Deconstruction of the use of cinematography, sound and editing.

Deconstruction of the use of cinematography, sound and editing.

During the production of a film and the creating of the finished product many aspects must be considered in order to portray the correct thought or emotion or feeling. One major way of doing this is to use different techniques in editing, cinematography and sound and furthermore adding and mixing these together in order to produce a final piece of footage which can present one or even more different feelings and aspects to the audience.

For example one very common use of these three major aspects is if a character is dreaming or is hallucinating etc. This can be done in a number of ways depending on the narrative such as different hues or opacities to make the shot look more of one colour (usually a dull version of the colour), dulled, quitter and or muffled sounds such as diegetic speech and far shots of the area and point of view shots. These are usually entwined so that the audience can clearly tell that a character is dreaming or in a different perceived realm.

In an article about ‘Apocalypse Now’ a character Captain Willard is haunted by memories of battle and warfare and his subconscious leaking images into the real world. At one scene after he wakes up subtle editing and lighting have been used to show his unstable mind to the audience. Stronger and bolder shadows on the ceiling fan to show his mind seeing chopper propellers, lens flairs upon him looking out the window.

However another use of these techniques is for making somewhere look strange or unusual to the audience. In the ‘Apocalypse Now’ article there is also the shown use of different shades in the same shot, a lighter key light on one side and dimming out as it moves to the other side creating a more shadowy effect to present more of an unknown eerie presence for the audience to feel.

True Detectives

In true detectives one of the main characters ‘Rusten Cole’ who was a drug abuser in his time as an undercover narcotics officer, because of this he has neural and nerve receptor damage, resulting in him seeing things. In many scenes he sees things that are real but are slightly twisted. For example in a scene when ‘Rust’ is driving at night on the highway, the road lights start to distort and create an optical trail. This is mainly done using editing by making the lights brighter and creating trails behind it using a shot editing system on each frame such as Photoshop. They also use a non-diegetic sound effect of an intense humming with pulses in volume creating a damaged hearing effect.