Vantage point

1. Vantage point Kelly F ogg

2. Plot Vantage Point is a 2008 American political action thriller film directed by Pete Travis. The story is about an assassination attempt on the President of the United States during a speech in Spain but it’s seen from a different set of “vantage points” through the eyes of different characters. And the same scene replays over, just from that characters perspective and their role in the assassination.

3. Cast Dennis Quaid Matthew Fox Forest Whitaker Sigourney Weaver William Hurt

4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVkUPjclSow

5. Establishing Location First few shots in the title sequence are aerial shots of Salamanca. Showing us the basic setting of the film. However because its cut in a V shape, and it only stays on screen for a max of 4 seconds, we don’t get a full view of the setting, leaving questions of where the place is set. We also get the setting before we get the title of the film.

6. In this shot it moves to a close up on a car, this early on into the title sequence we can tell that the car is holding someone very important, and also gives it vulnerability as with the red dot in the same shot that the person in that car is a target On this shot we see across “Columbia Pictures presents” there is a red dot slowly moving across it. This symbolises an assassination attempt/danger. And this also creates a foreshadowing effect that someone's going to be shot.

7. Here the camera pauses specifically on the anti USA sign with a picture of a mans face. This close up shows us what’s happening or what’s going to happen in the film. This also indirectly introduces a character as we can work out that the man in the photo has something to do with the protest and that he is going to be involved in the film.

8. In this shot the camera slowly pans over a sniper. This creates tension, as we now know there is definitely going to be danger. But we don’t know if that specific sniper is going to assassinate the president, or is protecting him.

9. Editing The title sequence is a montage as lots of different clips play across each other. This is used as a typical thriller convention as the title sequence isn't supposed to reveal so much, because the montage transitions move so quickly we don’t get much time to look at each section and so we only get the basic plot of the film. The awkward cuts of the images were shown make it harder to see what’s going on, again not revealing so much information to the viewer.

10. Towards the end of the sequence, the title “vantage point” comes from different ends of the screen and pieces itself together. This is related to the 8 different vantage points in the film and the different perspectives that happen in each “vantage point” piece together the whole story.

11. Mise-en-scene Colour: The gold/amber hue that we see throughout the sequence connotes royalty and power which indicates someone important is at an event. Costume: - Costume is basically used to identify in the opening sequence who are the police, important officials and civilians. - The civilians/protesters are carrying signs to show thier anger towards the US. And the police are armed as the people they are protecting are obviously more at risk.

12. Sound Sound is one of the most important micro elements as it attracts the audiences attention and builds tension. Its non diegetic sound, that slowly builds up throughout the title sequence. The sound changes slightly every time a new title comes on screen, and also when the camera pans across the sniper, highlighting this and also breaks up the tension just so it can build up again.