Fargo is a film by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen or better known as the Coen brothers. This film was released on 8 March 1996 (USA). Fargo is a crime drama set in Minnesota in 1987. Film techniques such as lighting and camera angles were used to convey the idea of greed through the text, I will be covering how these film techniques conveyed the idea of greed in this essay.
The Coen brothers utilized film techniques to display the idea of Greed. One of these techniques was lighting, in film, there are many types of lighting techniques, these are things like key lighting. Key lighting is a lightning technique used to show a character in full light and usually used to “put on display” there facial features and expressions.
Facial expressions are a key part of the audience knowing the emotions and intentions of the characters. Key lighting was utilized perfectly to display the idea of greed throughout this film. Key lighting can also be used to display how good or bad a person appears to be, this is shown in the starting scene of this film.
At the start of this film, a character named Jerry Lundergard arrives at a pub and sits down to talk to two men, when Jerry is talking to the men about how the two men will kidnap Jerry’s wife; Jerry: ‘Okay, see, it’s not me payin’ the ransom. The thing is, my wife, she’s wealthy. Her dad, he’s real well off. Now, I’m in a bit of trouble–‘ the light is only hitting one side of his face, this helps to improve the feeling of greed by making Jerry appear as though he has a dark and light side to him.
The director’s purpose in using key lighting in this scene was to reinforce the greed in Jerry’s words. The Coen brothers used key lighting to perfectly show the idea of greed.
Camera angles are also another tool the Coen brothers used to display the idea of greed through the text, they did this with a low shot camera angle. The low shot camera angle shows that the character in the shot has authority in the situation.
This camera angle displays to the audience an idea of greed when used on a character with bad moral intentions. This is used in Fargo on a character named Jerry, Jerry is a man with what most people would call bad morals and a bad intent. This camera angle is used to show that as Jerry communicates with two other men, that he does it with an intention of gaining money and is driven by greed.
This camera angle is also used in the bar at the start of the film, it is used alongside the key lighting. We can see this camera angle is used as Jerry meets with the two other men, straight away there is already a feeling of power put over the character Jerry, so when Jerry begins to explain his plan to the two men, greed is displayed as the key reason to why he is doing so.
The Coen brothers used the low shot camera angle to show the idea of greed in this film. Camera angles were put to use perfectly in this film and displayed the idea of greed.
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen used lighting techniques and camera angles in their film Fargo to display the idea of greed. I have covered how the use of film techniques such as key lighting and the low shot camera angle display greed in the text.
Hi Charlie,
You have identified a couple of good film techniques to discuss in your essay. Don’t forget you need at least three body paragraphs, meaning at least three points.
Something for you to focus on is your punctuation and grammar. There are times where you are making small mistakes. Go back over what you have written carefully and double check to catch them. Also make sure you are writing in a formal tone as you need to make your language choices appropriate to essay writing.
Remember you need to be discussing how film techniques are being used to highlight a theme/idea. This means you need to always be discussing your ideas in reference to that particular theme. Always bring your writing back to your theme.
It is good of you to use the technical terms for the film techniques in your essay, just make sure that you are describing the correct technique. You need to expand on your explanation a little bit further as well. You say techniques are used, but you are not explaining how they are used and how that highlights the theme.
You have a lot of good ideas so far.
Good work.