Movement In "Three Kings" and "Hero"

Our film class looked into two films, Three Kings and Hero, to uncover the secrets behind the use of movement in film. After all, movement is the basis for all films, which becomes apparent upon considering what they are also called…motion pictures. These two films are on opposite sides of the spectrum when considering the type of motion used, and therefore were interesting to watch in comparison to each other.

Judging from a purely entertainment level, I liked Three Kings much better because it was more fast-passed and easier to follow. But, that also may be because I just do not like subtitled films because I find it very difficult to keep up with as I try to watch the characters movements and interactions while I am reading the story on the bottom of the screen. In addition, I found the story line of Three kings to be more relatable and attention-grabbing.

Studying Three Kings from a movement point of view gives you a look at the concrete and literal aspect. This is where the camera is literally moving in various ways to produce different effects. The most predominant camera techniques used to express movement were pan, swish-pan, and handheld. The examples of each of these techniques show the meaning and importance of the varying shots. In the beginning of the movie, after the U.S. soldiers first discover the map from the man’s “backside” George Clooney’s character enters a tent where they are trying to decipher the map, and the whole conversation he has with the solders in the tent is shot in a single shot using panning to change from one character to another. Maintaining the continuity of the shot creates suspense and anticipation of what is going to happen next as well as preserves the cause and effect relationship between the characters parts in the conversation. For similar reasons, a swish-pan is used in several scenes throughout the movie. My favorite scene that it is used in is during a gunfire fight between the small group of U.S. soldiers and the villagers. The camera rapidly panned back and forth following bullets between the two groups emphasizing the magnitude of this event (braking the ceasefire agreement between the two armies). As with the regular pan, it created in enormous amount of anticipation to see whom the bullet would hit if anyone. Lastly, and in my opinion the most intense, the use of handheld filming made many aspects of the movie seem very realistic, and allowed you as the audience to feel like you were part of the excitement and adrenaline-pumping action. It is apparent that simply moving the camera in different directions at different speeds and add to the message of the film and how it is delivered, but it is not the only way to use movement.

Hero uses highly lyrical movement that is produced by the characters’ choreographed movement, instead of the camera’s, conveying symbolic messages. In Hero, choreographed fight scenes were the primary way of expressing the emotions of the characters. They were either intense and fast-paced or very flowy and ballet-like which usually matched an either angry or sad character respectively.

These two movies, although extremely different, allowed me to fully understand the multitude of ways movement can be used in films. For that reason alone, I highly recommend these films, especially Three Kings! Not to mention that they are both genuinely entertaining movies!