Past Student Work Analysis: The Taken.

The film opening begins with superimposed text on the screen saying AS PRO with a mountain in background. This is showing the audience the production company for the video.  The film begins with some moving out of focus orbs of light being blended with some footage of a car driving at night to set an eerie tone for the film meanwhile in the background a harpsichord is being played on a high scale to give even more of an eerie effect. I think this is a very simple but effective effect to have the two video clips fading in and out over each other. It’s a very powerful effect that gives you an idea of what is going on without actually showing you fully. Next we see a girl looking over her shoulder and then walking down a dark tunnel meanwhile we hear a voice over saying  “Same girl, Same path, Same strange silhouette” this is giving a hint to the audience that this girl may be the central character in this plot of this film. A close up of the girl laying in a river with marks all over her body also signifies that something may have happened to the central character in the film but also sets a narrative enigma for the audience to ask what has happened to her and how did it happen. The camera then fades into what looks to be a drunken person getting out of a taxi and making his way to the entrance of the house. At this point the background music has crescendoed intensifying the scene and signifying the something key in the film is going to happen. We see the man then fall into his bed but still having the dream of the girl checking over her shoulder and walking into the dark tunnel, at this point the film is signifying that these two characters are linked in some way but we haven’t found out how just yet.  We then hear the girl scream and then turning around and running away meanwhile the man is still in his bed having this dream. The girl runs through the woods and then the camera cuts to the man in the bed again and super imposed titles of ‘THE TAKEN’ appear on screen in a bold red font while the music fades out. The camera then slowly pans down in the river and we see legs and while the camera is panning to the right we see the girl that was shown in the beginning in black and white lying in the river with all the same marks but this time the scene is in colour possibly signifying to us that at the beginning of the opening this was only a dream but now this lady lying wounded in the water is actually reality. As a group we really liked the camera shots and editing in this film opening but we found it hard to follow the story on the first time of watching it as we had to watch it more than once to fully understand what was going on as because of the constant cutting from setting to setting. This cutting looks cool but at first it’s hard to follow the narrative.

Post By:
Josh Barrett
Metehan Hizli
Josh Shea