TV AND FILM ANALYSIS Rachel Lowe Level 2 Media
A QUIET PLACE ANALYSIS
Purpose The purpose of this film is to entertain; it engages with the audience on multiple levels and creates a connection from the characters to the audience therefore engaging in the audience’s emotions. This film was not made to educate as it had no recent events or realistic events throughout the duration of the film, it showed events which are very unlikely to happen in this year or the next and if on the off chance it did happen A Quiet Place doesn’t show you how to deal with these events necessarily in a way to survive. A Quiet Place also is not made to inform its audience as it doesn’t include any facts or reasoning behind the events, it doesn’t tell you how to deal with the events and it doesn’t show useful strategies to deal with the events taking place throughout the film. A Quiet Place isn’t made to sell any products as there is no big brand names on screen, usually if the film or show were partnered with a brand and made to sell something it would include the brands name once or twice very subtly but A Quiet Place doesn’t include any brands in its apocalypse type setting.
Camera The camera shots used in a quiet place are a bridging shot, a close up shot, an Ariel shot, a mid shot, a long shot, point of view shot, over the shoulder shot and a tracking shot. The bridging shot is used to convey a change in time and scenery to show that the time has moved on and to speed up the pace of the film whilst still going through the necessary points needed to build tension and allow the film to progress without confusing the audience. A close-up shot is used to, convey the emotion on a character’s face to show you how scared/ happy/ sad or any other emotion the character feels. It is also a common horror film camera shot. An Ariel shot is used a lot in this film as they film on a vast space, the farm is very big and you can’t always see where the protagonists are in the property, this is used to show where the Villains or creatures are and where the protagonists are in comparison. This shot is used when the father is looking for his two eldest children and they are in the corn mill, it’s also used in the CCTV cameras to show where the creatures are after the mother had shot one of them. This builds tension and suspense for the audience and causes dramatic irony as the protagonists don’t always know where the villains are. The use of a mid shot is the same as the use of a close up in the terms that it shows the character and how the character is feeling in response to the situation. This is used in the beginning when the youngest child is killed off, the mid shot is used to show the reaction of the characters such as the mother and sister. This shot is useful in this film because they use their hands a lot to sign to each other so this shot is perfect to be able to see the way the actor or actress is signing to the other. A long shot is used to convey the whole character and sometimes the scene, this helps the audience grasp the character’s response instead of just the close up and mid shot. It enables the audience to see if they were going to do anything to help them or if they were in utter shock, an example of this is once again when the youngest child was killed off. The long shot was used to view the killing and lets us see the murder of the boy. It also allows one of the first jump scares to take place in the film. A point of view shot is used to allow the characters to switch perspectives and for the audience to see the situation from another’s point of view. An example is when the perspective changes from the dad or moms to the eldest child. She is the deaf child so when the perspective changes it is obvious as you can hear the difference, when the perspective changes there is no background noise and everything is completely silent while in her perspective. The over the shoulder shot is used to see in the character’s perspective, to see what they see and to understand what they are seeing. To build a relationship with the character and become more attached. This is shown when the father is looking for his two eldest children, when he finally finds them we see the directors use of an over shoulder shot to see where the children are and see how relieved he is. The last shot used in A Quiet Place is the tracking shot, this is used to move alongside the character. This helps the fast pace editing fit into the film instead of it going from slow pace to fast pace. The tracking shot is used when the father is running to try and save his child from one of the creatures in the beginning of the film. It is also used multiple times when the characters are running. It is an alternate way to show how the character is feeling as it can demonstrate the fight or flight response.
Audio In ‘A Quiet Place’ Krasinski uses suspenseful music through a few of the scenes to create tension like in the beginning when the youngest child is killed off. At the time, the child is playing with a toy space ship which a normal activity for a young child (suspected to be around six or younger but the real age of the children and parents are never stated) although the audience haven’t been introduced to the problem yet they know that it is something to do with sound and that loud noises unless covered by something louder aren’t good. The scene before shows us that the child had picked up some batteries that the eldest child had removed to avoid the child making loud noises and being caught by the creatures. Krasinski uses a close up shot to show us this meaning it is important and that it will most likely forebode a future event. It seems the child is too young to understand the complex world he is growing up in. The sound effects of the toy space ship are the first thing you hear in the scene, you only hear it for a short period of time before the father hears it and runs to try and save his youngest child, the father turns around when he hears it and puts the child he was holding down. He immediately starts to run to get the child and as he does the mother and then the eldest child all turn around to see the toy being played with by the youngest boy. The mother turns around with a very sincere look of sadness and shock on her face which is when the eldest child turns around and see’s the event that she tried to eliminate take place before her eyes. The audience is switched the daughters point of view and there is no sound, the only indication that the toy is still going is that the lights on the ship are still flashing. Then the point of view changes to a third person point of view, like someone else is watching them all as the suspenseful music plays again and you can hear the creature running whilst also the toy space ship is still making sound effects. As fast as the father runs you can hear the creature as it creates a thud when it runs, when the child is taken it almost sounds like a firework type screech and the child was whisked away. From the buildup of the father and creature racing each other almost the sharp but quiet screech that you hear as the creature takes the child is almost in a mocking manner as if to prove how fast the creatures are. Music from other places in the film seems to be a mixture of either being loud and suspenseful or quiet and suspenseful depending on the events of the scene. When the mother was giving birth, the music related to the mother and captured the screams she would’ve given if it weren’t for the situations she was in. This builds a connection between the audience and the mother making the audience relate more to the mother and feel her pain.
Lighting The low key lighting used throughout the film makes the audience weary of what will happen to the characters as when things are dark its harder to see what is going on, not only for the characters but for the audience too, it is also a popular convention of action, horror and sci-fi that when it gets dark that something bad is going to happen. So it is inevitable that when the screen gets darker in ‘A Quiet Place’ that something bad is going to happen, like when the children were in the corn style, it was dark and the creature was after them. But they never intentionally fell into the style, it was the middle child who fell in first because the doors were loose and then he started to struggle in the corn so he couldn’t get out. The door very nearly missed him. The lighting in this scene was effective because we didn’t know where the monster was. As the point of view kept changing from third person to the eldest child we were going from having background noise to not having any background noise which helps build the tension for the jump scare when the creature finds the children. Lighting colour is important too as when the fairy light change from white to red everyone knows that something is wrong and this is when everyone starts to get panicked because the connotations of red are blood and danger so this would worry the father and son who weren’t in the house when these lights changed. We are never actually told what the red lights mean but can assume they either mean that mean someone is in trouble or they were set up for her pregnancy and they mean that she is going into labor.
Recommend
More recommend
