The film I have decided to analyse is the beginning of lucky Number Slevin.
The film Itself is a revenge story like ours which is why I have chosen to write about this film.
The beginning of the film starts out with a title sequence that lasts around 4 minutes and is a mix of actual film and animated footage. The whole Idea of the title sequence is ‘Books’ and I mean betting books for horses not just any old books. This is a very important theme that runs throughout the entire film especially within the first fifteen minutes. The sequence is composed of many different and seemingly unlinked events such as a man carrying a book being shot, a shot of just a phone and another man being killed by a fastball. We are led to assume that all these points will become important later in the films plot. All these are interchanged with the animated sequence of the credits being shown in a bookie’s book which as time goes on is covered with more and more splashes of blood. The credits for the actors are shown of the actual film itself more faintly but still in the same style creating a continuous theme. All this time a slow sombre but interesting piece of music is played quietly to reinforce the continuity and keep the viewers interested.
The most important part of the title sequence is about 2:30 into it where we are greeted with an extreme long shot of a very long room that is white except from the bright blue chairs with one person laying down on them near the front of the shot, they are in contrast and are dressed in brown. The shot is sustained as a man in black walks all the way down to the front chairs and slumps straight in front of the camera but with his back to us. This cuts to a close up on him, we can see that he is tired and his head keeps falling back. The screen fades to black which insinuates that he has fallen asleep and the directors name is shown. This is technically the end of the title sequence. The film uses a lot of interesting and perhaps unconventional shots which gives it a different feel such as canted angles when people are killed which give it a POV perspective and extreme long shots when he walks down the room where as many people would have used a tracking shot this makes you feel less attached to the character which is as we find out what happens next possibly the directors intention. It gives the film a certain artistic direction and makes it seem more quirky than others which if you watch the entire film you can tell is done on purpose.
The next part is where we see the first real interaction of dialogue by the characters, this is between bruce willis who is dressed as an old man and in a wheel chair and the mystery man in black. The shots here are again very unconventional and random and even is they seem relatively normal in terms of the shot they have a certain odd look about them:
The shots during the dialogue mix between extreme close ups on the watch the man is wearing, a two shot with both Willis and the man in black and completely normal shot reverse shots which the director has made strange by putting the characters in different places within the shots to how they would normally be.
The next sequence is a flashback sequence with Willis narrating over to tell the story. Whereas the colour in the shots before seemed very bleached and pale the shots during the flashback sequence are darker but full of colour:
The shots during this sequence all seem to follow one another more with a few exceptions but they are made to be like a story with a beginning a middle and an end so they are more normal and less quirky than in the real life scenes. The tracking shots are used to follow characters and especially used to effect when the horse race is happening. A low angle shot is used on the character ‘Max’ when we are led to assume that his horse is winning which gives a sense that he feels very powerful and is very important in the whole aspect of the plot, but when we see that his horse has fallen the shot is a close-up on his face and is at much more of a straight angle perhaps the tiniest bit looking down on him this relates to the emotion shown on his face.
The shots after this become a lot more jerky and handheld as he is beaten by someone and his son is missing, this gives the idea of someone seeing something they shouldn’t again like a POV shot just not in the actual action just an onlooker. As he is hit the screen transitions to white and then flickers back to a close-up shot of him in a darker room with blood over his face, a lot of transitions and effects are used to make it seem more like he is concussed and everything we see now, all the shots which are of three different storylines tied together now are all very short and flick between one another. This gives the idea that they are all happening at the same time and everyone is being killed together. The shots consist of focusing and un-focusing on shotguns, a medium shot of the child where you see a lot of blue sky behind him making it seem like there is someone behind him just out of shot and a long shot of a woman in a kitchen who turns around suddenly and we see a shadow on her. The director likes to focus on extreme close-ups on things that would unnerve the audience to make it more shocking like the barrel of a gun, the plates smashing on the floor and the slow footsteps of a man walking up iron stairs.
The scene then returns to that of Willis and the man in black and continues to shot-reverse shot. Around the fifteen minute line there is another clever point of view shot as Willis describes ‘a Kansas city shuffle’ where the man in black looks to his right which the camera shows but then returns to a medium shot of them both and Willis breaks his neck by twisting it to the left, just like he describes with the voice over.
The film Itself is a revenge story like ours which is why I have chosen to write about this film.
The beginning of the film starts out with a title sequence that lasts around 4 minutes and is a mix of actual film and animated footage. The whole Idea of the title sequence is ‘Books’ and I mean betting books for horses not just any old books. This is a very important theme that runs throughout the entire film especially within the first fifteen minutes. The sequence is composed of many different and seemingly unlinked events such as a man carrying a book being shot, a shot of just a phone and another man being killed by a fastball. We are led to assume that all these points will become important later in the films plot. All these are interchanged with the animated sequence of the credits being shown in a bookie’s book which as time goes on is covered with more and more splashes of blood. The credits for the actors are shown of the actual film itself more faintly but still in the same style creating a continuous theme. All this time a slow sombre but interesting piece of music is played quietly to reinforce the continuity and keep the viewers interested.
The most important part of the title sequence is about 2:30 into it where we are greeted with an extreme long shot of a very long room that is white except from the bright blue chairs with one person laying down on them near the front of the shot, they are in contrast and are dressed in brown. The shot is sustained as a man in black walks all the way down to the front chairs and slumps straight in front of the camera but with his back to us. This cuts to a close up on him, we can see that he is tired and his head keeps falling back. The screen fades to black which insinuates that he has fallen asleep and the directors name is shown. This is technically the end of the title sequence. The film uses a lot of interesting and perhaps unconventional shots which gives it a different feel such as canted angles when people are killed which give it a POV perspective and extreme long shots when he walks down the room where as many people would have used a tracking shot this makes you feel less attached to the character which is as we find out what happens next possibly the directors intention. It gives the film a certain artistic direction and makes it seem more quirky than others which if you watch the entire film you can tell is done on purpose.
The next part is where we see the first real interaction of dialogue by the characters, this is between bruce willis who is dressed as an old man and in a wheel chair and the mystery man in black. The shots here are again very unconventional and random and even is they seem relatively normal in terms of the shot they have a certain odd look about them:
The shots during the dialogue mix between extreme close ups on the watch the man is wearing, a two shot with both Willis and the man in black and completely normal shot reverse shots which the director has made strange by putting the characters in different places within the shots to how they would normally be.
The next sequence is a flashback sequence with Willis narrating over to tell the story. Whereas the colour in the shots before seemed very bleached and pale the shots during the flashback sequence are darker but full of colour:
The shots during this sequence all seem to follow one another more with a few exceptions but they are made to be like a story with a beginning a middle and an end so they are more normal and less quirky than in the real life scenes. The tracking shots are used to follow characters and especially used to effect when the horse race is happening. A low angle shot is used on the character ‘Max’ when we are led to assume that his horse is winning which gives a sense that he feels very powerful and is very important in the whole aspect of the plot, but when we see that his horse has fallen the shot is a close-up on his face and is at much more of a straight angle perhaps the tiniest bit looking down on him this relates to the emotion shown on his face.
The shots after this become a lot more jerky and handheld as he is beaten by someone and his son is missing, this gives the idea of someone seeing something they shouldn’t again like a POV shot just not in the actual action just an onlooker. As he is hit the screen transitions to white and then flickers back to a close-up shot of him in a darker room with blood over his face, a lot of transitions and effects are used to make it seem more like he is concussed and everything we see now, all the shots which are of three different storylines tied together now are all very short and flick between one another. This gives the idea that they are all happening at the same time and everyone is being killed together. The shots consist of focusing and un-focusing on shotguns, a medium shot of the child where you see a lot of blue sky behind him making it seem like there is someone behind him just out of shot and a long shot of a woman in a kitchen who turns around suddenly and we see a shadow on her. The director likes to focus on extreme close-ups on things that would unnerve the audience to make it more shocking like the barrel of a gun, the plates smashing on the floor and the slow footsteps of a man walking up iron stairs.
The scene then returns to that of Willis and the man in black and continues to shot-reverse shot. Around the fifteen minute line there is another clever point of view shot as Willis describes ‘a Kansas city shuffle’ where the man in black looks to his right which the camera shows but then returns to a medium shot of them both and Willis breaks his neck by twisting it to the left, just like he describes with the voice over.
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