In Cinema Studies class, we are currently tasked with the difficult job of picking a single ‘shot’ from a movie and analysing its composition, meaning and just about every other aspect of it in 1,400 words. It seems like a relatively daunting task that I’m currently at odds with as I try to decide exactly which shot to write on. Will it be a long one that conveys little information? Or should I choose a three second shot that has an interesting composition and context within the film?
Putting aside this task at hand, I wanted to discuss a phenomenon I experienced after viewing one of the films we can choose a shot to analyse from, Zodiac. It was released in 2007, directed by David Fincher, who also directed Fight Club, the Social Network and Se7en. It goes for almost three hours and is information heavy, yet even through these conflicting, confusing and mass amounts of information the audience is exposed to, it is utterly captivating. I think the cinematography and Fincher’s close attention to detail (often taking up to 99 takes to get the shot looking perfect) may have something to do with my fascination with it. Visually, it’s perfect, almost to a fault where the perfection seems entirely artificial.
My point to discussing this film in regard to the aforementioned ‘phenomenon’ is what happened after I watched the film. I spent hours researching the Zodiac Killer that terrorised Northern California, looking at crime scene images and composite sketches, photographs of the letters he sent, reading over police reports and all other public information. I even went as far as to buy one of Robert Graysmith’s (the main character in the film, the author of multiple books on the killer that inspired the film) books online. I formed my own theories on who the killer could be, laid awake until ungodly hours wondering, thinking about all the information I had acquired. I immersed myself in the film, and even after it ended, it had me captivated and hungry for more information. Ironically, the film’s main themes include that of ‘obsession’. The three main characters are obsessed with the case, and it is ultimately their downfall; to Avery’s life, Tosco’s career, and Graysmith’s marriage. I find myself in the predicament where I too and obsessed.
Perhaps it is my obsessive tendencies that lead me to this utter engrossment in the subject matter; I’ve always been the kind of person to watch a film or television series and then read everything there is to know about it; the plot, the cast, watch the interview, how it was filmed, the fictional backstories, etc. But, under the assumption that this kind of captivation is common with most media consumers, it makes me wonder. Why do we become so enthralled with what we see that we feel compelled to know more? What qualities to a media text make us become tied up in the characters, storylines and background that we become near obsessed with every aspect, with even the most subtle of eye movements making us think something extremely important has been communicated through that movement when in fact the actor was just blinking?
I believe that the subject matter is an important factor in creating this phenomenon, but is not the be-all and end-all. The naturalism of the filming and editing (Fincher’s film may seem artificially perfect, but simultaneously the way it is filmed and sequenced is extremely natural; conversations on the phone are filmed just as they would be experienced, not in some over exaggerated ‘cinematic’ way.) could be another factor. Maybe the main factor that I came to the conclusion made me so utterly caught up in the story was both how different the narrative was to that I experience in my own life, as well as (in this particular case) the fact that it was based off a true story; this could happen to your average joe, it was real and tangible for but a moment in time.
What do others think about this? Is this a common phenomenon, and why do others think it happens?
