The Film 'The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert' is concerned with journeys. How does Stephan Elliott use a variety of film techniques to allow his audience to understand the journey that his characters take?

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The Film ‘The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert’ is concerned with journeys. How does Stephan Elliott use a variety of film techniques to allow his audience to understand the journey that his characters take?

In his direction of “Priscilla”, Stephan Elliott uses a variety of techniques to show the audience the emotions of the main characters, Bernadette, Mitzi and Felicia during the film.  This shows the changes they undergo and the differences in their characters from beginning to end.  He uses a range of skills such as, lighting, camera angles and the language each character uses.

The movie falls into several genres: it is concerned with journeys and is mainly filmed on the road, so could fall into the category of road movie.  It also is very comical and contains some crude humour.  Felicia is constantly annoying Bernadette by calling her ‘Ralph’. The comical aspect helps to convey the thoughts and feelings of some of the characters.  Felicia is immature and Elliott shows this by making Felicia use childish language and baby language.

The structure of the film is categorised into two journeys: all the characters experience a physical and emotional journey.  Each spiritual journey involves the characters making discoveries about themselves.  The physical journey is cyclical, from Sydney to Alice Springs and back.  The journey to Alice Springs is long, and near the beginning of their journey Felicia stops the bus and they get out and look into the wilderness.  In this scene Elliott is trying to show the audience location of the film and the length of their physical journey actually is through a long shot of the road ahead.

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The emotional journeys are linear, at the beginning Felicia is very bitchy, but as the journey progresses, he becomes less bothersome and more mature.  Physically he goes back to Sydney but in terms of emotions he has changed for the better and stays this way.  All of the characters have emotional journeys and Elliot shows this by showing the audience what the characters are like at the beginning and how they change throughout the film.

At the beginning Felicia is very active and flamboyant. In one scene he is singing an immature song while Bernadette and Mitzi are ...

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