'Film Language Test Learner Response'

WWW: Some good attempts to incorporate media language

EBI: Re-Do Qs 1 + 4

Q1)

At the beginning of this extract, it shows a beaten up man who is sitting on the floor and is about to set fire to something but another man who was on a particular balcony and looked rather intimidating, urinated the fire when the line of fire came level to the balcony. This man had then come down to the person who was on the ground. He looked quite intimidating because of the long, dark coat he was wearing alongside the hat which showed that it is linked to a film noir novel. It was also dark clothes, he was wearing which can suggest that he is a villain.

At the beginning of the extract, it showed a dead body which will obviously show the audience that this type of genre is going to be a thriller and crime type of movie if they had already shown a dead body in the first few minutes. Another action code which suggests that this movie was something down the lines of being a thriller movie is the gun that the shadowed man had, which he used to kill the worn out man, sitting on the ground. The action code created by this is that what made him shoot the character why was sitting on the floor? Some audience may believe it had something to do with the dead body in the beginning.

Before the shadowed protagonist had shot that person, the protagonist who was sitting down seemed very relaxed which could result into knowing that this whole thing of the person being shot was planned because he didn't really do anything to stop himself from being shot by the antagonist in the hat and trench coat.

Q4)

In the beginning of the extract, it showed a slow motion effect of the helpless character on the floor lighting up the paper with his cigarette which was creating more and more tension because it suggested to the audience that he was either going to be doing something bad or it may just be the characters role where he might be struggling.

Throughout  most of the extract, it showed a wide range of editing techniques which did create a lot of tension through most of the extract as well. First of all, there was a wide range of straight cuts which was showing different parts of the setting. The setting seemed quite dull and evacuated which may suggest the fire because it wouldn't be safe for people to be around there. There were also many different straight cuts happening between the hopeless man sitting on the floor and the man in the trench coat. This showed that they were having a conversation with one another because of the 180 degree angle the shot was taken at and because of how they were looking at one another (one looking down and the other looking up). Also, this suggested that there was shot/reverse shot going on because continuous straight cuts were happening while the conversation was going on between the two characters. This created a lot of suspense because the cuts were moving really quickly and this is when the enigma code took place in the extract where what the audience that is going to happen next between the two characters. Later on in the extract, the enigma code was finally answered when the man in the trench coat finally pulled out a gun and killed the man on the floor.