Extra Practice Extract

The film excerpt "24" opens in an intense investigation where a woman had committed a crime by engineering a bomb to go off. The interrogator is a guy, who brings into question the action to solve the dilemma and to deprogram the bomb. The interrogator uses much of his control during the whole interrogation as an attempt to extract information from the woman. It prompted me to conclude that the purpose of the director for this scene was to show that as time is cut short, and tensions rise. This subsequently leads to desperate times, in which people will do all they can to conquer challenges and be triumphant over evil.

To Commence, the scene starts off with a fade into the face of the women. Subsequently a close up is done to get the expressions of the women’s face, as she is about to be interrogated by the man, who just walked into the room. The expressions show how serious the situation is, but at the same time once can see how the women is looking around, almost as if she is trying to come up with an idea on how to escape the intense situation, which she seems to be in.

Soon after, the man walks into the interrogation room, and with the use of eye-line match the seriousness of the situation is heightened, as it continues to grasp the facial expressions of both individuals, moreover the use of the “Over the Shoulder” shot is a very good use of camera angles, as it creates the tension that there is between the two individuals, without them even speaking to each other yet.

After the man is in the room, both individuals stay quiet, and the only thing that can be heard is the background music, which intensifies the situation. After the long period of silence from both, the women finally begins to talk, thus the dialogue of the two characters begins. Right as the women began to talk to the camera focused on her and was a close up on her so that again, the audience could capture all her expressions. The women kept a very serious face, and at the same time she spoke slowly and clearly. She never showed a change in voice, showing that she was not going to budge or say anything about the situation occurring.

Furthermore, as the man continues to demand that the women tell him where the bomb is located, the use of a high and low angle is used in a very powerful way. Now the reason as to why it is used so well, is due to the reason that when capturing the low angle looking up at the man. This in fact symbolizes superiority. This possibly meaning that the man is in a current state of higher power as he is interrogating her. This in its way is vice versa when using a high angle because the man is looking at the women who is beneath her.

In the end the use of lighting played a huge role in the whole aspect of things following, the setting of the whole scene. The reason for this is that an interrogation room is not a happy or good place to be. Due to this it is vital to create a mood or tone in the scene the elaborates on this. That is why the use of low/dark lighting is so important. Low/dark lighting creates eerie and suspenseful moods in scenes, and when used correctly it can intensify situations, just like the author did in this scene. He used the lighting to make the interrogation room a scary place to be in.