Frankenstein and The Hound of the Baskerville Essay Example

Frankenstein and The Hound of the Baskerville Essay Example Frankenstein and The Hound of the Baskerville Essay Frankenstein and The Hound of the Baskerville Essay Essay Topic: Literature This essay will be comparing and contrasting the opening scenes of Frankenstein and The Hound of the Baskerville paying particular attention to the film techniques used to capture the audiences attention. the techniques I will be focusing on particularly are lighting, sound, camera movement, edition and mise en scene. The film Frankenstein is based on Mary Shellys story, Frankenstein which tells the story of a man named Victor Frankenstein, a young doctor who is upset by the death of his mother during child birth, and becomes obsessed with bringing the dead back to life. Victor Frankenstein creates a creature from various body parts. Its not long before Frankenstein regrets his creatures actions. In contrast, The Hound of the Baskerville is of a completely different genre, one of mystery. The Hound of the Baskerville grabs the viewer by the throat from its opening scene; Sir Charles Baskerville lies dead on the moors of his family estate. With the look of fear on his face and the presence of animal foot prints around his corpse suggest the impossible, that a large hound, long feared by the Baskerville family is responsible for his death, as the next heir of the Baskerville family, Sir Henry Baskerville takes up residence at the family estate, legendary detective Sherlock Holmes and his trusted assistant Dr. Watson arrive to investigate the mystery. Although film makers use the same techniques they use them to make different effects as I will explain. The director of Frankenstein seems to use high key lighting throughout the whole of the beginning of the film. : High key lighting means that the picture is overall more realistic, also while Victor and the Crew Captain were talking you can see that the candle is glowing and flickering is trying to build up some sort of suspense. The director of Hound of the Baskerville seems to use lighting in a different way like in the scene where you see the corpse on the dissection table seems to be very bright I think the reason for the light being so bright while the camera is focused on the corpse is because in real life the corpse would have to be brightly lit so the dissectors can see the parts of the corpse clearly. At the beginning of Frankenstein where a women is speaking and seems to be reading out of a book, this is non-diegetic sound because if the scene was in real life you wouldnt hear her speaking because she is not there but if she was sitting there reading it out then this would be diegetic. But in Hound of the Baskerville I cannot find any non-diegetic sounds other than the background music which is used for quite a lot of the way through it. In Frankenstein there is a large amount of diegetic sound, sound that belongs in the scene. Here are a few examples of diegetic sound I found in Frankenstein; after the opening scene where the woman is speaking, you see lots of men on a ship and the sound of the waves hitting the ship and the lightning and all the crew yelling this is all diegetic sound. Later on once the ship gets stuck in the ice berg, the crew are trying to release the boat by hitting the ice with axes the sound of the axes hitting the ice is diegetic. Also another good example of diegetic sound in Frankenstein would be when the dogs are barking and then the chain snaps. In Hound of the Baskerville there are many good examples of diegetic sound my favourite one has got to be when the papers are flying out of the room when the escaped convict is on the loose, I also like the diegetic sound of when the officers are drowning in the quick-mud. I personally think that Frankenstein has better uses of sound than Hound of the Baskerville. The main ingredient in a good film has got to be good editing and I think both of these films have good editing but I personally think that Hound of the Baskerville has a lot better editing than Frankenstein. Here are some examples; in Frankenstein it is mostly straight cuts, the beginning is also very slow as the name of the film slowly gets closer and then speeds up at the end to get your attention. Similarly Hound of the Baskerville uses mainly straight cuts as well but Hound of the Baskerville uses them a lot more cleverly like for example the editor keeps making quick flashes of the body as if it is a bad memory in the doctors head, this is trying to grab your attention or in some cases scare you. The camera movements in both films are quite similar in some ways for example in Frankenstein there are lots of fast moving camera movements when the crew are on the ship and its very choppy on the sea this is similar to in Hound of the Baskerville were the prisoner is running away it was as though the camera man was running with the prisoner I think that it was a great use of camera movement. But the fast moving camera movements in Frankenstein are a bit to all over the place because you cant often see what is actually happening in that scene. Mise en scene is used to describe many different aspects of the film production like the clothing, make-up, settings and props. I think the makeup in Frankenstein was a lot better than the makeup in Hound of the Baskerville. For example when the camera zooms into the faces of the crew of the ship there faces are white and have ice on them to signify that it is really cold. But in Hound of the Baskerville the corpse is excellent the corpse is shaped as though it was scared to death and is as white as the crew in Frankenstein. In conclusion I think that Hounds of the Baskerville is better for suspense and has better editing, but Frankenstein has better Makeup. But the camera movements are better in Hounds of the Baskerville. Personally the beginning of Hounds of the Baskerville would make me continue to want to watch it.