Cinematic Views on the film "Super 8"

Cinematic Views on the Film “Super 8”

     Super 8 is a film directed by J.J Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg. It was released June 10^th, 11 and stars, Joel Courtney as Joe Lamb, Elle Fanning as Alice Dainard, Riley Griffiths as Charles Kaznyk, Ryan Lee as Cary and Gabriel Basso as Martin. The overall plot of the movie is about these kids making their own major production film in a small town. Late one night, Alice drives the crew to a train station where they set up to film a scene on the boarding platform while an actual train is passing by. While they are filming this scene, a nearby truck comes into contact with the train. This causes the train to derail causing a major explosion. The kids make it out of the wreckage alive and leave immediately before the army made it in time to catch them at the scene of the crime. Following this event, strange things start to happen in the town and people are slowly starting to disappear.

*Watch the film to find out what happens next!

     In the film, “Super 8” the train crash scene includes no lack in detail. The editors of the film were given a task of creating a very surreal looking train crash, which included numerous explosions while the train was derailing as well as pieces and parts were flying everywhere, especially towards certain characters. The tension created first starts when the characters are told to yell over the sounds of the train passing by, towards each other. When the train passes by and the characters are filming, each characters hair is flailing around insanely. This represents how close the characters are to the train and how much force is going against them. This causes the scene to be loud and dramatic. There had to have been additional lighting to this scene to present the emotions of each characters face in response to the situation. This scene had to have taken a large portion of time for the editing department to finish. The sound in this scene is diegetic because the characters can hear what is going on around them in the environment. 

  

     Another aspect shown twice throughout the film are lens flares. Lens flares are created from light sources found in a scene. They give off the effect that the audience or the viewer is in the scene with the characters. It makes the setting more realistic for the viewer. The first lens flares are seen when the kids first arrive at the train station and the camera zooms towards them creating numerous flares from light sources found in the shot. The second lens flare is seen when Joe and Alice are viewing Joe’s video of his mother. The lens flare is found coming from the projector behind them.