In respect, of the recent death of American Mathematician and Nobel Prize winner John Nash, I chose the film “A Beautiful Mind” directed by Ron Howard (2001).

The film was set in the late 1940, depicting the life story of John Nash and the struggles he went through. The film starts off with him as a young student, and ends with him as an old man.

The found scene I chose to explore is the car chase seen which involves John Nash, William Parcher and the ‘Soviet agents’. The scene is already shown in the dark, very low lit mostly by street lights which are noticed as they reflect off Nash’s face as he leaves the mail box.

What I love about this particular scene is the artificial lights and how its added to the scene to construct a very dramatic representation of panic, thrill and paranoia. The emotions the audience gathers from this setting in the scene is dark and scary. Nash walks up to a large creepy house with a large creaky fence and just a single lamp post to light up the area Nash is walking in.

Opening shot of he scene.
Big black fence opening to an unknown house where John Nash enters to deliver his work. The shot is very very dark and lit by only the one artificial street light from above. This creates a sense of mystery and tension.

This shot is of Nash leaving the unknown mystery house in a hurry to not be seen. That one artificial light has created an extreme amount of shadows on the house behind Nash as he leaves as well as a hard light source on the right side of frame highlighting his left side of his body.

The two shots above is of Parcher, rolling the car up to get Nash, as people are following them. What I love most about this show is it has a transition where you can see the car rolling up and its two lights and then ends on the hard light shown on Nash’s face from the car. It created this almost deer caught in headlight effect, which the audience can sense from his face as the car stops just in front.

As Nash enters the car Parcher frantically talks to Nash, alarming him of a chase. The light of the car behind him creates a very hard backlight which creates a very dramatic representation on his character, which works well in the shot as it is a thrill type scene.

This shot is beyond fantastic. The glare on the screen highlights the artificial light source depicted. What you can see is a hard backlight behind him from a street light creating that white outline around his character. It also has a hard key light positioned in front of him depicting the car following, which you can clearly see as his eyes light up showing his emotion of stress and panic.

This shot follows on from the one above, but the light source from the car behind them is much more intense and highlights John Nash in distress. It shows as if the car behind them is very very close. The backlight from behind is in a way washed out.

This shot justifies the light source from behind. From this particular angle we can see light sources from the street lights as well as the car behind chasing. The bullet hole/break in the window has a hard light edge which I think creates a more intense representation as they are in full frame.