Editing Analysis

Your final analytical blog task is to find a film or television clip on YouTube that you feel has been edited in a distinctive way and write a 750 word analysis of the clip.

 This clip is about Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is sent by the US government to rescue a group of politicians being held hostage in Guatemala. The clip starts with Dutch arriving to the base and meeting the general. We then immediately change the scene to inside where they talk about the mission. The interesting part now is the next scenes. The next scene is a long-zoomed shot of Dylan. Different mise-en-scene can apply in this shot. The lighting shows more shadows to portray mystery. The actor pose shows he is relaxed. When the audience is watching this for the first time this scene can build tension. Then the next scene where Dutch slowly turns around and looks at him builds even more tension. Then tension dies off in an exciting manner and goes to the iconic scene. In the next couple of scene, we can analyse the arm wrestle going on. This important because we can quickly identify who is in charge and what kind of personality the characters have. We can see that Dutch is clearly stronger and teasing Dylan while he is twisting his arm. But in the background, there are some hidden actions we can pick up on. When the camera is on Dutch, its very subtle but the camera slowly zooms on him, this means that Dutch takes more of the screen space but when the camera is on Dylan, we can see that he isn't taking that much camera space. Mise-en-scene plays in these scenes as well, the expressions we can see on Dutch face shows him smiling, not showing any type of struggle. In Dylan's face, we can see him twitching, showing more struggle. All of these factors show that Dutch is the dominant person and likes to take control, while Dylan is like the sidekick. It's only from stopping and analysis that we can analyse what the producers did to give this message to the audience.