RTF 305- Sixth Blog Assignment

During Monday's lecture, Professor Ramirez-Berg spoke about many different types of shots, shot progressions, camera angles, and each of their meanings. With these different shots, a director is able to portray feelings of loneliness, sadness, happiness, confusion, and many other emotions within a scene.

One of my favorite films is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The film depicts the internal struggles that Joel Barish must face while undergoing a procedure to erase his memory of his ex-girlfriend, Clementine Kruczynski. By undergoing the procedure, he must relive every memory from the present to the day that he met Clementine.

Just like in any other great film, the director of Eternal Sunshine, Michel Gondry used different shots to portray different emotions in every scene.

In this scene, Joel Barish, played by Jim Carrey, is dreaming of one of the days he spent with Clementine. After realizing that he doesn't want this procedure done, he is pleading with his doctors to stop doing the procedure. The overhead, high-angle shot used in this scene is a powerful indication of the lack of power that Joel has. He is at the mercy of his doctors, and this shot does a great job of portraying it.

Another type of shot mentioned in Monday's lecture was the low-angle shot. The low-angle shot is used to give power to the given individual. Although this doesn't quite depict the traditional low-angle shot, it is still relatively low, and shows how the doctors have complete control in this scene. The shot is in the point of view of Joel, who is sitting in a seat and is being questioned by his doctors. This shot does double the work by not only giving power to the doctors, but by also taking power from Joel and the audience, who are watching this scene in his point of view.

A third type of shot explained in Monday's lecture was the close up, or extreme close up. The close up is generally used to provide information dealing mostly with emotion. In this scene, Joel has awoken in the middle of his procedure, and is panicking because he was just having a dream about drowning. The close up allows us to see his expression and watered eyes, which in turn depict the panic and pain that he is going through while undergoing this procedure.

As you can see, camera angles and different shots are very powerful tools. They have the ability to depict multiple feelings and emotions, and really have control of setting the mood in films.