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Camera Techniques In Orson Welles's Film Citizen Kane

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Photography is the key element of mise en scene that determines how an audience will interpret the visual information in film. Orson Welles used the photography of his 1941 film Citizen Kane to emphasize aspects of the film he wanted viewers to focus on, and to remove non-essential information from the frame. This was accomplished through various camera techniques including manipulation of angles and proxemic patterns. Approaching the end of the film, there is a scene just after Susan (played by Dorothy Comingmore) has left her husband, Charles Foster Kane (played by Orson Welles), where he proceeds to trash her bedroom in a fit of anger. As Kane stumbles around the room, sweeping items onto the floor and throwing things into walls, (Welles …show more content…

The camera panned away from Kane for the first time since the sequence had begun, revealing a shift in power on screen. Placing the snowglobe in the foreground and center of the frame provided a visual example of the snowglobes' significance to Kane. As stated by Gianetta and Leach: “The central portions of the screen are generally reserved for the most important visual elements” (101). Kane's placement on the left of the screen where only his legs were visible suggested he was strongly influenced by the central image: “The left and right edges of the frame tend to suggest insignificance because they are the areas farthest from the center of the screen” (Gianneti an Leach, 103). The influence the snowglobe had over Kane was demonstrated as his destruction was brought to an immediate halt when the snowglobe lay in his path. Orson Welles used the sequence to set up and ultimatley define the significance the snowglobe had to Kane, as it played a key part in the mystery plot of the films plot. The photographic manipulation of angles and proximity composed visual information that would prepare the audiece for the resolution of the

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Doyle promulgates a description allowing for deeper analysis of snow; “Snow starts white and then gets grayer and browner and sometimes black as if it’s rotted, which in a real sense it does,” creates an image in our head that begins to form a life-like cycle of snow, you may compare it to metamorphosis, a physical transformation occurring in nature. The audience can then conceptualize snow and its traits, seeing they have never experienced it firsthand. His description deepens the image his audience has formed of snow throughout his article. Initially, Doyle aims to have his audience picture the physical transformation of snow, even when not in its

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The Film Citizen Kane was a groundbreaking film in the 1940’s, the way Orson Wells depicts his film with different lighting, cinematography, choice of camera shots and mise-en-scene throughout this movie truly showed the masterpiece that this film is. In the Film Citizen Kane, it was the first movie that went against true Hollywood cinema by introducing flashbacks throughout the movie to show us how Charles Foster Kane changes throughout the movie. Throughout this movie the audience can see how Charles Foster Kane undergoes a variety of physical and emotional changes from when he was just a young boy all the way until his unfortunate death. Power, that’s all that Kane wanted in the start of the film. In the beginning of the film Kane gets ownership of the struggling New York Daily Inquirer, Kane suggests that he wanted to use journalism to apply to the public and protect the interest of ordinary people.

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In this picture, we see the Teton Mountains covered in snow with a few clouds hovering over them with a shallow horizon line. I think Ansel Adams sets a low horizon line because there is not much to look at above the horizon line other than grey wispy clouds. This empty space leaves our eyes to mainly focus on the Teton Mountains. Once again the black and white color scale helps the snow stand out and highlight the rocky mountains. Since Ansel Adams took this photo from a high vantage point at the top of Signal Mountain it makes the tall trees in the foreground look more flat and tiny compared to the massive mountains.

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The movie overlaps the interviews to tell the life story of Kane while the flashbacks are doing the storytelling. The story is not told in chronologic manor, uses several techniques to tell the story of Kane. The angles used to portray certain scenes, getting all of views in, having lighting changes, shadows are all creative to the movie and introducing these techniques into Hollywood

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Welles used low-angle shots as a *motif* throughout the picture, especially ‘to emphasize the awesome power of the protagonist’. Combined w/the perspective-distorting wide-angle lens, such low-angle shots as the one filmed from below the floor, portray Kane as a towering colossus, capable of crushing anything that gets in his

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