textual analysis: Mission Impossible II

Tuesday 9th September 2014

Textual analysis

Mission impossible II

 

The location of this opening scene looks like it is set on a real life location. It is based in the middle of a desert, with a high, big rocks and cliffs. As I did a further research to find out where the location of this scene is, I found out it is set in a place in USA called Dead Horse Point State Park.

 

At the very start of the opening scene, there is a man climbing a big rock, in the middle of a desert. In this scene, they used an aerial shot, this is to show a view from above, and it could be a place or a scene. It shows everything that is happening from a bird’s eye view. It shows the audience everything that is happening at once. A man climbing a big rock, in the middle of nowhere could also tell us that he’s challenging himself by ‘free climbing’ as he’s not using any props (e.g. ropes) or any help but only using his hands and feet and a bit of powder. This also means that he had lots of practised to be able to this kind of dangerous activity.




 

Later on in the opening scene, they’ve used ‘slow motion’ when he jumped from side of the rock to the other side of the rock. They’ve used slow motion because slow motion can be used to raise the dramatic tension in a scene, they keep the audience at the edge of their sears longer, and the audience crave to know what happens next. In this case, the audience want to know whether he would fall off the rock or not, as he’s jumping from one side of the rock to the other side of the rock, on a high height.

 

As he still climbing the rock and he is higher up, we can hear the sound of the wind. This is called ‘ambient sound’. Ambient sound is everyday sound or background sound. For this instant, the wind in the background sound in this scene. The audience can hear the sound of the wind strongly. This then tell us that he’s in the middle of nowhere and very high up on the rock.

 

As we get further into the opening scene, we will get to the point where he’s hanging off the rock, similar to Jesus on a cross. Jesus represents Christian religion. This suggest to us that the actor/character is in danger as he’s hanging off the rock and also, when Jesus was on the cross, it was when Jesus got tortured before people killed him. So with this scene, it gives me as an audience an idea that he’s about to face a serious danger. 

 

Next, we move on to the camera shot. Meanwhile the character is hanging off the rock; the camera is zoomed into his face, which is called the ‘close up’ shot. We use close up shot, in a certain feature or part of the subject takes up most of the frame. In this part, it’s a close up on the character’s face. This is to reveal who the main character is, to present to the audience who the character is. Close up to a person emphasizes their emotional state. A close up exaggerates facial expressions which covey emotion. The audience is drawn into the subject’s personal space and shares their feelings.

We can also notice a ‘high angle’ shot when the character was close to fall off the rock. The camera positioned high looking down at a subject, which is the man who’s climbing the rock placing the audience in a position of dominance, making the subject appear submissive or powerless.

One of the sounds they've used is 'theme tune'. theme tune is a piece of music that introduces a film or a TV programme and sets the mood of the genre that will follow. So in this case, the theme tune comes up, nearly at the end of the opening scenes when Ethan Hunt who is the main character got given a mission to be done.