Post #3B

Evaluation of the Scene “Welcome to Jurassic Park” and Explanation of My Plans to Teach Film Terms and Camera Techniques




I will analyze a scene from the movie Jurassic Park tiled “Welcome to Jurassic Park.” Eleventh graders read the novel upon which this film is based in the Themes in Literature course I teach. I have taught this course once, and in doing so, I followed up the novel by showing a few clips of the movie. Next year I look forward to showing more of the movie and asking students to analyze it for some of the camera techniques, the creation of relationships, the narrative development, and the larger purposes of the film. It will be interesting to compare the novel to the blockbuster movie based on these points of analysis.

The clip begins outdoors during the day, and the camera zooms in on Dr. Grant. He slowly stands up in the back of a jeep with his mouth hanging open. He gazes past the camera at what the audience soon finds out is a large dinosaur. The close-up on his face is needed so that the audience can vicariously experience his shock and amazement at the sight of his first dinosaur. The camera then pans to follow his hand reaching over to the front seat of the car where Sattler, a scientist invited to view and evaluate the park with Grant, is sitting. Grant places his hand on her head to coax Sattler to turn and view the dinosaurs.

The first time that the audience sees the dinosaur, a low-angle shot is used to demonstrate the power and enormity of the dinosaur. From this angle, the camera slowly pans upwards over the body of the dinosaur, allowing the audience to process the image. Next, the shot is widened to include Grant and Sattler; this is necessary to demonstrate the size differential between the humans and the dinosaurs. This sequence ends with an extreme low-angle to solidify the awesomeness of the dinosaur’s size.

At this point a wide-angle is used to show the whole dinosaur as it eats from the very top of a tree. Included in the shot are Grant, Sattler, and Dr. Hammond, the park’s creator. The Jurassic Park theme music intensifies and reaches a crescendo at the exact moment that the dinosaur’s front feet, which have been previously lifted off of the ground so that he can reach the tree top, hit the earth. John Williams is responsible for conducting the orchestra that plays the theme song which can be heard at moments like this in the movie. The song is uplifting, upbeat, and exhilarating. The music causes the audience to feel a sense of prolonged excitement and even suspense at times. At this particular moment, the music serves to add to the thrill of seeing the dinosaur in motion for the first time.

Next, a close-up of Grant, Sattler, and Hammond is shown as the three discuss the existence of a T-Rex on the island. It is particularly important for the camera to focus tightly on especially Grant’s and Sattler’s faces to dramatize their emotions as they learn about the T-Rex. This clip ends with first a close-up of Grant with his mouth hanging open again as he sees additional dinosaurs, and then a wide-angle lens is used to feature the dinosaurs he sees. These open-mouthed close-ups of characters previously depicted as cool, confident, and in control, add to the shock-and-awe factor that the writers clearly intended.

It should be noted that the larger purpose of the creation of this movie was to generate revenue. Nonetheless, the ways in which the production team went about engaging the audience caused many of us to take a genuine interest in the film. While the novel Jurassic Park centers on themes such as the relevance of science, the validity of scientific techniques, greed, and what is referred to as “chaos theory,” the movie focuses heavily on the conflict of human versus nature and survival techniques. Clearly these themes are also present in the novel, but the movie exploits them to create a thrilling and suspenseful 127 minutes of entertainment for general audiences. As I mentioned before, I look forward to discussing some of these ideas with my students.

Some further thoughts I have about teaching film and editing techniques in my classroom include using many of the approaches to analyzing film discussed in Beach’s chapter 3. With my Creative Writing class, I plan to teach a scriptwriting unit. To begin I will introduce still images, and using a list of questions, ask students to evaluate the images noticing cultural meanings of signs and codes and other photographical techniques used to signify power or meaning. The class will then move on to learning the vocabulary necessary to unpack a film or part of a film. I very much liked the assignments I just completed: the shot by shot analysis of a commercial and the examination of the film clip. I envision using either of those with my students. Finally, students will write their own screenplay or commercial, storyboard it, and shoot the film. Final grading would be a combination of using a rubric that I have created with the class and also peer-reviews. I like the idea of making the showing of the final products into a competition so that students are engaged in evaluating each other’s work. As Beach summarizes, “[b]y learning to analyze the use of specific film techniques, students develop the ability to judge the effectiveness of filmmakers’ purposeful use of these techniques to convey certain meanings” (32). Since I am always interested in helping my students unpack and critically analyze the messages constantly bombarding them, I feel that the skills developed through this unit of study are relevant and transferable to a multitude of real-life situations faced by students on a daily basis.