Shot Analysis of The Bourne Ultimatum




The first thing that caught my eye with this video was the establishing shot right at the start. This is typical of most films of this genre, which open showing a shot of the person seeking revenge but keeping some element of mystery- here they have done this by keeping the shot very plain with little detail and only showing us the back of the person.
The shots start of slow, and are intermittent with text (explaining that the persons loved ones have been murdered etc.) Then the editor has sped the shots up, building tension leading up to the text that shows he is really out for revenge (his past destroyed etc.)
The slow shots have very little sound, with only sounds at the highlights between shots as the shots change from one to the next. The sound then picks up as the shots get quicker. For example the gun shots, the car going over the barrier into the water. Then getting quieter again when the car has entered the water and they are under the water (woman drowning). Then the there is a moment of silence before the person we assume is the protagonist starts to speak. All of this sound is used to build the tension and fully displays perhaps the main genre of the film - by using lots of action shots in a short space of time, the target audience can see this film will have a lot of action, due to the fact that film trailers and especially teaser trailers would take the best shots from throughout the film.

Weezer- Buddy Holly

No real storyline to it, just teenagers in café dancing, enjoying the music and socializing.

There is a limited amount of special effects used in this video, in fact there is only one- and even that one is extremely subtle. Spike Jonze has taken shots from an old, very well known TV programme ‘Happy Days’ and used layers to put the band into these shots. However Spike Jonze did this in a very impressive way- right at the end when the song finishes the cafe owner from the original show actually interacts with the band: talking to them, looking directly at them, and possibly the most impressive of all- they even manage to get the cafe owner in the old footage of the programme to touch one of the band members in the new footage on the arm. This is done so well throughout the whole video though that you can't actually tell this has been done. It's like the actors from the programme were actually recruited to be in the video. This is a parody and also a form of intertextuality.

Brief

For my Media Studies A2 Coursework we have been put into groups to create either a film trailer of no more than 2 minutes, a magazine front cover advertising the trailer and a poster or a music video, a magazine advert and a cover. 

I will start by analyzing a couple of both products and then my group and I will choose together which one to use for our project.