For anyone who hasn’t seen 12 Angry Men, well first of all you are missing out. The movie is based around a dissenting juror in a murder trial slowly manages to convince the others that the case is not as obviously clear as it seemed in court.

Here is a trailer:

Our weekly assignment for DS106 is to write a blog post involving one of your favorite movies by identifying key scenes that use some of the elements described by Roger Ebert in his article “How to Read a Movie”

I decided this picture was a good example of the “golden ratio” At first, I doubted the theory, but than after continually stopping the movie at certain times, it is true. For anyone, who doesn’t know about the ratio Ebert describes it ” A person to the right of that position will seem more positive; to the left, more negative. This picture follows the rule except for the main guy is slightly put on the left side.

Another thing that Ebert talks about that is true in this picture is: “Extreme high angle shots make characters into pawns; low angles make them into gods. Brighter areas tend to be dominate over darker areas, but far from always”

The angle of the shot in this picture is looking up at them.

This was another picture that really struck me when I saw it. Even while watching the movie in real time, this moment of the movie, brief, yes, is still really important. They only show the witness twice. The first time they show him it just from a distant, but than you get this really close up view, and it shows a lot. He is perfectly centered in the middle of the frame. The shadows do a good job of leaving it in a gloomy mood. The picture shows his age really well, and does a great job being submissive. Last, the high angle shot really does make him appear like he is a pawn.

The genre/TV trope would be the Orgy Of Evidence. By definition according to Orgy of Evidence, it is a common tactic for fictional criminals (especially murderers) is to plant false clues at the scene of their crime: either to deliberately frame someone else or merely to throw suspicion away from themselves. Sometimes, however, they take things too far and the sheer amount of clues they plant has the opposite effect. No detective will believe that any criminal could be so careless as to leave that much incriminating evidence behind.

This does not follow exactly the genre, but it is close. Before the main guy, Henry Fonda, convinces everyone of the erroneous evidence, all the jurors claim throughout the movie, that there is too much evidence to not convict him of being guilty.

A look into Fonda picking apart the evidence