Sliding Doors analysis

Sliding doors research/analysis for film.

I have chosen to analyse the movie Sliding Doors because its storyline has similar aspects as our film. The main plotline is that a woman’s life is changed by a split second -missing a tube. Her life then splits into two and the audience is allowed to see the difference between both of her lives.
At the point which changes her life there is a bright, white flash which indicates to the audience that there is something abnormal happening. The advantage of this is that there is a point which is very clear to the audience. However, the bright, white flash goes against the normal conventions of film making. The usual meaning of a white flash is that the character is suffering from flash backs. This shows that the makers of the movie are trying to break away from tradition and make their film original.

There is also a section of a scene where there is a rewind effect. This shows the audience that the character is going back in time; there is an instant feel that the future will change. This has an effective influence on the film and it shows me that the makers are not afraid to try new, relatively unused effects in their movie. This might be a good effect to use in our film; however we might face problems due to our limited editing knowledge and the software which we use.
During the film we, as an audience, can see that if the two women were indeed separate people that they would come into contact frequently, which helps build suspense. Although we cannot make the characters come into contact with each other, we could show the male walking in the footsteps of his deceased girlfriend.

In the split second life changing scene both women occupy the same scene. Although they are not visibly in the same shot, there is aot point of view shot. The audience feel that it is the woman’s point of view, looking out of the window onto the station platform and seeing what would have been herself standing there. There is also a point of view shot from the character standing on the station and where the location where the previous point of view shot is an empty seat. Although this adds to the suspense and effect of the movie, it might be confusing for some viewers which limits the potential audience to somewhat intelligent people. Although we could complicate the storyline in our film, I think that it would give the film a better chance of success if we keep the storyline less demanding.

The woman is seen throughout the movie as 2 different characters both physically and mentally. Although physical features such as hairstyles separate the women by looks they have clearly become two different women entirely due to the split second which changed their lives. In our film we will be able to distinguish between each character as they will be completely different- one will be a male and the other a female. The production team changed the physical attributes of the character so that it will be easier for the audience to distinguish between them.

Mise en scene

Makeup
The main female character wears plain discrete makeup which gives her a plain look. This adds to the feel that she is boring and it comes to no surprise that he husband has an affair with Lydia, a glamorous powerful business woman. Lydia wears dark eye makeup and red lipstick throughout the movie. This gives the character a glamorous high maintenance look and her red lipstick has connotations- that she is “slutty” and “dangerous”.
Makeup is also used to create a cuts, bruises and wounds on a character. This is to show the effect that both violence and an accident has had on her. Without this makeup it wouldn’t show the seriousness of the injuries and the audience would either play down the wounds or not notice them at all.

Street scenes
The street scenes are set in London and they appear to be shot in the real streets rather than in a studio. The weather is typical “English weather” as it is often grey and rainy. This adds to the depressing mood of some scenes. However this weather could give the production team problems because it is important to keep continuity in a film as you cannot have different weather conditions in the same scene.

Sets
The scenes where artificial sets are used include areas such as a house, sandwich bar and an office building. The sets appear real to the audience as there is detail which would ordinarily be found in those areas in real life such as food products and office files.

Camera shots/ movements
There are a variety of different camera movements throughout the movie. There is a scene where Tracking is used. The camera runs along side of the river, following a main character rowing. This is a good type of camera movement for this type of shot because the track keeps the camera steady throughout the entire movement.

Panning is also used which shows directs the audience’s attention from one character to another. This is more effective (in this case) than a simple clean cut edit because it creates a flow in the scene and keeps the atmosphere and feel of the scene without interrupting it.

The camera also zooms in and zooms out, this is to make the audience notice detail and facial expressions such as smiles and in one shot it zooms in a tear on the characters cheek.

There is also a number of different shots including, Long shots, Extreme close-ups, Close-ups, Establishing shots, Extreme Long shots, Mid close-ups, Mid shots and a Crane shot, which shows the character from above and his surroundings.