Allison Emery: Silent Film Analytical Review

Allison Emery

November 15, 2012

Group Three

Silent Film Analytical Review

Camera perspectives within cinematography represent what the film wants viewers to recognize and notice. The way a camera moves through the scene, the perspective of the lens, and the camera angles of a scene are all aspects of making a movie transpire—they are all facets in the art of cinematography. The vision a camera depicts effects what is being communicated for the entire film; it shows audiences what is important in that scene, and what one should pay attention to. Group 4 presented, Oh God, No…, by telling a story of woman who gets killed by an evil cat while she is watching the cat for a friend. They use the element of cinematography in regards to how the camera captures a scene to communicate and foreshadow that the cat is not as friendly as it looks. My argument exclaims that the way they use close ups, camera angles, and camera movement —all aspects of cinematography, portray how the cat is manipulating the woman and ultimately plans to complete the fate of the movie. All of these different camera aspects are used in the film to communicate to spectators the importance the scene has on the overall film meaning.

            The beginning of the film starts with two friends greeting each other while one drops off her cat so the other friend can cat-sit. The camera placement eighteen seconds into the film puts the audience into the scene setting. The video clip below portrays the part of the film I am referring to. The lens predicts the “field of view” for the scene.. This film shot is important because it makes the audience feel a part of the action. The audience consistently has to decide what is taking place in the scene, especially since it is a silent film, and through the perspective of the lens we can see that we are emotionally involved in the film action because of the camera angle and the lens focusing on these two women. This camera aspect in this scene represents the decision the director made to emotionally involve the viewer in the storyline. This is important to the overall film because we consistently make assumptions of what is going to take place in the film based on what we can see as the audience.

Now that the camera angle and placement have let the audience have an emotional attachment to the film, the directors focus in on a certain contender in the film. Focusing to a different character implicates that our concentration throughout the film should be on the cat and what it does for the plot. The video snippet below shows that the camera has done a vertical pan downwards to focus on the cat at 26 seconds. This camera movement and focus tells the audience that the cat should be a major contestant to something that happens in the film. Further into the film, camera angles and close-ups of the lens are used to show that the cat took part in an action that just took place. The second video snippet below is just after the cat-sitter goes outside to water plants and she gets locked out of her house. We assume that no one else is in the house because we have only been introduced to three characters, and now only the cat-sitter and cat are in the scenes. The close-up on the cat looking outside where the cat-sitter is locked out gives the audience a clue that the cat could be the one that locked her out, which foreshadows future events. 

            An abundant use of camera movements, lens perspective (close-ups), and camera angles in the next scenes in the film allow us to note that the cat is trying to harm the cat-sitter. Focusing in on the cat, as indicated at one minute, 21 seconds, helps communicate something to the audience even though there are no words vocalized in the film. The decision to use lens perspective to make the audience feel an emotional attachment to the film helps a viewer become involved in the storyline. The camera movement from the girls to the cat gives us an indication that the cat is a major focus throughout the film. Also, the close-up of the cat after the girl is locked our gives us a perspective that the cat is the one involved in the evil action. We can see that the cat is planning the actions because of the camera angle, focus, and perspective, but the cat-sitter is clueless of the cat’s schemes. All of these camera aspects of cinematography are used to hint where are focus should be on in the film and help us plan the story out as it is happening. These elements of camera focus, perspective, and movement are a major importance to Oh God, No… because it lets the audience know where the focus should be, and allows us to understand something that people in the film may not be aware of.