Film description
“Inception” is a science fiction film about dreams. Cobb and his partner Arthur are experienced “extractors”, the people who can extract secrets and information from the target while the target is dreaming. Although their extraction from a Japanese businessman Saito fails, Saito believes that they have the ability to perform “inception” – plant an idea in other’s subconscious. Saito wants Cobb to plant an idea into Robert Fisher, a commercial rival of Saito, to dissolve his father’s company and promises that he can use his influence to clear Cobb’s murder charge if this mission success. As Cobb wants to live with his children, he accept the job and form his team to perform “inception” when Robert takes a flight to Los Angeles.
The role, function and use of music in the film from cultural perspective
The film opens with “Half Remembered Dream”. It easily draws audiences’ attention as the brass instruments keeps repeating the same 1-2 rhythm and the sound becomes louder and louder. The brass part is getting slower later. As time flows slower when dreaming, it can be considered as a hint that Cobb is actually inside a dream when he is lying on beach at the opening. Similar brass rhythm is also found in other scenes when characters are going to wake up. It functions like a countdown and when the music stops, the characters open their eyes.
“The Dream is collapsing” is an action cue. It is used when the van is dropping into the river in the first level of dream during the inception mission. In the scene, characters have to rush up different levels of dreams in order to escape. Otherwise, they will be trapped. The music starts with electric guitar. It sets up a feel that the situation is getting worse and the characte...
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...fect used in film
In the film, characters have to travel different levels of a dream so audiences can see scenes are happened in various locations. It may not be easy for an audience to notice that whether the scene is happened in reality, inside a dream or inside different levels of a dream by just watching the pictures. In fact, sound effect is used in the film to solve this problem.
There is change in pitch in the surrounding sound when the characters travels from one level of dream to another. When they travel to a deeper level of dream, the pitch is lower. The pitch becomes higher again when they travels back to the upper level of the dream. Beside pitch changing, there is also change in speed. As characters experience slower time-flow than that of upper level in a dream, surrounding sound also slows down. And when they go back to upper level, sounds speed up.
First of all, diegetic sounds and ambient sound effects are integral in creating tension and apprehension in the film, as “ …sound plays a critical role in determining how audiences react to images.” (p.234) At the background of the opening shot the audience hears the distant roll of thunder; gradually its sound increases and reaches its maximum, causing fear of impending jeopardy. As the tension escalates, the volume of the sound rises, we hear the roaring of dancers’ drums, and its sound is intentionally exaggerated, the tempo of music speeds up as well as the dance of the indigenous performers of the ritual sacrifice to gods. The alteration of volume and tempo of the sound heightens suspense and makes the audience anticipate with anxiety the forthcoming shots.
At the start of the film, Marker put in this familiar noises of the planes to tell us that it was situated at the airport. Without the use of the sound in this particular scene, it would be just a photo montage whereby the viewers wouldn't probably feel the present of planes. Music helps to establish a sense of the pace at each of the accompanying scene and sometimes overlap voice-over musical score. At the beginning of the film, the images of the war torn Paris was accompanied by some sort of choir music that sounded very depressing and melancholic which then adds to the atmosphere. With the film starting off with this eerie atmosphere could also foreshadow a depressing storyline later on, that the protagonist meets his own death. Furthermore with the deliberate use of music in various part of the film, it kind of foreshadow the tragic ending whereby the fixated image of him as a child watching someone die at the
...vision and music. Therefore the movie begins on a simple level. The viewer is introduced to many of the central elements of the film in a purely visual way – Donnie, his family, and the American suburbs. The music makes this an isolated and surreal presentation; the viewer sees the family from the outside before seeing them from the inside. The song also has a feeling of apprehension and of magnitude which makes what is seen seem more significant and mysterious.
The film is about change and every element of sound functions to reinforce that theme. The opening sequence uses an audio recording of a prisoner’s interrogation to transcend space and time. The scene bridges sound from the actual interrogation, where the sound is synchronized with the prisoner speaking the words, to a training session for future interrogators, where the sound is now simultaneous with a recording from the interrogation. The actuality of this recording is used to instruct the students in the art of extracting information and confessions from enemies of the state. The theme of change is asserted when on...
The Seven Five is a documentary that frivolously reexamines the crimes of Officer Michael Dowd and his team of dirty cops. Dowd is a former New York police officer who was stationed in the 75th Precinct in Eastern New York. The film presents the nefarious deeds of these officers via original interviews with Dowd and his former comrades as they recount their crimes and explain the reasoning behind their unethical behaviors. While working as a cop, he embellished his income through criminal exploits which include stealing guns, drugs, money, and eventually he began working in drug rings selling cocaine. Dowd’s felonious activities were extremely lucrative and earned him approximately $4,000 a week. Dowd was eventually arrested in 1992,
In the title sequence the music starts of very quiet and slow and as the music speeds up it builds anxiety within the audience because they want to know what going to happen. It also builds a horrific tension within the audience; also it shows the camera from the shark’s point of view in the sea which is an effective way to build tension because the audience...
The sound used in this scene are all diegetic, the sounds of gunfire and explosions show that the characters in this scene are in very real danger of being shot or blown up, this helps the viewer grow a more personal connection with the characters since the scene is towards the end of the film, the viewer has developed a personal connection with the characters and do not want them to die. The diegetic sounds of military personnel can be heard, this is used to show the urgency that the military personnel have to get The Sapphires and Dave out of the dangerous situation.
When you were in high school or just around town, did you ever see a mentally challenged person be treated like dirt? If so, then you should see the movie "Radio." In one part of the movie "Radio", James Robert "Radio" Kennedy went around the high school football field every day. One day, Coach Harold Jones invited him inside the gates. The football players took advantage of Radio and locked him in the equipment shed while the players threw footballs at it. After Coach Jones unlocked the shed, Radio, played by Cuba Gooding Jr. ran out of the field.
The unconscious has a huge part in shaping human behavior, yet many overlook the idea behind it. This is an idea that maybe these unconscious behaviors can be used to alter the future or the past mistakes or anything in between for that matter. Everyone dreams at some point in their life and what many people don’t realize is that dreams usually develop from past experiences or from actual occurrences and thoughts. This means that if someone happened to see a guy wearing a cowboy hat with a feather in it, in one of their dreams, they most likely saw this person at some point in their life and may not have even realized it. It is impossible to create a new face in a dream. In Inception (2009), Christopher Nolan portrays Dom Cobb as a special operative whose life mirrors a Freudian psychological reality in which his repressed guilt leads to self-destructive behavior.
...successful collaboration of sound, colour, camera positioning and lighting are instrumental in portraying these themes. The techniques used heighten the suspense, drama and mood of each scene and enhance the film in order to convey to the spectator the intended messages.
The film starts out with orchestral music, and shows James Dean's character, Jim, drunk on the ground of a sidewalk. The sound of a police siren is heard and used as a transition into the next scene that takes place, understandably, in a police station. While in the police station, Jim is yelling along with the sound of the siren, and humming loudly to give the impression that he is drunk. At one point in the scene he is brought into another room with an officer, and begins to punch a desk. The sound effects are loud, and the he pauses, and music begins again when he begins to hurt. Again, a siren is played at the transition to the next scene. However, for the most part, score music is played during all transitions.
A key aspect that was used in this scene was the way that the director builds and releases tension when required using the sound track. This is used as Tim gets up to put his clothes in his draws. The slow, high pitch music in the background started to become more high pitch and louder as the light falls and breaks, the door then opens revealing a shadowing figure as the music comes to its climax. This non-Diegetic music serves the purpose of amplifying the emotion and tension of the atmosphere in this scene in the way that diegetic sounds are restricted from. The use of the monotonous, string based, music served as a way of emitting a
Sound is an incredibly relevant part of filmmaking. Although often misunderstood, it helps to generate a more realistic episode by recreating the sonic experience the scene needs. Its main goal is to enhance the emotions that each section is trying to convey by adding music and effects alongside moving images. Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960), is one of the most popular films of the XX Century (Thomson, 2009). Commonly recognised as a masterpiece for its cinematographic, editing and musical values, it changed cinema forever by “playing with darker prospects (…) of humanity such as sex and violence (Thomson, 2009)”. This paper will analyse the sound effects used in the shower scene and its repercussions
In society, dreams can evoke lots of fascination; furthermore for many years philosophers and scientists have tried to resolve the riddle; why do we dream? As human beings we devote so much time to dreaming, so much so that we don’t remember many of our dreams that get disoriented in the realms of us sleeping. Chances are of those dreams we do remember, tend to be difficult to understand; therefore, leading us to wonder why we even dream at all? Throughout the progression of time, many theories have been presented, the two most famous ones being: the psychoanalytic theory of dreaming and the activation synthesis model of dreaming. The psychoanalytic theory of dreaming by Sigmund Freud’s suggests that dreams are nothing but our unconscious longing, judgment, and incentive. On the other hand the activation synthesis model of dreaming by J. Allan Hobson suggests that dreams are a result neural impulses that occur during your dreams, that trigger different areas in the brain which result in dreams that he claimed to be the “most creative state” we as human beings take part in. Based on my own series of dreams, my own personal theory is very similar to that of Sigmund Freud; conversely, I believe dreams strive to do what we as human beings struggle to do, which is make up our minds. Dreams serve as little flares that clarify our conflicts; likewise to Sigmund Freud our dreams do include our unconscious desires, but these are only present to show us as human beings that the answers to our conflicts are already present; present in the back of our minds, secluded from everything else.
This film takes advantage of lots of short quick cuts in all of the action scene to keep the audience 's attention. The most used shot the tight shot to show character reactions and thought and decisions help convey a characters thoughts without having to state it outright. Most of the images on film are open, setting up the next shot for the camera to move next. They also use pan shots to show entrances and changes in location and create the illusion of motion in Matrix with it. The structural rhythm of the film is very quick helping with that action feeling. It play with the juxtaposition of the Matrix and real world. The film also frequently uses match cutting to drop in agents where people used to