GCSE English – Media Assignment

Film Analysis
For this assignment you are being assessed on your ability to produce a piece of writing to analyse, review and comment
on a media text (in this case a film), using an appropriate critical vocabulary (eg. use of film language studied in class).

• Write a review of The Matrix, analysing what makes it original and commenting on how
effective you find it.

In your writing you should comment on the film’s use of camera-work, editing, sound, lighting &
colour and mise-en scene, and show how these contribute to the film’s meaning and the audience’s
response.

Among the points you could consider are:

1. Mise-en-scene / Lighting / Colour / Sound
a. The Warner Brothers logo at the beginning of the film establishes an uneasy sense of the film being out of
the ordinary, together with the eerie music that continues into the film
b. The use of computers eg. the computer screen at the beginning and Trinity’s use of a laptop, together
with the importance of telephones as a link between one world and another (just as modems are used to
link computers to the virtual world of the internet). Again this is unclear at the beginning – the audience
does not see what happens to Trinity in the phone-box in the opening sequence, though the agent tells us
‘she got out’. However, by the end, the audience has been shown how Tank uses computer programming
to communicate with characters and to ‘upload’ and ‘download’ them from the matrix.
c. Costume that alludes to ‘fictional’ worlds eg. the Agents dressed a little like characters from ‘Men in
Black’ which contains a number of ideas in common with the Matrix; the futuristic black-leather look that
is reminiscent of figures in computer action games
d. Action sequences that look like computer games with their ‘impossible’ moves. Stylised movements
(often based on martial arts) and the combination of this action with the use of sophisticated weapons.
Non-diegetic sound (eg. the pounding modern music soundtrack in the action sequences and sound of
ambiguous origin eg. the tinkling of the falling ammunition cases, the martial arts fighting noises) further
reinforce the computer game style.
e. Use of a strong colour palette: green tinged lighting is used to create a psychological link between the
green data on the computer screens and the world of the matrix (which is always tinged in green). This
implicit link in the opening sequence becomes more explicit near the end when Neo actually views the
agents and their surroundings as streams of computer generated symbols.
2. Camera-work and Editing
a. The zoom-in on the computer screen, creating the effect of going through a tunnel then zooming-out to
the scene with the police begins to establish a link between moving from a real to a virtual world –
although this is not clear to the audience at first.
b. Use of ‘bullet-time’ shots that create a sense of virtual reality, again like that found in computer games
c. Use of high & low angle shots to show the relative status of characters – for example early on the agents
are shot from below, but as the power of them and the matrix reduces this happens much less in the
closing sequence
d. Top-shots are often used in the matrix to give a sense of a closed-in, imprisoning atmosphere.
e. Hand-held camera work / rolling shots in the final sequence contribute to the sense of the ‘hold’ of the
matrix become less strong – the virtual reality is becoming more unstable as Neo realises it has less
power over him.
f. Parallel editing in the final sequence shows the relationship between the matrix and the real-world quite
clearly, and this is reinforced by the use of some shots which use similar framing as the agents chase Neo
and the sentinels attack the Nebuchadnezzar.

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GCSE English – Media Assignment

Mark Scheme –

AO3 (i): communicate clearly and imaginatively, using and adapting forms for different readers
and purposes
AO3 (ii): organise ideas into sentences, paragraphs and whole texts using a variety of linguistic
and structural features

AO3 (iii): use a range of sentence structures effectively with accurate punctuation and spelling

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