Final Scene

Midterm: Shot-by-Shot Analysis

Film Title: Road to Perdition

Director: Sam Mendes

DP: Conrad L. Hall

In the film, Road to Perdition, Tom Hanks character, Michael Sullivan, plays an Irish mafia hitman who goes on the run with his son after his wife and younger son are murdered. He discovers that the son of the man who took him in and has been like a father to him, John Rooney (Paul Newman) had killed his family and throughout the film he takes revenge on the various parties who wronged him while protecting his son from becoming the same man he became.

In the scene I've chosen, Sullivan is murdering the protectors Rooney and eventually murders Rooney himself. The scene is set on a rainy street at night.

(1)

In the opening shot of the scene we see figures crowded around the door. They are dressed in black and aren't very well lit. The only source of light is from off screen right and it emanates a golden glow while outside the rain and nighttime make for a grayish color of light.

(2 & 3)

Shots 2 and 3 are a crane shot of the figures leaving the office. They are framed in shot 3 by the two light poles which are the only source of light in the shot. The figures don't have much in the way of definition and seem small in comparison to the lights and the darkness of the night that surrounds them.

(4)

In shot 4, the figures have more definition because of the lighting though the character out front has the most lighting. The street in the background is glistening from the rain and the lamp posts in the right make a diagonal with the characters and are pointing to the car they are headed to.

(5 & 6)

Figures 5 & 6 are of the dead driver in the car from two different angles. In shot 5, we see a figure on the right of the screen peering in the window and in shot 6 the dead man is lit from outside of the car with the majority of the light hitting his neck and his eyes are almost completely hidden from view.

(7)

In shot 7, the character of Rooney continues to peer in the window of the car, yet this time the lamp in the background has lots its white hue and is a shade of brown. The character is framed by the car and the guard holding the umbrella as if is he protected from things to come.

(8)

Shot 8 is a wide shot of the street and all of the characters are barely lit and the light from the lamp posts combined with the wet street reflect light back on them. Its also noteworthy that there are 5 lights in the background, one for each character on the street.

(9 & 10)

In shots 9 and 10, the character of Rooney looks down the street and the eyes is drawn to the center of the frame which is completely black. The lamp on the left, street corner on the right, and the ground below are lit save for the end of the street.

(11 & 12)

In shots 11 and 12, the characters are still hidden in darkness and the main character is framed by the car and a guard while the guard in front of him is being shot.

(13)

The light from the machine gun become visible in shot 13 and this is the only thing visible from the darkness. The person nor the gun are visible and the bullets appear to be coming from nothingness.

(14)

The character, Rooney, turns his back to the ongoing shooting and his face only lit from his left side and his suit is glistening from the rain.

(15 - 17)

Shots 15-17 are a pan of the guards being shot, while Rooney keeps his back turned. The shot focuses on Rooney and his figure stays in the middle of the shot for its duration. His face isn't lit and only the rain on his hat cast any bit of light on him.

(18)

Shot 18 is a wide shot of the dead men that have been killed. Their figures aren't lit and the shadow of Rooney points where the bullets came from though he is facing the opposite direction.

(19 & 20)

In shot 19, we see Sullivan's figure begin to emerge from the dark street. In shot 20, there is a low angle of Sullivan with Rooney framed between Sullivan's leg and the barrel of his machine gun. This angle gives Sullivan the power in the shot. Its of note that there are two street lamps in the background denoting the two surviving characters.

(21 - 24)

In shots 21 - 24, Sullivan emerges from the darkness as the camera zooms in on Rooney, the focus shifts from Rooney to Sullivan in the last shot.

(25 - 33)

Shots 25-33 begin as OTS shots of the actors and then delves into close ups. Each actor only has their face lit. Their clothes are dark, and the background behind them is out of the focus. This is drawing the viewer to the faces of the actors rather than anything else to distract from the gravity of the scene. In shot 32, the gun lights up Sullivan's face and it should be noted that the murder of Rooney is never shown. We only see the angst of Sullivan's face though the darkness of the night surrounds it.

(34 - 36)

Shots 34-36 show Sullivan looking off camera and the subsequent shots reveal that tenants of the apartments have come out to look at the whats taken place. Again, the non-major characters in this scene don't have all of their features in focus. The silhouettes of each individual is the only thing seen. The varying lights from the various apartments are the first change in color the entire scene. The rest of the scene was in various shades of blacks and grays.

(37 - 38)

In the final two shots of the scene Sullivan's character disappears into the night and slowly fades from view in shot 38. The camera is low angle again, to denote the power that Sullivan had. There is a slight glow from the rain bouncing off the pavement in shot 38 as it catches the light from the lamp posts. In the final two shots, there is only one lamp post that is seen, going back to the fact that Sullivan is the lone survivor of the shootout.

Portrait of a Place Afterthoughts

From my portrait of a place assignment, I learned that it takes more than long pan shots to tell a story. I wanted to convey the emptiness of the house but didn’t do so adequately and more or less made a video that a realtor could use for a virtual open house. Seeing the other work that my peers created I saw how to better convey a portrait of both a place and a person. Music or even ambient sound is an integral part of the final product even though dialogue isn’t allowed. Sound was vital to the portrait assignment though the focus was on the visual aspect. I learned from my peers, ways to better tell the story than the way I had. I could have utilized sound more and brought in outside objects to better convey my connection to the house and better tell the story visually.

JVC vs SONY

When I usually prepare to do an assignment I generally pick the camera I’m most comfortable with, and that’s the JVC. I’ve used the SONY cameras once in Professor Schwartz’s class and we had problems with them and he decided we’d only use the JVCs. I use the JVCs in my internship now, so it’s more of a comfort and convenience issue when I choose which camera to use. I prefer shooting to flash cards over tape because of ease of data transfer when I get in the lab. I’ve had problems with the tape decks in 130, but transferring data with the flash cards is much easier. The similarities are that both cameras have the capability to shoot in HD, but the biggest difference to me is their method of recording.

Portrait of a Place

Goals

     My goals in terms of filmmaking are to become either a director, editor or writer for film and possibly television. As of yet, I haven’t nailed down which one I would prefer because I enjoy each one of those aspects of the filmmaking process. I enjoy being in charge and taking something that someone else has written or created and bringing it to fruition and ensuring that their vision of what’s on the page matches what will be seen on screen. I enjoy editing because you take hours and hours of footage and sift through take after take to make something wonderful. Editing is like putting together a 1,000 piece puzzle, you see the individual pieces and have an idea of what the final product will look like, but you have to go on a journey to get there. My final option in terms of filmmaking is to possible become a writer. I enjoy writing and have always been good at it, though I really didn’t like it as much until I got to college. I write poetry and short stories now and would enjoy writing screenplays for a living. A writer is the first one to create an idea or is tasked with developing the overall storyline/plot of a film. When writing the sky is the limit to what you create or imagine, though it can become stressful when you don’t where to go next in a story it’s still a creative process that I enjoy.


     In terms of this class, I am more interested in learning and developing methods of framing a shot. If a shot is framed poorly, it takes away from the final product. I want to be able to visualize what I want to convey and then capture that image the best way possible on film. I also want to learn how to use different cameras so that upon graduation I can show that I’m proficient in using different types of equipment.

Inspiration

The above images not only provoke inspiration or motivation to me artistically but they bring back various emotions that I’ve felt when I was looking for a career path. Certain images remind me of the burden that others had to bear so that I can be where I am today.

The first image of the rusting car reminds me that though our physical bodies don’t rust, we age just the same. Life is too short to delay doing what I enjoy doing. If I wholeheartedly enjoy filming or editing, I should make every effort to either film or edit or learn about either one every day.

The second image is of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, a centuries old sculpture. The sculpture inspires me for two reasons. The first is that the sculpture is still beautiful even though the head is missing. As artists and people in general we place so much emphasis on the face that we forget that the body holds as much beauty and importance as the face does. The second point of emphasis is the sculpture’s clothing is sweeping as if it’s moving forward, as if it’s frozen in time but still in motion. And like this sculpture, film is an art form of beauty in motion.

The third image is of the hands from the movie poster, Jungle Fever, being in an interracial relationship and living in the south isn’t always easy, and images like this stick out to me because it shows that people of different races cannot only coexist and work together, but love one another as well.

This leads to my fourth image of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, two figures of the civil rights movement. Heritage is important in all that I do; I feel that all individuals should take pride in their heritage and ancestry not only from an educational standpoint but from an overall admiration of achievement that people of many different races can coexist in one place. I wouldn’t even be able to attend the University of Alabama had it not been for the work of Rev. King and other prominent civil rights figures.

The last image is perhaps my favorite; it’s of a monk in Vietnam who is burning himself in protest. This man was willing to give his life for his beliefs and as artists we must do the same, but not to the extent of death. Give your all to every shot, every frame, every film project because if you’ve put your soul on the film the audience will see it too.