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Analyzing The Film 'Meshes Of The Afternoon'

1356 Words6 Pages

Introduction
For the final deconstruction paper, I chose the opening of Meshes of the Afternoon a 1943 Hollywood film directed by Maya Deren and cinematographer Alexander Hamid up until the actor closes her eyes just before she sleeps and before the dream. The film concerns the main cinematic element of slow disclosure, while delving into the secondary elements of multi-angularity, camera movement, and familiar image. The paper will deconstruct the opening scene’s cinematic structure shot-by-shot including both visual and aural elements used by the director such as the shot number itself as well as the shot relation, the type of shot, the duration the shot took, the camera motion while the shot was being taken, a narrative description, topic …show more content…

The element of slow disclosure in the opening sequence refers to the gradual emergence of relevant information or the prolonged delay in giving away crucial facts in a story. The film’s opening sequence cinematically manages to create the element of slow disclosure. The opening shot involves a hand placing a flower on the floor with a slow disclosure camera movement. The hand disappears while the flower still in the floor. The second shot is depicted with a single shot. The third introductory shows the shadow of the girl while she is walking on the floor. To achieve this, the cinematographer alexander Hamid utilizes multi-angularity in moving the camera to show slow disclosure. According to Sharff, some of the most important cinematic elements used in the opening scene to achieve his discourse include slow disclosure, object movement, camera movement, and multi-angularity (Sharff, 1982, pg. …show more content…

A girl comes home one afternoon after picking up a flower from the street and falls asleep. The story develops into a double climax, in which it appears that, the imagined, the dream, has become real. In like manner, the film uses orchestration to further its course. According to Sharrf in Elements of Cinema, orchestration is the relationship between the lengths of each shot taken in a scene in the montage. It uses close ups static shots as well as master LS tracking camera shots (Sharff,

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