Taken - Editing

Taken

I have decided to write about is Taken. I will be analysing the scene where the daughter of Bryan Mills (played by Liam Neeson) is taken by a group of corrupt Albanians. There are two locations in this one scene. The first one being the house in which Neeson’s daughter and her friend have been taken from in Paris. The other location being the house in which Neeson is living in back in the United States. 

The method used to join the shots together is the straight cut method. The straight cut method gives the scene a really fast pace as it quickly cuts from one location to another. The faced paced editing gives the scene a real frantic feel which has the audience worried, anxious and always on the edge of their seat. This fits with the storyline as the daughter is desperately trying to escape from the Albanian kidnappers.  The fast paced editing really highlights the danger that the young girl and her friend are in. 

The shots within the film are matched are not smoothly visually transferred. The shots are quickly and sharply matched together to concentrate on the fast paced franticness.  The director, Pierre Morel, has used an establishing shot at the start of the scene to show that the girls are in their house. However, the rest of the scene is mainly made up of close ups of the daughter’s face and the father’s face. This is to show the concept of mise-en-scene which is facial expressions. The close up shots shows the facial expressions very clearly which tells the audience exactly how the character is feeling at that certain moment.

The sequences are constructed in a discontinuous manner as there is more than one location in the scene.  The scene is constantly swapping between the two locations to show both the daughter’s reactions and the father’s reactions to the situation they are in. The director has used a montage as there is a rapid succession of close up shots in the scene. There are juxtaposing close up images of the daughter and father which have been edited in fast rapid manner.  It gives us a great effect because it shows that although the characters are on the opposite side of the world to each other, they are still involved in the same horrific situation.

The director has used cross cutting as the camera is constantly cutting away to another action point and location.  Cross-cutting is an editing technique most often used in films to establish action occurring at the same time in two different locations. A lot of suspense is added as a result of cross cutting. Cross-cutting also forms parallels; it illustrates a narrative action that happens in several places at approximately the same time.

To support the suspense in the scene, both digetic and non-digetic sound has been used.  Digetic sound is sound that the character can also hear. In this case, it’s the girl screaming on the phone to her dad while she is being taken. This gives the audience a real insight into how the character is actually feeling and it puts us into their shoes. There is also non-digetic sound in the scene. This is sound which the character cannot hear but the audience can. In this case, the non-digetic sound is the fast paced frantic music in the background which adds a little suspense to the scene which constantly keeps the audience on the edge of their seats.