• Continuously address 2 cinematography elements (examples of these) and how they worked to address directors intention.
  • Give audience response= correctly describe the effect for you.
  • Discuss how these reflect societal ideals/ thoughts/ opinions… and possibly discuss times when we’ve seen this in history etc.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” – Albert Einstein
    Director Steven Speilberg effectively portrays to viewers the dangers of technology in society and its utter control over mankind. John is an emotion driven man whom put his faith into technology to prevent society from feeling the same heartache he had when his son was taken from him. However John begins to realize the lack of reliability of technology and how society has begun to trust these emotionless machines. Humanity is putting full faith into technology and giving technology the power to fulfill human roles. We begin to see this in a bird’s eye view scan over the building before we capture a low angle shot of the pre-crime advanced helicopter descending into the alley, highlighting technology freely invading the privacy of a deprived society. combined with the diegetic song of bad boys playing as the helicopter descends. This highlights that the government may be seen as bad and invasive to the people living in this complex.  It amazes me how similar technology and humans are in the fact that humans also invaded each-others privacy before society’s technology became so advanced  that we let it fulfill this duty. The historic World War 2 Nazi regime is a significant event in society in which generations will be effected and learn of the horrors that were a reality to the world during this time. Nazis freely labelled and intruded people’s homes to try to create the perfect society through ultimate elimination, which is what we can see Speilberg creating during the spider scene is technology invading homes to save humans time. The intense non-diagetic sound of a deep, drawn out piano and violin effectively compliments the low angle, closeup shot of the spiders as they break into johns apartment building. The closeup, low angle magnify’s the size of these techno spiders creating an even more daunting species, alongside the intense orchestral music it is hard to not fear these species and the harm they could do to our protagonist John. Speilberg cleverly picked the animal playing the roles of the “investigators.” On the animal planet website it is stated that spiders are one of the top 10 animals most feared by humans. This helped Speilberg bring another factor of fear into the scene as many viewers already had a fear of spiders. Lastly the spiders were so limited in ability they failed to recognize they had caught John. A mid-shot of Johns eyes getting scanned with the diegetic sound of the scanner and john releasing painful screams shows the intimacy and closeness between the spiders and John. The human eye has the amazing ability to recognize people and objects just by looking at them, something the spider failed to do. Why did they put such faith into these spiders, i think this highlights the real dangers of technology. We continuously put so much faith into technology, we share messages, information, identities, secrets to the people behind the other screens and trust that only the indented person will get our message. But technology is an unsafe and powerful thing and holds so many dangers we fail to recognize. Speilberg effectively showed this when the spiders were unable to recognize john when he was centimeters away from them, does this not make you wonder the security and ability of technology compared to the human brain?

Join the conversation! 2 Comments

  1. There needs to be more of a connection between these two sentences:

    However John begins to realize the lack of reliability of technology and how society has began to trust these emotionless machines. We see a birds eye view scan over the building before we capture a low angle shot of the pre-crime advanced helicopter descending into

    Reply
  2. FEEDBACK:
    Hi Caitlin,

    You raised some good points in here. I want you to now consider:
    – developing your sentence crafting and the fluidity of ideas – it did feel a bit rushed
    – Give more Y moments throughout, esp. a commentary on how the viewers are positioned.
    – Be more pointed in the use of the TWO TECHNIQUES TOGETHER to demonstrate the director’s purpose.

    Keep this in mind when you actually attack your 3.9.

    🙂

    Reply

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