Textual Analysis 1

Textual Analysis 1 – Sixth Sense, M.Knight Shyamalan,1999

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLyYYHqVTsE

Knight’s, Sixth Sense is famous for its use of colour to drive the tone of the sequence. This is mainly in his use of reds to indicate danger, which will appear in this sequence of film I am analysing.

The scene begins with a medium close up of a police officer’s arm/hand and bottom half, walking away from the camera. The officer pops a red flare and continues to walk away from the camera as it slowly follows. The officer walks off screen past 2 talking police. We assume there has been some kind of accident as we can hear sirens, and smoking cars with dents in the bonnet which has caused a long queue. As bystanders stick their heads around the cars to see the cause the camera slowly moves down in between the two cars. We have sound over 20 seconds before we get to the car with the woman talking in it, as the camera gets closer to the car it moves round to a shot through the drivers door window. We see Toni Collete, dressed in red talking to her movie son, Haley Joel Osment dressed in black.

As the two talk, all diegetic sound from before, the sound of sirens and people talking disappears, focusing on the conversation between the mother and son. Until 1:45, the previous was all one long shot, this long one shot is ended when Cole, the young boy, mentions that he can see a ghost stood next to him outside the car. We get another medium close up of his mother, as she turns her eyes from the commotion outside to looking at Cole, when the camera finishes moving as Lynn starts to turn, it we don’t see over Coles shoulder, which I feel emphasizes a sense of distance between the two characters. We then get a med shot from Lynn’s direction looking at Cole and behind him outside the car we can see a ghost. I think a important factor in this is that the ghost is not represented differently to any other character, the only small give away is a trickle of blood down the characters face, we also assume that it is the ghost as Cole says he can see her outside of the window, which means that the narrative is moved along via dialogue and cinematography.

We then have a sequence of dialogue, Knight uses shot reverse shot, however doesn’t show each characters shoulder as the two converse, again a sense of distance is felt between the characters. Lynn’s distance from her son who says that he can see ‘dead people’. There is no diegetic sound in the background of the conversation, only dialogue between the two. Again as I mentioned above this is Knights use of pulling us deeper into the conversation. As the conversations become more intense, the Lynn’s emotions change and the camera gets closer

and closer to Coles face.

In this image I am showing how Knight doesnt use the traditional style of the ghost. there is no see-through, or a pale blue colour to the ghost. The woman just looks like a normal human, aside from the blood down the face, I will strongly consider this idea when it comes to making my film.