were the poor quality of zoom in the cameras and the positioning of the tripod. Instead we simply overcame these by holding the camera closer to the actor's face to avoid poor zoom quality, and by placing the camera on the floor for stability rather than a tripod.
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