Practice exam

Watching the short extract from the film 24, I feel the author was trying to convey that a theme here would be how hard it would be to get your way with a lack of power. What happens is that a woman is in an interrogation room and a man needs to get information out of her. He cannot due to the fact he can’t get it by physical means and he is running out of options. He physically pushes her and is then guided out of the room and off the case.

In the first scene, we see that a man walks into the room and hands over the files why at the same time we see a team watching this happen. A low angle up at the man toward the direction of the girl, makes it feel like the man has lots of power. The acting of the girl where she has no reaction to the man staring down on her makes it feel like the girl is not feared by the man knowing that he won’t be able to do anything. The acting of the man when he looks at the camera shows that he wants to do something that he isn’t allowed to do but can’t because he knows he is being watched. The ambient sound when the two are looking at each other feels tense like the man could do stuff if he wasn’t so restricted. The prop of the files shows that he has information on her but knows there is more by the way he drops it in front of her like that. The lighting throughout the scene is dark and this makes a foreshadow feel that something bad might happen.

In the second scene,The girl looks at the clock and says she needs to go but the guy won’t let her and is trying to get who is her contact while flipping the table and screaming at her. The over the shoulder shot where the guy is talking with the girl’s shoulder makes it feel like the guy is smaller compared to the girl showing the power difference. The dialogue with the girl and the guy where they are talking about letting her leave sounds like she is not in fear by the guy and is impatient by the bomb, and not by the guy's power which shows he has a lack of. The acting from the guy where he screams at the girl shows that he is very impatient and is showing off what he can do to her by flipping the table shows that he has power. The Acting from the girl where she isn’t scared of the guy when he screams tells the audience that either she isn’t scared or she knows that she cannot be harmed by him and therefore shows he is weaker.

In the last scene in the extract, the girl admits she knows that she won’t be physically hurt by him and then the guy proves her wrong by taking her and pushing her against the wall. He is sent out of the room and won’t be allowed to work on the case anymore. The split screen where the guy is choking the girl and the other detectives are running over to stop him shows that the girl was right about the no power and there is a sense of hopelessness toward the guy. The fade to black at the end of the extract makes the audience think that it didn’t end well for the guy. The acting from the girl in the end, after the guy left, showed the audience that she was breathing hard and was in shock after but, she still didn’t give any information and the guy was sent out. 

These examples show that my perception of the author's theme is true,it would be hard to get your way with a lack of power. The camera angles, acting, lighting and more all show this to be true. There are way more examples I didn’t cover in this essay and all of them would further prove that the theme was correct.