Lost Highway

Thriller Opening Analysis Sheet

Film Title: Lost Highway
Director: David Lynch
Title Designer:

Technique
Effect (Analysis)
Camera – distance, angle, movement…
Shaking centred in the middle no other objects seen. Movement of the camera continously shaking.

Effect/Analysis ^
Shaking of the camera gives it a high level of verisimilitude as it makes it feel real and as though you are generally in a car looking through the window of the road. Movement of the camera shaking form left to right makes it realistic. It’s quite different in the way that the director has used this sort of technique to open the film with.

Editing – speed, style…
Editing, and speed becomes faster as the time of the opening of the film begins to end. Style is the same throughout.

Effect/Analysis ^
With this sort of editing and speed of the clip it makes the audiences perspective from calm then eventually nervous, as the tension of the clip fastens and becomes more enticing. The style of editing throughout the opening extract stays the same as it bring the main attention onto the names of the producers and their purposes.


Sound – effects, musical score…
2 lots of music in this opening, one being a mans voice singing quite happily, then the noise of a more jumpy sort of theme.

Effect/Analysis ^
Confuses the audiences imagination into thinking what this opening is trying to tell them, and what is may be like inwards to film itself.
The voice of the man singing is quite weird in a sense that you can’t understand why he’s singing happily.

Mise-en-scene – props, costume, setting, lighting, colour…
Road, road line out, lighting consistent throughout, no change of lighting

Effect/Analysis ^
Yet again there’s no change of lighting of the continuous image of the road, as the directors purpose does not want the audience to be focused on that. The road outlines and just the image of the road signifies speed and movement, and the pace of editing becomes more fast as the extract ends.

Special Effects – CGI, animation…
-

Effect/Analysis
There’s not a lot of animation in this clip, although it may have been effective if the producer would have put a person in front of the wheel of the car to create a sense of character.

Titles – font, colour, placement, over black / over clip…
Plain, not very exciting although there bold (yellow in front of black) within 32 seconds of the opening extract the title of the film appears.

Effect/Analysis ^
The use of little colour is important as it creates a sense of unhappiness depression, and this is shown as the image of the road and speed becoming faster could make us think that maybe someone is running away?
Yellow font in over a black background shows what is more important being the text and names.