Cinematography

• blue light in the vehicle when he opens the hatch
• Light comes from outside the space station
• Establishing shots
• Opening is the only brightly coloured and saturated bit
• 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?

Characters

• Sam Bell clones – male, middle aged, white
• Tess Bell – woman, middle aged, white
• Gertie – male robot

The way that gender is represented – the males have the important job working on the moon and the woman is at home looking after the child. This supports the gender stereotype however may just be done for the narrative and plot.

The motivations of the characters

• The Sam clones initially wanted to do their job and go home, but when the cloning was discovered they wanted to discover the true meaning to themselves and what was happening, as well as escape and break the cycle. They also wanted to see their (dead) wife and daughter.
• Gertie – Gertie was programmed to help the Sam’s, so his only motivation was to help the Sam clones in every way they can

How does the opening and closing of the film compare? What has changed? Or are things the same as ever?

• The cycle has been broken, the clones will be able to find out that they are clones and that they’re lives are a lie. Also, the motivations of the characters have changed.

What is the film saying? About humanity, life on earth, work/employment, nature?

• Determinism – (put very simply) If a person were to live their life again, they would end up in the same place as free will is an illusion. (Dictionary/Google defines it as: the doctrine that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes regarded as external to the will. Some philosophers have taken determinism to imply that individual human beings have no free will and cannot be held morally responsible for their actions.)
• Could have suggestions to the danger that technology may cause, not necessarily in the way we initially imagine (the robot), but with cloning etc.

How does the film sustain ‘narrative tension’ or drama? (How does it keep you interested?) What technical/formal devices does it use?

• Using the wife and child to make you care for the man’s ambition to go home, and to make you feel bad for him when you find out she is dead and that the videos are fake, as well as himself
• You feel bad for him when he finds out he’s a clone because you start to care for him
• The timer countdown of when the others arrive builds tension as they need to solve the mystery and escape in time
• The set is small and claustrophobic, making the tension rise as the Sam’s have limited space making it feel as though they are trapped

Can you link this film to any other film you’ve seen? How? Why?

• I can’t think of any similar films

How does this film make you feel? What ideas does it inspire in you?

• Confused – the number of clones and their backstory became hard to keep track off. I didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t even when the characters found out the truth.
• Sad – because not every Sam made it and because the replicant Sam made life seem a bit meaningless, he could just be replicated

First responses to ‘Moon’

• Initially, I thought that the robot would be evil. The face on the machine seemed ominous and impersonal. This turned out to be false. This could show that technology is not the problem, its humans (and how they use it?) and/or that there could be other technology problems such as cloning
• Blue lighting and yellow lighting were used to create certain responses from the audience
• The film seemed to be de-saturated, or at least not colourful or bright which could represent the bleakness of the situation
• The film was confusing because of the clones, suggesting it could be a good film because it makes the audience think
• I think Sam got burnt on his hand at the beginning to help identify the Sam’s between one another, as well as one of the Sam’s having a mark on his face (before becoming seriously ill)
• The hallucinations were confusing, but the women that wore a yellow dress could have the connotation of sickness
• It could be showing how human life is important, as the idea of clones are portrayed as negative because individual people and their feelings are important or portraying the insignificance of life as the clones were easily created and the emotions towards the wife were easily manipulated and based on lies