Opening Analysis - Children of Men

Representation

Location: In a minimart located in town

Character: There were many people standing inside the minimart, watching the news. There was a strange atmosphere that suggests that something is not mainstream. Than the man came in and ordered a coffee which he doesn't seem to care about the new at all. The camera follows the man everywhere, from when he walked in up until when he walked out. This indicates that he is the protagonist. 

Narrative

Enigmas established: When the man walks away from the minimart and started pouring ingredients into his coffee, there was a bomb at that particular minimart. There was not a single suggestion at the beginning that there will or there might be a bomb. The news on the TV is about the death of a child so this kinda creates a negative mood, however, there are possibilities that the news is linked to the bomb. At the end of the video, a women came running out of the mart, crying, and holding something in her hand. I think her arm might got ripped of by the bomb. This therefore shows that something really bad and dark has started to occur. 

          

Dexter Credits

What Dexter is : It is an American television crime drama mystery series. The series centers on Dexter Morgan, a blood spatter pattern analyst for the fictional Miami Metro Police Department who also leads a secret life as a vigilante serial killer, hunting down murderers who have slipped through the cracks of the justice system. The show's first season was derived from the novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter (2004), the first of the Dexter series novels by Jeff Lindsay. It was adapted for television by screenwriter James Manos, Jr., who wrote the first episode. 

Micro element used to create connotations : Dexter credits mainly focuses on filming everything in a close-up way. By viewing thing closely, It gives the connotation of feeling more towards what we see on the screen. At the beginning, there was one scene that the man is using a razor to shave his beard and it films closely when the razor touches is neck. We all know that the mise-en-scene, in this case the razor, is sharp. After the razor touches his skin, blood drips along his neck and drips into the sink. The blood is being filmed in an extremely close up camera angle. This suggests a connotation of thriller. The editing is kind of a jump cut from razor touching to blood on the skin and then to blood dripping down the sink.

Relevance of the use of shapes : By filming everything real close, The shapes of each object can be seen very clearly. It is then a bit hard to determine what that object really is. For example, one scene that he was about to cook and he cut out a pack of meat. The camera was so close that we think he was cutting open someone's flesh. It was misunderstood because we did not see the whole shape of it. 

Understanding Thriller Sub-Genre

We showed our understanding of Psychological Thriller conventions in this short film.