The+Hunt

Ten Choices for The Hunt- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2106476/ 1. At the start of this scene, Lucas's son, Marcus, is opening the door and calling for the dog to come inside. This shot is relatively quick, but it foreshadows what will happen. What's interesting about this shot is that there is cold light coming from the outside, and there is warm light inside the house. It's almost as though the cold light is penetrating through the house, and something actually does later...

2. This shot shows Lucas (Mads Mikkelson) cutting up vegetables. The start of the scene is like an average day at home with a father and son. This shot is done with warm lighting, and creates a sort of mellow, relaxed and cozy tone. For a while, the characters, and even the viewer gets caught up in this family moment, and it's a break from the frustration and injustice in the rest of the movie. Family is a major theme in this movie, and this scene demonstrates it, as Lucas wanted to have his son live with him but his ex-wife wouldn't allow it for a while. 3. They start talking about each others lovelife, and Lucas asks Marcus if he has a girlfriend. Again, this adds to the theme of family; this is a typical father-son moment. We're seeing the two get closer to each other after not seeing each other for a while. There seems to be a light shining down on Marcus and it looks sort of like right now, the only good thing in Lucas's life is Marcus; almost everyone else has deserted him. This is one of the few moments of happiness in the middle of the film, and it's about to be interrupted.

This sequence of shots had multiple interesting choices: 4. The rapidity of the sequence of shots was very jarring. Each shot was very short. First we see an object go through the window, then the camera follows Lucas fall down, and then we see Lucas and the rock and we realize what happened. During the shot though, the viewer is extremely confused. This is partially because as the camera tracks Lucas going down, it is unsteady and doesn't capture him fully. It was also jarring because we didn't expect it to happen right then; we were enjoying a happy family moment. The rock did more than break their window, it penetrated their safe, happy mood. This adds to the idea that Lucas can' seem to escape this lie despite his innocence, and it follows him even to his home. 5. The first shot, where it shows the window, pushes towards the window. For the very first part it doesn't seem significant, but theres about a half a second right after that where the viewer starts to think, "Hey this shot has gone on for a while I wonder why...CRASH". This adds to the shock value. Also, once I went back through it, I realized there was a fairly small delay in the image after the sound, that is, we heard the crash a fraction of a second before we actually saw the crash. I'm not sure if this was simply a problem with the editing, but I think it's also to confuse and shock the reader's brain even more, and we don't even notice it. Again, it could also be a that the editing was a little off. The last shot reassured us where the son was. After we saw Lucas on the floor with the rock, we've understood what happened and the immediate thing that a father would do would be to make sure his son is ok, and it's like the director is doing that for us.

6. After Lucas comes out to see what happened, there's a cold light on his face as he looks around. We can't see anything else other than his face, and Lucas also can't see anything. This means the viewer is just as lost and confused as Lucas is at this moment. The cold light on his face represents how the outside world is harsh and cruel to him. As Lucas looks out, he doesn't take up more than half the shot, and he also can't see what's going on. This makes him seem even more helpless, and adds to the sense of injustice we feel for him; he's innocent, but he can't really prove it, and he also can't stop bad things from happening to him. 7. Here we see a combination of the warm and cold light, but we also see Lucas's facial expression. His expression is one of fear. He's scared with this clash of the outside and the safety of his home. He's scared that they penetrated in to his home and put him and his son in danger. He doesn't know what to do. The combination of the clash of the lighting and his facial expression reveal how he feels about this situation. 8. Here we see how Lucas reacts to a mysterious black garbage bag, and the viewer had no idea what's inside it. The lights are still clashing, but Lucas's facial expression has changed. Now he appears stoic. This makes the viewer very curious as to whats in the bag. Later, despite his father's protesting, Marcus comes out and looks in the bag. His reaction is angry, sad and helpless. Now we try to fathom what could possibly be in this bag and we grow increasingly nervous.

9. The camera placement and angle for these shots are very interesting. In both of the above shots, the camera is shaky. This adds to the suspense, and also shows how the characters are feeling; shaken. Another interesting thing is how we see Marcus. We see him at angle; he's bent at almost 90 degrees and the camera is upright. We can see his face scrunch up as if he's deciding whether to cry or to shout in anger. After that the camera trails down his arm and we see that their dog, Fanny, was in the bag, apparently hung. This is a gut-wrenching site to see. This adds to the aforementioned sense of injustice.  10. After Marcus sees the dead dog, he gets up and starts shouting and threatening, as Marcus tries to pull him back. Marcus doesn't have the same reaction as Lucas, but that doesn't mean Lucas wasn't just as hurt. I'm sure most viewers had a similar reaction to Marcus; anger and frustration, but Lucas did not. Lucas stayed calm and rational.