Kill Bill: Essay
How cinematography and sound create meaning and provoke audience response in a 3-5 minute sequence from the film Kill Bill.
I will be writing about a fighting scene from the movie Kill Bill and telling you how cinematography and sound is effective through the fighting scene.
The fighting scene first starts of with the character The Bride (Uma Thurman) stopping in a car with a vicious look on her face, looking at the house that the character Vernita Green lives. She then gets out of the car and goes to ring the doorbell and at door is Vernita Green and she's surprised to see The Bride because of what happened before when they thought each other. So they had another intense fight, but then they realized that Vernita Green's daughter comes home from school, so they decided too stop the fight and that's were the fighting scene ends.
The Director's aim for this sequence is to show that the character, The Bride wants revenge and this is shown in a flashback were The Bride first went up against with each other. The director tried and makes this fighting scene look fast pace and intense. The director used cinematography a lot to show the characters from every angle and make the fighting look very realistic.
So from this scene the director shows that the main character, The Bride desperately wants her revenge by killing Vernita Green and this shows that she would do anything, although a kid is involved. So at this point she feels a bit heartless because she needs her revenge.
This helps to manipulate the audience by drawing most of their intension to The Bride because at this point she's most powerful compared to Vernita Green.
The director uses a range of different camera shots in this fighting scene from start to finish the keeps the audience anxious and and makes them react in a worried but excited way. The scene starts of with a medium shot showing the facial expressions of The Bride whilst she's in the car and this shows a viscous look in her eyes to show that something unpleasant is going to happen. Then it cuts to a long shot of the house that Vernita Greens lives, as she's near the door the camera cuts into a close up of the doorbell and her finger pushing it and back to a long shot of her and the house, this is just to show what's she's doing in every little detail, this could suggest that she means business.
As the door is opened by Vernita Green it shows a quick medium shot of her, then cuts straight to The Bride in a medium shot and then zooms into her eyes for a close up, these quick fast pace camera shots shows that things are getting intense and building up to a point we're something is going to kick off. Also the close up of The Bride is very effective because it shows that all her focus is on Vernita Green and it shows that it's not a pleasant stare either. The Bride then has a flashback of her first fight with Vernita Green, but The Bride lost that fight against Vernita Green as it showed. The Bride point of view is shown as a low angle shot of Vernita Green as she is laying on the floor which shows that she is weak and suffering at this point and that Vernita Green is more powerful then her. Also shows us a close up shot of her faces covered in scars that tells us that she's in pain and shows us her facial expression looking directly at Vernita Green, This suggests that she will never forget her face and will have her revenge. Whilst Vernita Green is still standing and this is shown by a high angle shot which shows that she is most powerful at this point and feels like she really wants to win this fight, it could also make the audience feel sorry for the bride.
As The Bride is at the door, Vernita Green is surprised and reacts quickly to fight back, at this point the director uses quick editing and camera shot from every angle to allow the audience get sense of all the action and that the pace of the editing matches the speed of the action. As the characters are kicking and punching each other there would be close ups of them hitting each other to show every little detail and frame. Also the director would use close ups of the characters faces while they are getting hit to show that they are in pain and this helps the audience react in a certain way, it could make them quit uncomfortable and anxious. Also later on the fight the director has chosen to do another close up shot of The Bride strangling Vernita Green to shows that Vernits Green is struggling to breathe. While The Bride is still strangling Vernita Green they fall together on the floor and there's a focus with the camera on the metal stick beside Vernita Green this could suggest that she's going too use it as a weapon to try a make The Bride release her. As Vernita Green tries to run away there a little tracking shot of The Bride chasing her in to another room.
As it gets near the end of the fight it enables the audience to follow the action as it unfolds. There's a close up of a frame of Vernita Green's foot moving an object out of the way to show that she's aware of her surroundings, there's also a medium shot between the characters to show that they are tired and scared and this gets the audience curious of what's going to happen next. The director chose a long shot of the two characters because in the middle of them there's a big window in the living room so the audience is able to see the school bus dropping off Vernita's daughter from school and she's coming back from school there's close up shots between the characters facial expressions which shows that Vernita Green is worried and The Bride can see that she's scared and feels sorry for her so she decides to stop, this also makes the audience react in worried way and feeling sad and anxious hoping that the characters will stop. So for the finale camera shot the director uses a medium shot from the behind of the actors as Vernita's daughter comes in to show that they've hidden the knifes behind thier back to prevent Vernita's daughter from seeing it.
The director has chosen a range of diegetic and non-diegetic sounds throughout that sequence. It starts of with a diegetic sound of the car engine, to show that The Bride is stopping at the house. Also there are two off-screen sounds of her shutting the car door, which we now know that she's gotten out of the car without the audience having too see that she has and for the second off-screen sound the audience are able to hear the birds singing and dog barking. The director has purposely chosen too add this sound effect to that scene to get the audience thinking that it is a calm and peaceful neiboughood, but suddenly the pace starts changing into more of a violent mood. As The Bride walks to the door a rings the door bell that's an On-screen sound, this could suggest that this is the beginning of the fight scene and it gets the audience ready of what is about to happen. After the doorbell there's another off-screen sound of Vernita saying "coming, Sarah i can not belive you are early" but the audience are not able to see her, this suggest that Vernita Green doesn't know who's at the door and she in with a surprise and so is the audience.
When Vernita Green opens the door she is shocked now that she knows is The Bride, a quick flashback is dissolved of Vernita Green and The Bride first fought each other and a Non-diegetic sound of background music is playing while the flashback is shown. This helps build the tension up too a point were they are going too start fighting again. Straight after The Bride punches Vernita Green the director uses parallel sound to match the action, this makes the fighting seem realistic while they are punching and kicking each other. Also it shows The Bride getting thrown into the picture frame and Vernita getting kicked into the glass table and her hitting The Bride with the table's leg is another on-screen sound. As the The Bride strangles Vernita Green you can hear her struggling and Th Bride breathing heavily, to show that they really want to kill each other and can sometimes be scary for the audience to see so it keeps them on the edge of their seats, so this why the director chose to put this On-screen sound. Another On-screen sound is when you can see the characters stepping on broken glass which shows that this is dangerous what they're doing and someone is going to get hurt. Finally when the two characters are in distance with each other you can hear the school bus out side so another On-screen sound has been used too alert the characters and the audience that Vernita's daughter is almost home and they are doing the wrong thing and this is proved now that a child is involved in this mess. This makes the audience react worried and shocked that the innocent child is involved.
Conclusion
Overall i think the director has used a great amount of cinematography and sound. he has made it easy for the audience to understand what's going on in this clip and made it easy to try and reveal the plot between the characters. Also the sound matched well with the action and done well to try and build up the tension. Finally he didn't use to much of the non-diegetic sound in this fighting scene because he wanted the audience specifically to focus on the objects that were being smashed to highlight how vicious the fight was. This also shows the characters facial expression to show that they both determined to win and to make the audience understand how much they hate each other which helps keep the audience interested of what might happen next.
