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The Truman Show Essay

Decent Essays

In the film “The Truman Show”, directed by Peter Weir, the main character Truman, faces his fear of crossing water in a scene at the Seahaven Bridge which connects Seahaven’s island to the mainland. Through the use of lighting work, camera angles and sound effects, this setting showed how deeply entrenched Truman’s fear of water was in his life. Seahaven, the fake town where Truman resides, is presented as a brightly lit town with a positive atmosphere: the perfect American utopian setting. One aspect however that isn’t portrayed in this fashion is the Seahaven bridge. In contrast with the rest of Seahaven, the bridge is a dark setting with low-key lighting displaying it. The water around the bridge appears to be murky, far from the crystal clear quality you would expect from Seahaven. Across the bridge is a black forest, leading to which is a long stretch of bright tarmac and a foreboding bright yellow warning line in …show more content…

In one shot over the camera is looking out through the front window screen of the car and the audience can see the long stretch of road the leads across the bridge and Truman’s reaction to it through the rear view mirror. In a high angle longshot that shows the audience the bridge, the audience’s opinion about the bridge is changed. Using this shot Peter Weir has made the bridge look unimportant and a lot smaller than it had appeared from Truman’s point of view. Peter Weir has done this as he wants the audience to see the level of control Christof has over Truman. Through the other techniques we saw how scared Truman was of this bridge and the water under it yet through this angle of shot the audience can see how small and insignificant the bridge actually is which shows the audience the level of manipulation Christof has over Truman if he has been able to make Truman fearful of something so

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