Film analysis part 1

 Film: The Prisoner

Analysis: The mise en scene of this opening sequence is very fast paced, cooky, and abstract. In the opening sequence we are given a storyline of this buisness man in London that drives a wacky car, resigns from his job and goes back home to pack his bags when he has been followed home and someone fills his house with this sleeping powder. He passes out and wakes up in this foreign castle-like place where he trys to run away on the beach but realizes hes trapped. We also see another point-of-view of what we can guess is of the man who kidnapped him, in this view we see the buisness man being watched in this headquarter-supervillan style office. As for the cinematography, the clips in this opening sequence they are very choppy and fast paced. The cutting on action clips is to depict how fast paced the car is going and to show he's in a rush to his workplace. We get a wide, high angle, and close up shots of his feet to view him walking down this dark hallway only seeing his shadow to get this impression he has buisness to attend. It then shows a low angle, mid shot of him swinging opening this door to what seems to be his bosses office where he turns in his letter of resignation and swiftly leaves because it jumpcuts back to him driving his car back home. The camera then zooms into a file cabinet labled resigned. We then see a typewriter type the letter "x" over in image of the buisness man and fades back to a close up of the man driving. It transitions back to his image being placed back into the file cabinet. We finally make it to what seems to be this mans house where he gets out of his car leaving the frame and the camera dollys in on a car following him. We flip to the inside of his home where he is pacing around packing a passport into his suitcase when we see the man that followed him walk up to the door and shoot this white powder into his home where he passes out. He wakes up in his home but he's in a foriegn place, we get a close up of his face where he seems to be confused. The film reveals this evil lair like office where the main character is being monitored. The film jumps to the main character running though this foreign place trying to escape, running all the way to the beach trying to escape. The final clip is a dolly out of him stranded in this foriegn place. Overall the the cinematography of the openning sequence is very faced paced. The clip is 5 minutes long but feels shorter for how fast paced the clips are. Same with the editing, tons of cutting on action and fast transitions. As for sound, theres no talking in this opening squence only music and sound effects. Theres a beachy, upbeat, fastpaced, song playing in the background of the first half only using sound effects to enhance clips like footsteps when hes walking, the sound of the engine when hes driving and noise of lightning bolts instead of a voice being used to talk. Once the main character has been kidnapped the music changes and we actually hear a voice this time. It's the supervillan.

Comparison: This film is similar to our film because we are following a similar concept of someone being kidnapped. To contrast out character is being kidnapped by being grabbed while in this film hes put to sleep by mystery smoke. In our film the storyline only goes as far as the kidnapping while the clip shows where this man is taken and a more elaborate storyline.