Comparison between Eighteen and Gone GirlQuestion 1

Establishing Shots in Gone Girl

long shot of Eighteen’s main location

Establishing shots

• For both films, establishing shots and long shot was used to show the audience the location of the crime. In Eighteen, the long shot is used to show the audience where the “crime” of the scene will be happening. And in Gone Girl, multiple establishing shots was used in order to give “hints” of the crime in the film, as these shots might represent that the different locations used was to show where a crime has happened or to show places where it is closely related to the crime 

• By replacing an establishing shot with a long shot has helped us to increase the continuity of the scene as we are able to have Ali to interrupt the straight when we are revealing the location, and if an establishing shot was used in this scene, this will lead to the tension of the audience being lowered as the entrance of Ali will need to be shown from another shot. And with the longshot we are able to slowly build up the pace of the scene as well as building up the tension of the audience at the same time.

Representation of Female

Gone Girl Eighteen

Representation of Female

• In those to shots, it shows a completely different representation of female, where in Gone girl, the female character was treated like an object as the male character was gently patting the female’s head. Where on the other hand, in Eighteen, the female cop is leading the way as well as giving instructions to the male cop, this shows that she is the leader in these 2 roles. And these 2 shots represents Laura Mulvey’s male gaze theory and David Gauntlett’s empowered female theory respectively.

• In gone girl, the protagonist was introduced with the male voice over in the scene, however all the character in the opening sequence was clearly being introduced in each scene where dialogue applies.

Opening title sequence

• In Gone girl, the credits starts appears in the beginning of the film and the Title was shown on the first establishing shot, and was ended during the display of establishing shots. However, in Eighteen, the title sequence appears after scene 2 of the film and after the title appears, and through this, we can see the difference between Gone Girl and in Eighteen.

• Gone girl’s opening sequence maintained a slow pace and by having credits appearing before the title will not affect the physical feeling of the audience, however in Eighteen as it is slowly building up the tension of the audience this means that if credits are introduced before the title appears this will affect the tension of the audience as thy are very likely to be distracted.

Ending shot of the opening sequence

Gone Girl Eighteen

Ending shot of the opening sequence

• In both opening sequence ends with a shot of a still object, this show the audience that the object shown in focus is very important to the crime of the film, and by showing this still object, this satisfies the question solving section of Maslow’s hierarchy where the audience will need to think and “solve” what is the point of the still shot of the object.

• However in Eighteen, the pair of red heels has a character of the Macguffin of the entire plot of the film as the introduction of the pair of red heels has lead to a important change of the overall plot.

Sound

• In both film, a similar style of score was being used as the score used in both films is used to connote suspense as well as building the tension of the audience. However the score used in Gone Girl has a overall slow pace, while compared to the two different pace of the first and second part of the opening, the scores used in Eighteen is classified as a more rhythmic score while Gone Girl’s score is more like a orchestral score.

Pace and Editing

• In Gone Girl, we can clearly see that they have a slower pace as the opening of the film is very relax, the overall opening sequence used a lot of slow and long takes which helps to allow the audience to blend in to the film easily.

• However, in Eighteen fore the first and second scene of the opening sequence there are a lot of shot takes which helps building up a fast pace and building up the tension of the audience at the same time

Settings of the opening sequence

Gone Girl Eighteen

Settings of the opening sequence

• In the setting of the conversation scene in Gone Girl, a bar was chosen to be the location of this scene, this show that the film is mainly targeted to a older age group compared to Eighteen, where the setting in conversation scene has chosen to you the room of the character and this clearly show that there is a age difference in between two films as they both have different social locations