Textual Analysis - Ishma - Taken

Taken is a crime and action about a former spy who uses his skills to find his kidnapped daughter in Paris as she forced to join the slave trade. The story line to this film is quite different from ours; however, being the same genre, it uses skills which we would use in our film. The opening of taken starts with slow, high pitched, non-diegetic music. This immediately tells us that this is a scary film and something bad is going to happen. It starts with a flashback which is what we have planned for our film, though there is debate as to where to put the flashback, as it will be typical to have it like other movies. The flashback if of his daughter, along with the music, we assume that there is a link between the music and the girl, and this is that something is going to happen to her. It then cuts to the man waking up, which could indicate this is his dream. The lighting is dim which causes suspense and created a negative environment. The colours suggest that the mood is depressing and has connotations of bad things happening. When the man wakes up, it goes back to the negative music and zooms out to an extreme long shot making the audience aware that he is alone in the room. From this we can assume he lives on his own or has a lonely life. The man is dressed is ragged, lounge wear. This may reflect his life as a single man. When he turns the light on we understand that he was looking at a picture of a woman. We can assume this is the girl in the dream. We now know that she has something to do with the events going to take place. The light is positioned on top of the photo, which shows that the girls is a key character and also that it is her who the pain is going to inflicted on as the photo stands out from the rest of the room.

 

This is the DVD cover for Taken. When first looking at it, we notice two main things, the dark background and the word taken. The black background has negative connotations of mystery, death and evil. The word taken is in orange which catches your attention. This implies something is going to be taken away from the mysterious looking man. However orange usually has positive connotations. In this case is can represent the man’s strength and endurance to find his daughter or can also show distrust or deceit. The man we assume is the man finding his daughter. His head is down which can show he is upset or giving up. The gun in his hand can represent what he is capable of to achieve his goal. The last colour shown is grey which has a lack of colour. This can be linked to man and his lifestyle and how he is lacking something which in this case is his daughter as she has been taken from him and it can also represent his personality as being simple or boring. The writing itself gives a clear indication of what the film is about. Over all this poster shows the viewer what this film is actually about.