Our assignment was:

You will now review the clip three times.

1. Before watching the first time, slide the volume on the clip (or on your computer) all the way down. Take notes on the visual aspects of the clip. Look for camera angles, cuts, how many times the camera switches view, the quality of light. Look for the ways the camera tells, guides the story.
2. Now turn the volume up, but play it without looking at the screen; just tune into the audio. Take notes on the pacing of the dialogue, the spaces in the the audio, the use of music or sound effects (think back to our work earlier on listening to audio).
3. Finally, watch the scene with the audio as normal. Pay attention to something you may have missed the first time or how the elements you saw in the first two steps work together.

VIDEO ONLY:

I noticed that as Batman was interrogating the Joker, the camera was always level with the Joker but sometimes looked up to Batman. (This made Batman look superior) During the interrogation the camera kept cutting back and forth between Batman and the Joker (rarely showing them both in the same screen). Towards the end when they were fighting the camera was consistently looking up to Batman and down to the Joker. (Clearly making Batman dominate to the Joker, I don’t think I have ever paid attention to the details of the camera angle before)

AUDIO ONLY:

This scene begins with banging sound effects and without actually seeing what was happening on the screen it sounded very strange. Then there was a little dialogue and more sound effects. I noticed that the spacing of the audio seemed more spaced out than I remember (I felt like it was all unfolding very slowly) Also, when just listening to the audio I noticed that when the Joker was talking there was strange background music playing (I never noticed this when watching the movie). Just listening to the audio was strange for a movie I have seen a few times, even though I had seen it I heard and noticed things for the first time while listening to the audio only.

VIDEO AND AUDIO:

The sound effect definitely made complete sense when watching the action that went along with them. Also when watching and listening, I did not notice and awkward pauses between audio (This is weird because the audio is EXACTLY the same, I guess it helped to have something to watch during the pauses) I did notice the music this time, but only because I was listening for it.

This assignment was really cool. I loved reading Ebert’s information about movie making techniques. Most of the ideas made total sense to me, I had just never thought about it before. Watching this scene 3 times and 3 different ways really helped draw out the details!