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1. Back to the Future- analysis
In our lesson we had to analyse the film back to the future directed by Robert Zemeckis. We looked
particular at the cinematography used within the first 5 minutes of the film. I discovered that back to
the future uses a wide variety of shots that make the audience feel a certain way. For instance there
is a tracking shot leading up to something, which builds suspense and intensity.
During the opening scene it starts by panning a close up of a clock, which we should soon discover is
important as the movie is about time traveling. As time goes on, the camera starts to pan left to
right showing a wider variety of clocks. Leading on from this the camera carries on panning from left
to right and stops on a newspaper article which has a big significance to do with one of the
characters. After this the camera then continues to pan, while doing this it stops and zooms into the
new on the TV, where the diegetic sound of the women talking come from. The reason for the
camera to zoom in is to enhance the importance of what she is saying.
Shortly after, the front door opens and we are introduced by another main character and another
characters dog. We are introduced by this boy by only showing a close up of his legs, shows and his
skateboards. The person enters the house and immediately shouts the name “Einstain”. This is done
while the camera carries on a low angle showing the skateboards being pushing into the table, the
shot was wide shot at this point as they kept the kitchen in the background, but you could also see
underneath the table which was hiding the plutonium box (relating to the TV news report).
We still haven’t seen the boy’s face, as they have only been using low shots in the opening scene to
maintain suspense. The boy heads over to the amps and speakers, then grabs his guitar. At this point
the cinematography is mainly extreme close up shots. The cameras then zooms out to a wide shot
resulting in showing the room and the boy stood in front of the speaker. There is then another
extreme close up of the guitar pic as his strums down on the string. As a result of this, there is then
the diegetic sound created by the guitar. Because they haven’t yet shown the boy’s face emphasises
how important and main he is in this film. This also is apparent when they do eventually show his
face, as they use a mid-shot for quite a long time.
Using a tracking and panning shot allows us to get clue to what the characters are like. This is
because the pan shows so much about the area in which the character lives. We see that it is mess
and that there are loads of weird inventions, from this we gather that the character is an inventor or
doctor type person.