Scene Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8guAnshoMk

The film I have chosen to perform a scene analysis on is Quentin Tarantino’s 2012 Academy Award-winning spaghetti western Django Unchained, starring Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, and Leonardo DiCaprio. The film is set two years before the Civil War in which Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave, accompanies a German bounty hunter named Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) on a mission to capture the vicious Brittle brothers. The scene being analysed is from the very start of the film in which we are first introduced to Django and Schultz acquires him.

The scene takes place at night in a dark forest lined by tall trees, and the hard light cast onto the ground as shown in the below screenshot is from the moons ambient lighting, casting hard shadows off the trees onto the ground. This is used to give the effect of the This provides most of the fill lighting for the scene particularly in the close up shots such as the one above evident by the cool area of exposure on Schultz’ shoulder. To compensate for the lack of natural light, working from both a practical and narrative standpoint, hand-lamps are held by the characters and act as spotlights that has a very tight beam allowing for a highly directional key light. This is used to draw the viewers eye to whatever the lamp is illuminating, in this case, Django. Had the scene been lit more generously, such as daylight, particularly in the above shot, our eye would be drawn potentially towards the other slaves. This way, Django is quickly established as a key figure in the film through the use of lighting to draw the audiences eye.

The lamp is held by Schultz between him and Django who are facing each other, and acts as the key light that is directionally cast directly onto the front of the subjects, limiting shadows cast across face and providing a flattering effect on the skin. Symbolically speaking, this paints a picture of Schultz as being an angel to Django as the man who is going to help him. The flame provides soft lighting with a relatively low foot candle measure. The lamp is also used to set a clear mood and convey the relationship between the two protagonists. The warm glow of the lamp against the side of Djangos face is a sign of salvation as he is about to be set free, and the warm temperature emitted by the lamp represents a comfort to Django. Combined with other elements such as the tight shot framing as a close up, this creates a sense of intimacy between the two subjects and foreshadows their eventual partnership as bounty hunters. There is limited fill lighting around the edges of the frame to focus the audiences attention on on the relationship between the two subjectss, making the viewer feel as though they are part of a very deep conversation, with minimal bounce light due to limited luminance of available natural light. There is slight fill on the right side of Djangos face, creating patches around the cheeks that are the brightest part of the shot, helped in part to the direction Schultz is facing the lamp, drawing specific attention to Django and positioning him as an important character in the first close up we see of him.

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