Analysing footage...

When analysing a piece of footage, there are 4 key areas to look at:

MISE-EN-SCENE:

• The mise-en-scene is everything within the frame. This includes things like set, props, costumes, composition and actors. It also includes more specific things like facial expression, gaze direction, gesture, posture, body contact, appearance and spacial behaviour.

SOUND:

• Diegetic sounds are the sounds which exist within a world, for example a phone ringing or background street noise.
• Non-diegetic sounds are sounds like a soundtrack, or voices within someones head, which cannot be heard by all the characters in a scene. This is shown here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpgU3Ck6h3c in the infamous bike flying scene from ET. The music used adds to the exciting and uplifting feel of the scene, and allows the audience to suspend their disbelief.

CAMERA:

• The Camera work consists of angling, shot crop and tilt among over things. There are many different types of shot available, like the wide shot, close up, 2shot etc.. which all give different feelings to the scene and are used to empahise emotion or action.

EDITING:

• Editing is harder to identify wen analysing a piece of footage, as it it generally intended to be seamless and difficult to spot, to create comfort for the viewers. However you need to look out for different kinds of cuts, as they can signify changes in mood/scene/action and force the viewer to look at certain things, guiding their opinions.