Final Montage Jain Mak Essay

The final montage from ‘Rigor Mortis’ showcases the skilled use of framing, music, lighting, and camera angles by director Juno Mak. Mak has a distinct style of filming, and the montage showcases all of his little details and quirks.

In the scene, Mak shows how the story would have progressed without any supernatural interference on Chin, the protagonist; there would have been no damaged and dingy building, the family of Yang and Pak are happy, and Meiyi has successfully coped with the passing of Tung. To emphasise these points, all of the mise-en-scene is completely changed from earlier parts of the story.

The montage opens with a closeup of the ash and covered protagonist, Chin, then switches to a POV shot from very low angle, which is then graphically matched into the eye of his corpse. The shot is zooming out while simultaneously rotating clockwise. As a part of the white on red motif so in the story, pure white snow falls from the black void in the sky. Cut to black, and Chin walks slowly past Yau in a straight on pan shot, with Yau centered in the middle. Cut, and a long shot shows Chin, who slowly

Regarding his camera positioning, it is almost never static, instead, it is constantly panning, zooming, or jump-cutting to explore different parts of the environment. The pans are always gradual, instead of jumping towards the subject. Mak adds layers of zoom to many of his shots, but does not change the level of focus significantly, preferring to keep everything in deep focus, despite the fact that the background of his shots is very simple. Mak’s use of camera is also very objective; in no case in the montage is there any use of subjective camera. Lastly, Mak tends to use lower lights for most scenes, perhaps to increase the tension, or highlight the unfriendly atmosphere of the building. In addition, he uses a green filter over many of his shots, presumably for the same