I found the full film 'Kiss Me Deadly' from 1955 online, because our OTS is meant to be 2 minutes long I decided to look at the first 2 minutes of this film noir and analyse screen shots that I take.
Right at the beginning of this noir the company credits 'United Artists' appears with grand music, already just from this title you can tell it's going to be a black and white film.
Straight after the titles finish the screen goes black, woman's legs start to run across the screen with heavy breathing as the black slowly fades into a road. Already you start to wonder, who is this woman? Why is she running? Where is she?
The camera then quickly shows a shot of the woman's face, from this we have to assume that she is the femme fatale. However still not answering our questions but adding more tension and mystery.
The camera then shows the woman that we can only guess as the femme fatale from a extra long shot (ELS). This shows us where she is but still not answering how she got there or why she's running.
As she proceeds to run the shot then skips to a extra long shot of a car heading in the other direction toward the woman. This adds further questions, why is there a car in the middle of nowhere? Who is driving it? The woman stands in front of the car forcing it to stop and swerve in to the side of the road, the woman then approaches the car.
After the woman approaches the car the camera shows a close up of the man sitting in the car, we can only assume that he is now the anti hero of the story due to the way he's dressed, the smart car he drives and his sly attitude towards the woman.
An over the shoulder shot is used to show who the femme fatale is talking to, and the anti hero's reactions that what she has to say, however due to being out of breath all the femme fatale can do is pant heavily. He has no choice but to say "Get in."
As the femme fatale walks around and enters the car a narration is played over the top with the woman's voice, unfortunately due to the films age and quality of the video I'm unable to figure out what is she's saying.
The last scene of the 2 minutes shows the opening credits, the camera shows a point of view shot where it feels like we are looking out from the front window screen. The credits slowly appear from the top of the screen and don't stop until they disappear in a calm movement, you notice that on the screen shot the writing is backwards, this is because the writing is coming down and so we read the bottom words first. Even though this OTS was quit dramatic in we had no idea what was going on, we think that the woman is now safe with this man and so there is less tension.
I really like this OTS, because we have no idea why the femme fatale was in the middle of nowhere or why she had no shoes etc, and from this point on the story can be unravelled with flashbacks and stories creating us on edge throughout the film noir due to the leaving us in suspense at the beginning.
No comments:
Post a Comment