Topics for M 10/28
Thursday, October 24, 2019
Here are points of discussion about Zodiac for M. Feel free to suggest other topics and to start the conversation in comments.
- Use of sound, especially music, and how those choices affect our reading of mise-en-scène.
- Use of lighting.
- The choice to keep the killer out of frame or obscured in the m-e-s.
- Parallels between the police, Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and Armstrong (Anthony Ewards), and the journalists, Avery (Robert Downey, Jr.) and Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhall), investigating the killer.
- The use of setting to show character, e.g., Leigh Allen's (John Carroll Lynch) trailer and Paul Avery's houseboat.
- The effects of casting choices, especially for the actors playing the suspected or implied killer. Carroll Lynch and Bob Vaughn (Charles Fleischer). How do these choices play on stereotypes people may have about what a serial killer like the Zodiac would look like?