Social Realism

Film analysis of Prisoners.

This extract of prisoners sets the tone for the rest of the film effectively as a thriller through use of extremely well thought out camera, mise-en- scene, lighting and sound.

At the beginning when we as an audience are shown a medium shot of a back lighten car, with the noise of diegetic rain over the top of it we become curios about why it is there and who it belongs to. The backlight in this shot, is coming from inside a diner, which has a colour palate of mainly yellows and whites, with extremely artificial bright lights. This shows extreme contrast between that and outside the dinner, which is mainly dark and hard to figure out what is there, causing everything to be in silhouette.  The fact that the contrast of the two places is so extreme, makes us believe that the inside of the diner might be safer and calmer than the outside.

When we cut to the next shot, a medium shot of a man eating inside the diner, the audience feels a sense of relief due to the darkness, and therefore foreboding danger being left outside, meaning we are now in the light, taking away that fear of the unknown aspect. However as the camera slowly zooms in towards the man to become more of a close up, the audience might realise that the whole scene has a very slight Dutch angle causing them once again to feel uneasy as something is slightly off. The diegetic sound of the rain has also got a lot louder, the fact that there is no non diegetic music also gives the scene an uncomfortable feeling, as we can hear the sounds of the character eating which we wouldn’t usually be able to in a thriller type film.

The colouring inside the diner, is also much more prominent when they are inside, whist the yellow and white are still greatly featured and the lighting is still extremely strong. We can now see that there are ascents of red and black, throughout the place for example on the waitresses’ uniform and the stools creating the idea of danger in a way.

In the shot after this we get to see the face of the man who is talking to the waitress for the first time, making us feel more comfortable due to that aspect of mystery being destroyed, the framing of the scene makes us look directly at him however because the waitress is still in shot, we can still see the red and black colouring extremely promently, showing that danger or action is coming soon. The use of the intense lighting behind this man also gives us the idea that he is probably a good person, whist still adding to the setting effectively. However the fact that he is also wearing completely black gives an element of the unknown to the character and causes us not to trust him.

After the waitress has left, the diegetic sound of a phone and a police alert, interrupts the characters meal and therefore causes him to leave to get into the car in the shadow we saw the start of the scene, this creates an illusion of mystery due to us not knowing if he is a police officer or is running from the police himself. When he turns the lights onto the car, and is pulling away from the diner and therefore hope itself, the red lights come on, leaving the whole screen black and red for a slight moment causing the audience to feel the danger is intense.

Only at the point in which we learn, that the man be have been paying attention to is in fact a police officer himself, and has been called to the scene of a crime, does the diegetic music start to play, a low droning sound that causes us to feel on edge more than anything else so far due to the connotations of danger. The camera angle also changes so that we feel like we are sat In the back of the car looking forwards at the effective and the darkness outside, we are driving towards the danger.

The transfer from the darkness and the back of a car into a long shot of watching the car pull up under the bright lights, almost interrogation esc, shocks the audience and this is added to by the sudden lack of non-diegetic sound again.

Overall prisoners uses sound, camera, mise-en-scene and lighting extremely effectively in order to fit the gene and show tension.