In the film Frankenstein by James Whales (1931), I have noticed a few things that caught my interest when the film was played during class.

Lighting:

As a black and white film, the proper use of lighting is important. The film brings a very dark and grim look for the characters, which makes it ideal for a horror monster film. This brings a more intensive feel as the director controlled the lighting for the highlights and the shadows well.

The proper use of lighting brings out the characters in the film, creating a more attractive look for the film, captivating the audience’s attention.

The Story:

Based on the short 20 minutes clip that was played during class, I found the film was straight forward and on point. The introduction to the film was definitely different where a person was warning us that the film will be frightening. Watching it from modern day perspective, gives a mild humour for the audience.

The story on the other hand was very well compose, and simple to understand. I felt that the movie was spoon feeding the audiences the story. A scene of 3 person nodding was taken in 3 separate shots was shown as an agreement that they wanted to enter, which could be easily taken with one wide angle shot. This comes to show that the audiences needed to been spoon fed the story in order to understand the film.

My understanding from this is that audiences from different time have different ways of understanding film. It is important that the director knows his target audience in order to present his/her film.