Opening:

Cinematography

• blue light in the vehicle when he opens the hatch
• Establishing shots
• Opening is the only brightly coloured and saturated
• Images taken from news footage (archive footage)
• Animation
• Outside has low key, high contrast lighting and inside has high key, low contrast lighting

Mise en Scene

• space craft is less colourful (monochrome) than earth which makes it look lonely
• In the title screen the earth looks small
• Communication satellite
• Shot of people on the beach with factories behind them shows the binary oppositions. Representing of people ignoring what’s happening in the rest of the world
• Nearly 70% of the planet is represented as  West America
• Logo significance – colour choices of grey/white/yellow, the moon sun representation and how the companies moon strategy is shown, white background links to modernism
• Fairground/amusement park place which is brightly lit
• Fires with diesel like technology
• beautiful nature shot
• From desert to a greening desert
• New York with a full moon
• Brightly lit city
• Hal is like Gertie
• Gertie’s faces look like the faces Sam draws on the walls later on
• Outside is dirty/dark/natural which contrasts to the white/geometric inside however this clean white look doesn’t last long – Sam has a dirty baseball cap/janitor suit/space suit and wears trainers,  he has defaced the dashboard (?) with the Mark (the apostle names are used Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John). Plus, Gertie initially looked clean but now he is dirty and has post it notes on him
• Lunar logo everywhere
• Fluffy dice in vehicle – silly/irony or luck and chance

Performance

• Gertie willingly helps Sam, will always help his needs, ‘Okay Sam’
• Sam is energetic which contrasts to the end of the film and links him to the other clone Sam
• Isolation (only the robot is there with him)
• Sam running on a running machine is a metaphor of him not going anywhere and not having a real destination
• Sam is leaning over in his seat – tired etc

Editing

• Infomercial gives context to why he is in the moon and contrasts to the isolation etc in the rest of the film. Montage sequence
• Montage sequence
• Graphic match of the Ferris wheel to the sun which is linking the project to something happy. But the Ferris wheel (?) is called Tsunami which could suggest the disaster that is coming. (Graphic match of brightly lit world to the sun)
• Graphic animated sequence after montage
• Setting up moral questioning

Sound

• music – fast arpeggios are playful and happy contrast to the minor piano music after
• Long electric space like noises
• Overhead speaker speaking about being offline links to the rest of the film
• ‘There was a time when energy was a dirty word’
• When it talks about producing energy, there is a full moon above New York (consider connotations of New York)
• Montage interacts with the dialogue
• Drums – work/productive

Narrative

• basic exposition
• Morality about exploiting the moon – swapping one finite resource for another, they haven’t learned
• Binary oppositions – human/machine, clean white design/space, have’s/have not’s, West/East, nature/technology, light/dark, wealth/suffering, white/black, Earth/Moon

Age

-use children in the advert for emotional purposes
Sam is an adult

Ideology

• Binary oppositions – human/machine, clean white design/space, have’s/have not’s, West/East, nature/technology, light/dark, wealth/suffering, white/black, Earth/Moon
• Environmentalism
• Capitalism (Lunar Industries) and how not everyone benefits. The running machine and Sam metaphor
• Modernism – idea that there is a logical answer to everything (whit background)
• Patriarchy
• Socialism
• Marxism (predictions) –  (1) communism and everyone profiting from labour and (2) technological utopia and democracy – the empty promise that technology will make everything better?

 

Middle:

Cinematography

• High key lighting/ functional lighting
• Over the shoulder shot
• Close up of blood
• Close up of the Sam’s faces when they are about to fight
• Close ups when fighting
• When Sam 2 is searching, there are many mid shots and longs shots of him in the centre of the screen which feels claustrophobic
• Mid shot of Sam 2 searching under the counter but you see all of him – claustrophobic
• Long shot of them fighting to the side with lots of empty space make the audience see they are fighting over nothing and they have just each other and should be working together
• Close up of knife
• The camera moves down to see the knife rather than have another shot

 

Mise en scene

• Model – represents all of the Sam’s, could show how Sam could have been an artist, destruction is shocking, of a known place?, suburban and perfect
• Original clone is dirtier
• Chair – Borman in 2001: A Space Odyssey and anachronistic (out of time)
• Clothing – branding
• Blood – problem with clone

 

Editing

• Montage of him looking around and jump cuts – don’t have change in shot length – idea of fragmentation and fast paced editing

 

Performance

• New clone often above (taller than) original Sam (proxemics)
• Irony that they are fighting themselves rather than working together
• Chucks model instead of gently lifting it
• Not looking in the mirror (the mirror was an opportunity for Sam to analyse the moment) and the mirror image shows multiple Sam’s
• Sam watches Mary Tyler More as distraction (trash tv) – media to passivy the workers
• Both Sam’s attack from behind at least once

 

Sound

• Builds tension
• Beeping
• Minor piano comes back – when looking (music)
• Eerie noises
• Close sonic perspective of all the thing being messed with – claustrophobic
• ‘Eliza arrival in 13 (or 15?) hours’

 

Gender

• Not necessarily in this scene, but throughout the film, the women (wife and daughter) are seen as the prize/reward
• Possibly the male stereotype of aggressiveness

 

Narrative

• Discussing conspiracies and how the company is using clones to save money (hating of capitalism)
• Sam 1 is in denial – sticking to idea of ideal town and life he will go back to (model)
• ‘Eliza arrival in 13 hours’ – tension, like a bomb countdown

 

Ideology

• Sam 1 and Sam 2 have different points of view (Nihilism – Sam 1 believes life is meaningless because he knows he is a clone?)
• Marxist – worker has limited creativity and is not benefiting from working
• Discussing conspiracies and how the company is using clones to save money (hating of capitalism)

 

Ending:

 

Cinematography

• Eliza ship has a spider like shadow
• Long shot of Sam 2 leaving which Sam 1 sees
• Long shot of Sam 2 in the building – empty without Sam 1
• Yellow and blue lighting when Sam 2 is leaving
• Zoom in to a close up of the countdown
• Close ups of Gerty could suggest a human quality to him?
• Long shot of Sam 3 – meat – can’t see his face

 

Mise en scene

• Sun glasses – cool gesture – persona
• We see the countdown which contrasts to the emotional music
• Sam 3 – we can’t see his face only body (meat), distant from us but the sounds of the arrival time suggests he is human and matters too
• Gerty’s faces look like the ones that Sam 1 draws on the wall (on the wall, we can see rubbed out faces from where the previous Sam’s have drawn on the wall, as they all went through the same thing)
• Eliza ship has a spider like shadow and a red flashing light which has connotations of danger
• Rescue team have guns

 

Sound

• Music – the peaceful music like a clockwork toy when Sam 3 wakes up – suggests falseness
• When there is a long shot of Sam 3, we hear the arrival time which suggests he matter/is human too
• “getting things done” music kicks in when the signal thing gets knocked over (?)
• Drums – satellite working
• Sad music when Sam 2 has left Sam 1 means that when we see the countdown, we don’t feel tense, it doesn’t matter as much anymore

 

Performance

• ‘I hope everything on earth is everything you remember it to be’
• Gertie helps – humanity ?
• Taking the ‘kick me’ post it note off Gertie suggest Sam 2 felt a humanity in Gertie
• Sam 2 prays before escaping
• ‘We’re not programmed we’re people’

 

Editing

• Parallel action of Sam 1,2 and 3
• Parallel action of Eliza and machine and Sam 2 leaving

 

Narrative

• Reference to the new Sam and programming
• Sam played by the same actor
• ‘We’re not programmed we’re people’
• Parallel action
• Sam 3’s humanity considered
• Narrative repletion (new Sam)
• Clone of Sam Bell has given evidence (V/O) but called ‘either a wacko or an illegal immigrant… lock him up’. The company claims to have changed the world but can’t change the people. The company probably won’t be shut down (determinism – no matter what Sam did he couldn’t have won). America. Compare ending to beginning.

 

Ideology

• Existentialism – Sam 2’s purpose was to stand up for what was right
• Determinism?
• Compare beginning and end. Starts with energy problems and how Lunar Industries helps. Ends with illegal immigrant comment – didn’t change the people with the earth and nothing has changed (determinism)
• Lunar Industries admit racism (?) (orientalism)
• Wilful ignorance in humanity – ignore issue
• Nihilism (?)