Cinematography

 

Orphan Trailer Analysis

Cinematography is important to a thriller film, as it builds a relationship between the audience and the characters, through emotion and their actions. This itself creates an understanding of the film, enabling the audience to be drawn in.

One of the shots that I identified was a ‘point of view’ shot. In this particular shot it shows one of the nuns of the orphanage and a married couple looking through a gap in the door viewing an orphan, before walking in. This shot views a child isolating herself from the other orphans in a room and painting. It shows that there is something suspicious about the child to why she may not want to mix with others and do normal ‘childlike’ activities. This ‘point of view’ shot is conventional to a thriller film as it creates tension, an enigma and makes the audience question the child; there’s something not normal, as her maturity does not match her age. This could lead to the audience coming to some sort of conclusion to what’s going to happen next with the expectation being that her identity is false. The audience begin feeling uncertain of her character.

The second shot I detected was a ‘close up’ shot. The camera is zoomed up on the orphans face smiling innocently as she introduces herself to the married couple. This shot stereotypically looks as if she is a perfect, well behaved child that any parents would want to adopt. For the orphan, her first impressions are everything. This is conventional to a thriller film as the audience can see that she is the perpetrator with typical pale white skin and dark hair, which is a classic narrative within a thriller. With her abnormal choice of accessories; velvet fabric that’s fastened around her neck creates mystery to the purpose of it being there. Typical thoughts of the audience being that she’s hiding something, making her seem secretive.

The third shot I chose to analyse was a ‘mid’ shot. This singular shot portrays that the orphan, Ester overlooking her new sister, Max. This image foreshadows that something bad is going to happen to max. This is conventional as the setting is all very predictable; pitch-black room with a thunder storm occurring outside, flashing images of Ester in a white gown; supposedly the colour of innocence. This creates contrast. This scene relates to most features of a conventional thriller with the setting, sound, cinematography and mise en scene. The audience begin to worry and sympathise for Max's safety as they feel harm may come to her in time.

Within this piece of work, it has taught me that the choice of camera shots is vital witinin a thriller film in order to grab the audience’s attention and create understanding. Through my analysis of Orphan I found that the ‘point of view’ shot was the most interesting out of the three. I felt this way, as for me being the viewer, it built numerous emotions such as suspicion and made me question the orphans character. Drawing in an audience’s emotion, I feel is vital as it creates vivid understanding, and I will focus on this aspect when I come to making my own 2 minute opening for a thriller film. Analysing these three shots has taught me how they all individually work, which will again help me as it’s something I can look back at and compare to my own.