Moon. Commenting on the use of mise-en-scene, lighting and performance.

MOON

"MOON" is a 2009 British science fiction drama film direct by Duncan Jones. The film is based on a man who faces personal crisis during his last days on the moon as a part of his three year contract.

Lighting:

• If observed closely, it can be seen that when Sam is on the surface of the moon there are quite a lot of lens flares from the sun's light. This brilliant technique is used to make the shots more realistic and lively.
• Low lighting method has been used almost all throughout the film to make the atmosphere dark and cold and create suspense amongst the audience.
• A specific scene where Sam finds another Sam in the wrecked space-car, red lights are used. This method has been used to convey a message to the audience. Red symbolises danger, blood or something bad is about to happen.
• Whenever Sam goes out to the surface of the moon, it always shows that the background is always dark. This again, tells the audience that Sam is in a place where there is nothing he can do and live a normal life.

Mise-en-scene:

• The machine (Gurdy) has a voice which is gloomy and also expressionless so it is complicated for Sam to understand what he is trying to express. Gurdy also has a limited number of emoticons stored in his database to back up what he is saying. All this sum up and the bottom line is that Gurdy is a robot and therefore, he cannot express feelings like humans.
• The color setting of the spaceship is very dull and monotonous. This shows that Sam is lonely and it actually proves the point that he is not on earth, where everything is lively, full of emotions and colourful.
• Non-digetic sound is also used to to make the audience feel Sam's feelings to some extent. The music is soft and very painful. Therefore it reflects Sam's feelings and shows how lonely a person he is.
• There is a scene, where Sam goes to flashback and he sees all the happy and precious moments that he has spent with his family and it starts to fade away. This usually happens to people who are going to die and eventually Sam dies at the end.

Performance:

• Sam is always talking to himself as there is no one else to talk to.
• In the entire film, there are many times where he tells Gurdy, "Why won't you listen to me?" This is very much ironic as machines are not suppose to respond to human commands until it is legitimate. This again tells the audience that how lonely Sam is as he is all by himself.
• Sam eventually starts hallucinating and this shows that his mental stability is decreasing day by day .

The most interesting part of this film was the camera angles. I will try to include the high angles and the establishing shots into my trailer and make it look interesting too.