The Matrix

The Matrix
Director:Larry and Andy Wachowski
Release:1999
Gerne: Action, Sci-fi

The scene I studied from The Matrix is the scene where Morpheus and Trinity drive Neo to see the Oracle. Its the first time Neo has returned to the matrix after been freed from the program he believed to be real and he doesn’t see the world as he used to before he knew the truth. The whole scene is shot inside the car because the dialogue is important and the directors didn’t want the audience distracted by the world outside of the car but everything in this scene has being placed in the shot in a specific way for a specific reason.

Each shot concentrates on the character who is talking showing the characters head and shoulders on one side of the shot leaving a lot of free space a small bit of which is taken up the bland, black interior of the car they are in. The rest of which is taken up by the window of the car, outside of the window is a blurry, green tinted moving shot of the street they are driving past. The directors have done this to draw the spectator’s attention to the characters and what they are saying making the character talking the focal point. But mainly to show that the characters inside the car look out the window and see the matrix as a false world because if it looked really clear it would appear to be real, this is similar to the use of a the shallow depth of field used inside the school in Elephant to show the spectator it is a familiar place that the characters pay no attention to it because they see past it. This affect was obtained by using Rear screen projections, as apposed to the more green screens which provide a realistic image, the same technique used in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. This is also used to show that the contrast between the characters inside the car and the people outside the car who are caught up in there meaningless lives in the false world of the matrix and the characters trying to change the real world and end the war. The inside of the car is a very formal black to show that the car is plain and doesn’t stand out because an over the top car would draw attention and the character wouldn’t want catch the attention of agents they are clearly seen as fugitives or vigilantes. As for the characters they are well groomed and dressed immaculately to because they are how they imagine themselves as apposed to dirty and dressed in rags as they are in the real world.