Edward Scissorhands Cinemetography

The cinemetographer, Stefan Czapsky, shows this scene in what the audience would convey as normal people going about their simple lives and something creepy living up on the hill. He does this by having the colors of the houses all pastel colors such as light blue, light green, yellow and pink. The audiences eyes are drawn to the darkness of the hill because it is so dark and so large right in the middle of the camera angle. He did a great job with the placement of the clouds and showing how large the hill actually is. Even though the detail of the mansion is not the greatest, it does not matter because the audience gets the picture of how dark and scary it actually is.  Everything in the picture is so uniform and the hill seems out of place almost, but it definitely creates a dramatic effect. The audience is drawn to the middle of the screen and it definitely creates a dramatic effect. What person is not drawn to a big dark hill in the middle of the screen? Not many people would say that they are not drawn to it.

When Edward is introduced to simple every day things such as eating, he is tasked with trying to figure out how to eat with his scissor hands. He has a very tough time adapting to simple things in life such as this. The camera is zoomed in on his face and it truly shows the raw emotion on his face and the audience can really see that in his eyes and his facial expression. The bags under his eyes, the messiness of his hair, and just the look on his face almost make it seem like he is very scared and truly does not know what to do. The fear in his eyes almost makes it seem like he really does not know what he is doing and maybe does not like what is happening to him but does not know anything different. This is when the audience would start to feel bad for him that he is such an outcast and this is where the movie really starts to turn. Edward goes from this innocent character, to what people think is a monster which simply is not true.

Work Cited

Movie:

Burton, Tim, director. Edward Scissorhands. 1990. Stars: Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder, Dianne Wiest

Images:

Susman, Gary. “’Edward Scissorhands’: 11 Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About the Tim Burton Classic.” Moviefone, Moviefone, http://www.moviefone.com/2015/12/11/edward-scissorhands-facts/.

“Mise-En-Scene: Edward Scissorhands.” Film Production, 29 Nov. 2012, flexpointe.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/mise-en-scene-edward-scissorhands/.