Apocalypse Strategies

In the opening scenes of the film Apocalypse, there are many strategies used by the filmmaker, Francis Ford Coppola, to convey ideas and foreshadow what the remaining minutes of the movie may have in store. A few of the tools I picked up on were the angles presented as well as the lighting. It’s silent at first with a close up of the jungle and suddenly a helicopter zooms by. The scene of the bombing and helicopters is upright, until the frame of a man comes into perspective. He appears upside down, dazed, and a bit confused. His face remains faintly in the background while an image of the bombing continues, and slowly the man’s face turns right-side up. I think the decision to use this strategy was mainly to show how a bombing flips some people’s worlds upside down and can leave people completely blind-sided. It impacted my understanding by thinking that maybe this man was a victim or an army soldier wounded by the bombing. It made me curious, especially when he when the camera finally zeroed in on the man lying down on a couch with a camera angled up connecting with a ceiling fan. Could this be PTSD triggered by helicopters? I believe it arises questions, perplexing the audience and keeping them engaged. The lighting is another tool that Coppola utilizes in the opening scenes. It opens on a bright picture of beautiful palm trees with plentiful lighting, and as the image of the man appears, his surrounding light is dark. The bombing scene has vivid lighting, but that changes as the frame of the man lying in the room appears. The lighting for this is darker with many more shadows, until he gets up to go look at the outside to figure out where he’s located. I think the filmmaker wants us to take from this that when finally alone, the soldiers have ‘darker’ and sadder attitudes and feel somewhat isolated from the rest of the population. This makes the audience question whom this man is and what role he will take on in the movie. Overall the tools and strategies brought into the first few frames set up the rest of the movie very well and draw the audience in with ease.