Amelie

Amelie

In this short scene, Amelie sees her hopeful lover, Nino, collecting photos under the booth.  Jean-Pierre Jeunet uses a swish pan when Nino bumps into her in order to cause a bit of confusion to the viewer.  The swish pan blurs the frame, highlighting Amelie's anticipation and then disappointment, when Nino treats her like she isn't even standing there, while she is currently obsessing over him.

In this scene, the Amelie shows the homeless blind man what the world around him is like with vision.  She captures the small scents and details of her surrounding through speech, and the camera cuts to the man's face occasionally, marking am action/reaction shot.  The camera cutting to the man's face shows his look of wonder, displaying the magnitude of what Amelie has done for this man in 30 seconds.

In this opening scene, Jean-Pierre Jeunet uses an aerial shot, when panning over the waterfall to Amelie skipping stones.  He also uses tight frames and up close shots to draw attention to the details of her small little pleasures, like cracking the creme bolet or dipping her hand into the seeds.  This makes the viewer almost crave these pleasures, because they can see now the tiny significance of these, so they can feel them for themselves.

In this scene, when Amelie takes her first glance at the Mystery man, Jean-Pierre Jeunet uses anticipatory movement when Amelie looks down and identifies this man.  This all being in slow motion, captures her very exited reaction.  Later in the movie the viewer finds out that she was happy because when she looked down, she saw a toolbox.  This meant he was a booth repair man, solving the mystery.  This anticipatory movement emphasizes her idea which brings her closer to Nino in the end.

In this clip, Jean-Pierre Jeunet uses the fast-motion type of mechanical distortion of film.  It encapsulates the finale of the built up emotional tension between the two thought the movie, because it makes the scene seem like it has been going on for longer, like it happens often now that they are together.  Difficult to explain but the fast motion makes it as if this deep intimacy is a common occurrence, and it will last forever.

Secret Life of Walter Mitty

The Royal Tenenbaums

In The Royal Tenenbaums, Wes Anderson creates a surreal world with a highly contrasted and well thought out color scheme giving it an artificial feel.  In this powerful scene, Margot walks dramatically towards her brother in slow motion, marking the rebirth of their relationship.  The dominant in the frame is Margot's face, with dark eyeliner contrasted from the rest of the bright frame with natural light.  This exaggerates her complex personality that is held inside her throughout the movie.  Her hairstyle as always is the same as when she was little, showing her longing for what she was in the past.  The green in the green line bus symbolizes a rebirth, referring to the meeting of her and Richie once again.

In yet another powerful scene, Richie attempts suicide with a razor blade on his wrists and then passes out.  The whole scene is dominated by the color blue, exaggerating his depression.  He also wears his Fila tennis shirt, how he longs for the past professional tennis player he once was.  But, in this scene, he cuts off all his hair, takes off his headband, and shaves his beard, indicating he is letting go of that alternate person.  He is also sitting down slouched, making him seem vulnerable and less masculine.  Lastly, this is one of the only frames throughout the movie that isn't symmetrical, showing that Wes Anderson is trying to differentiate this scene from the rest of this weird reality, making the experience seem real.

Mystic River

In this scene, Jimmy's light face is juxtaposed against the dark uniforms worn by the police officers aggressively harnessing his desperate effort to see his daughter's body.  This is dominant contrast, isolating the emotions in his face to differentiate himself from the other beings in the crowd.  This along with the godseye angle gives the viewer a unique and emotional perspective on the heart-wrenching scene.

In this early scene, David Fincher uses parallelism later in the movie so the viewer can make the connection between when Dave was kidnapped as a kid and when Jimmy and the Savage brothers take him away  This is another method of getting the viewer to perceive the dominant(Dave), as trapped. Because he was so innocent when it happened to him as a kid, the parallelism helps him seem obviously innocent later on in the movie when he is taken in the back of a car again,

As Jimmy looks across the parade in this scene, he sees Sean point a finger-gun at his head as to say "gotcha".  Though this action can be interpreted differently, the cinema technique of depth is the same.  It is used to focus in correctly on Sean, despite all of the commotion going on around him in the parade.  This highlights the effect of Sean's action, but still gives it the view from Jimmy, to seem distant and unreachable, which is what Jimmy wants considering Sean knows he killed Dave.

This frame shows one of the men who kidnapped and raped Dave when he was a boy.  It uses closed form because the red hat sticks out from the rest of the frame, showing the importance of Dave later on in the movie.  The closed from technique is calculated function of an object to give more meaning to the character or object as a hole, and this red does just that.  It shows that he will be the one to be singled out and ultimately killed by one of his friends, just because he is a bit different.

This is the classic shot using the film technique of mise en scene.  The specific placement of the booth, the table, and later one of the Savage brothers all around Dave makes dave seemed trapped, and instantly dominated by those around him.  Also, the empty shot glasses suggest that he is intoxicated, effecting his decision making and perception bad situations.

Usual Suspects & Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

In the Usual Suspects, Bryan Singer mysteriously twists the viewer's mind into believing the false tale of Verbal, when 
verbal is truly Keyser Soze.  In this scene, it begins with a close up shot on Verbal's face.  This makes verbal seem innocent have nothing to hide.  Typically villians in movies are shown mysteriously with long shots, typically too dark to see.  Since Verbal has none of these going for him, he is perceived to be innocent.Verbal tells the intense tale on how Keyser got his notorious name, in which fast film stock is used which makes the viewer not sure what is going on and feel disoriented, making Keyser's image in the mind not clear.  Also, during the flashback, high contrast lighting is used as Keyser is walking away from the burning buildings, to make the fires seem more bright and dangerous, and hiding Keyser's face and further darkening his image, while the fire making seem like he's escaping hell. 

In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Michel Gondry uses confusion and a reversed script making the film hard to follow yet quite capturing. One of the main techniques he uses is the use of cool colors vs.warm colors.  In this scene Clementine's hair is a bright red, which highlights her energetic and open personality, versus the cool colors that Joel always wear giving a more closed-personality vibe.  The medium shots used in this scene are close enough to capture the enticing memories of Joel, but far enough away to factor in the symbolic book store with disappearing books, perfectly done by Gondry. This scene also uses formalist light preference (artificial light) to make the whole room have light, rather than have shadows. This makes the memory seem less scary than some of the preceding memories, giving the relationship a revamp of what it ended like.  It shows he doesn't want to forget her and the light makes her seem much more welcoming than in other scenes.