Shots! Shots! Shots!

Movies are all about the shots. The right shot can make a clip great and the wrong type of shot can ruin the whole movie. Using the correct shot will be the difference between your movie making it and your movie failing. In the reading Film, Space, and Mise-en-scene Dick Bernard talks about all of the different types of shots that are used to provoke certain emotions and to give the movie a certain feel. The wrong type of shot will fail to provide the audience with the feelings that you wish for the audience to feel. Learning how filmmakers use shots changes the way that you perceive films, instead of just being engrossed in the movie, one can intelligently attempt to perceive why the filmmaker is presenting the scene in such a way. This reading really makes you think intensely about your favorite movies and makes you try and explain why certain shots were used in a certain way.

In the film, 13 Hours, many different shots are used. The movie is about the 9/11 attacks on the Libyan embassy in Benghazi that left 5 Americans dead. The movie uses an assortment of shots in order to convey the different emotions that you should feel at different points of the movie. The beginning of the movie is very foreboding and you have a feeling that something bad is going to happen. Toward the end you are left with a feeling of outrage and American pride. The movie trailer switches continuously between action shot footage and informative screens that give brief information on what happened that night and the situation that had been occurring in the area over the past couple of months.

The movie trailer starts with a long wide cut view of the city of Benghazi. The purpose of this scene is to set the stage. It shows how beautiful of a city Benghazi can appear to be. However, soon the trailer takes a dark turn and it turns to close cut clips of the special operators at Benghazi. The tight close up frames help to humanize and make you grow attached to the special operators. Next the camera cuts to a black page with solemn words that help and outline the situation showing with words what the video could not. This shot is very forbidding and screams out that something bad will happen in this movie.

This image shows a medium range shot that is neither a close up nor a far away shot. This shot serves to humanize the operators. Even though the operators are trained killing machines that have killed more human beings then I could ever dream of, this frame shows them as just average everyday americans who are just doing their job to keep their country safe and to go home to see their family. This