The Shawshank Redemption

The Shawshank Redemption

The Shawshank Redemption stars Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins. It was based off of a book written by Stephen King. In the film Tim Robbins character Andy Dufresne was accused of murder he didn’t commit, he is sentenced to life in prison. The Shawshank Redemption was released in 1994 and was nominated for seven Academy Awards.

When the new prisoners are arriving at Shawshank, the director chose to use a bird’s eye view long shot. A medium shot was also used to see the other prisoners run to the fence to watch the new prisoners arrive. These techniques are used in the film to make the film seem more natural to the viewer.

The first part of the movie uses a lot of dark and low key lighting to make the film seem more sad and depressing. Such as the scene inside the prison the first night Andy is there, the cell is very dark with very little light shining through the cell window. Towards the end of the movie the lighting changes to high key and bright lighting. The scene when Andy is driving his convertible after he escapes is very brightly lit. These color changes throughout the movie suggest progress of the lives of Andy and Red.

While Andy and the other prisoners were watching the movie, Andy and Red were talking and the camera had both of them showing at the same time. Andy was positioned on the right side of the screen and Red was placed on the left side. The territorial space in the film, overall makes the film more interesting to watch.

This film uses kinetics in many different ways, the characters are almost always moving on the screen. The types of shots to show movement in this film are crane, dolly and aerial shots. Shawshank uses left to right camera movements as well to make the film flow more naturally.

While Andy was teaching Tommy the camera panned towards the right. The director did this to show what they are talking about. There