Now listen to part of a lecture on this topic in a film class.
(male) The other day I went to this great new movie. And one of the scenes in particular I thought was really set up nicely. At the start of the scene, before the action and talking things started, you saw on the movie screen an image of a city. You could tell it was a big city. There were lots of buildings, tall ones, skyscrapers, and the cars and signs on the city streets looked old fashioned, like they were from the past, like the 1940s.
The other thing I noticed right away from this first image, just when the scene started, was that the city seemed gloomy. You couldn't see much because it was, well, it was mostly darkness rather than sunlight. And there was only just little bit of light from street lamps. On top of that, it was raining and kind of foggy.All of these details were together to create a dark, gloomy, mysterious feeling. So then, when the action started and it showed detectives talking to each other in the office, I already knew that the office was located in a tall building, in a big city, sometime in the 1940s. And I had a good idea that the events that’d be taking place would be pretty dark and mysterious because of the shot, the image I saw at the beginning of the scene."
Using the professor’s example, explain what an establishing shot is and how it is used.
"Establishing shot is a far-away image shown at the beginning of a film scene that is used to communicate background information and create mood feelings. The professor takes a film he used to see as an example. At the beginning of the film, he saw an image of a big city, and in the city there were lots of tall buildings, skyscrapers as well as old-fashioned cars and signs. All of these told him that the story took place in the 1940s in a big city. Then he noticed that the city was gloomy, because there wasn't much light, only a bit light from the street lamp. Besides, it rained and fogged. So the whole scene seemed dark, gloomy and mysterious. When the action started and the detectives began to talk, he already knew that the story took place in a tall building, in a 1940s big city, and the story was dark and mysterious because of what he saw in the establishing shot. (163 words)"
