Romeo and Juliet - Show how Baz Luhrman the director of Romeo and Juliet uses film language successfully to entertain his target audience.

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Chris Mottram

Romeo and Juliet

Show how Baz Luhrman the director of Romeo and Juliet uses film language successfully to entertain his target audience.

In a film the director has to “lift” the text off a page and use his own film language to dramatize the words.

He can cut or rearrange the words, but he must be true to them.  So he has to bring the text to life by creating a background, the characters and the props that make the text livelier so when you are sat there for two hours or however long the film may be you are not bored stiff.

The director knows that the original Shakespeare text would not be suitable to make a film with, as it would not entertain the young audience today.  The text was written as a play so Baz Luhrman adds things to the film, which make it livelier for the audience.  He adds things to the film like an attractive cast, love, action, high emotion and violence, to make the film more appealing to his audience.  The violence made it more exciting for me.

The five main areas in film language I am going to be looking at in my essay, especially in Act 5 are: what the director puts in to each scene that makes it more entertaining to the audience like the props and cast, how the scene will be lit which creates the mood and combination with other effects, what sorts of camera shots will be used to shoot the scene, how will the film be edited which shots should be used which creates the pace of the film, and what should the audience hear like soundtracks.

As Act 5 begins the audience sees Romeo in Mantua.  The scene is set in a desert type surrounding with tatty caravans and a few rusty cars, which small children are playing on.  As a car approaches Romeo’s caravan there is a cloud of dust behind the wheels of the car, which helps to show the high speed of which the car is travelling at.  I think the setting where Romeo has fled to has been very well chosen by the director as Romeo has come from a very rich background and a large house in the city of Verona and has now fled to a scruffy place on the outskirts where you would go if you had no hope in life at all which basically Romeo hadn’t after he had left Juliet behind.

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As Romeo hears the car approaching rapidly, he immediately reaches for his gun.  As Romeo reaches for his gun the camera cuts from a medium shot of Romeo to a big close up on his face which helps to show the audience how scared Romeo is as the car comes speeding towards him and so reaches for his gun as feels it might be a threat.  As he reaches for the gun the close up on Romeo’s face cuts to a big close up on the gun again to show how scared he is as the car approaches him.

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