The Critical Eye: An Introduction To Looking At Movies

Although The Interview featuring James Franco and Seth Rogan has been looked upon as a hugely controversial movie, I have chosen it as the movie I will dissect in the name of suturing. In this paper, I will lay down some groundwork by stating general uses of formal film elements. Once I have laid down what I believe is sufficient groundwork, I will then continue to discuss specific scenes in The Interview that contain this elements used for suturing. In chapter three of The Critical Eye: An Introduction to Looking at Movies, the authors discuss elements with respect to the camera. Some of these elements would include zoom shots, medium shots, close ups, and iris shots; many of which give the viewer intimacy with the filmed object or objects. For example, and iris shot may be used to give the viewer the sensation of seeing exactly what one of the characters is seeing. Moonrise Kingdom has a phenomenal example

Some terms used in this chapter are sound bridge, narration, music, dialogue, and leifmotif, all of which are mainly used to transmit emotion to the audience. For example, peppy, high tempo music will give the feeling of happiness whereas slow, somber music gives the feeling of sadness. Plus, music can also add suspense just by adding a crescendo to transmit a sensation that something is about to happen once the music hits its climax. Narration, as used in the beginning of Never Let Me Go, is defined by The Wabash Center is “The process through which the plot conveys or withholds story information. The narration can be more or less restricted to character knowledge and more or less deep in presenting characters' mental perceptions and thoughts.” In the beginning of Never Let Me Go, Carey Mulligan’s character is looking in on an operation room while you hear her voice in the background talking about her life. Personally, it gave me a sense of being her as a result of hearing what I assume were her