Sunday, December 21, 2014

Scene Analysis- True Detective

(Note: embedding of this video is unavailable on YouTube)

In this shot, the camera follows Officer Rust Cohle as he –while undercover with one violent gang, raids another gang. The camera spends a lot of time on Cohle’s face to convey his emotion: rushed and frantic. With no establishing shot, the audience is left unaware of a lot of Cohle’s surroundings which helps to increase tension in the viewer.

While in the first building, the camera pans side to side which mimics Cohle as he tries to maintain control of the room.  The room is extremely chaotic, and Cohle must make sure that the opposing gang member is complying with their demands so they can make a quick exit. He must do this while surveying his crew and ordering them not to shoot their weapons.

When tensions inevitably boil over, and gunshots are fired, the audio becomes somewhat muffled. The gunshots and yelling sound stifled. This moment marks the situation taking a turn for the worse. The quick second of stifled noise is not unlike Cohle’s handling of the situation: a brief moment of shock and pause followed immediately by action to escape the situation.

At 3:43 of the clip, Cohle is on top of one member of the opposing gang while the camera spins around.  Cohle is surprise attacked by another man that is only revealed in the frame after his baseball bat makes contact with Cohle. The audience was unaware of this man, just as Cohle was.

Another interesting use of camera work was from 4:50-5:00 of this clip. The camera follows Cohle and his hostage as they escape through the neighborhood. To demonstrate how hostile the environment is, the camera continues to follow Cohle’s movement on the other side of a house while showing the gang members that are IN the house .

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