Scene Analysis

     For this assignment I chose a scene from Shawshank Redemption which is a movie about a man named Andy (Tim Robbins) who is wrongly convicted for the murder of his wife and her lover. He is then sent to Shawshank Prison where he meets fellow prisoner Red (Morgan Freeman) and forms a friendship with him. The scene I chose was the one of his escape. After watching this scene you are anxious the entire time, for me it's especially when he is crawling through the pipe as they use a tight frame to show he is trapped and if he gets stuck there is no one to help him. This scene starts with him in his cell with a flat angle with very minimal lighting which to me seems to portray the severity of what he's about to do. To get into the sewage pipe he had to hit it with a rock, to keep people from hearing it he would line up his hits the lightning. During this scene the only lighting is the lightning adding a type of desperation to scene. This scene is what the movie was building up to and becoming free is a revelatory scene in the movie. This scene in my opinion is one of my favorite movie scenes of all time just because of the way they portray him throughout the scene using close ups to show his emotion and lighting flashing every few seconds to give enough light to see him. When he comes out on the other side he realizes he's a free man and to show to the viewers his emotion the cameraman uses a kind of fadeaway from above as he stands in a kind of power pose with his arms up. Throughout the movie Andy has been pushed around and this scene shows how strong he actually is and portrays him in a way that makes him seem powerful and almost as if he has won. The voiceover by Morgan Freeman throughout this scene added to the scene by letting the actor be silent and keeping it more serious.