Analyzing Technical Elements of Film

 I Saw the TV Glow (2024)

Genre: Horror/Drama

Producers: Emma Stone, Dave McCary, Sam Intili, Sarah Winshall, Ali Herting

This movie was something I had been anticipating to watch. The simple sypnosis of this film is: the movie follows a boy named Owen and how he bonds with this girl named Maddy over a show they watch together throughout the years, but with more time, the show and their real lives begin to mix and they can't tell whether their memories are real or if they're fictional. The movie holds a lot of different camera angles, mostly wide shots that capture the characters small compared to the setting, which helps convey the theme. This movie makes good use of zooms and focus pulls to engage the audience. 

There's an emphasis on the main character, owen, which is captured by the zoom into a close-up shot. This  scene shows how owen is sort of enthralled by the show he's watching, which symbolizes how he feels connected to it in some way, telepathically. The scene also makes great use of a slow transition from Owen, to the ice cream truck, and the back to Owen, to draw out his reaction and make the scenes from the show Owen was watching as if they were happening in real life.

This scene shows a young Owen and Isabel (one of the characters in the show he watches) both walking. This tracking shot following Owen shows how much smaller he is to the rest of the landscape around him, signifying how young he is in the first clip. With the transition between young Owen to Isabel shows the connection between him and the character and foreshadows how their lives will blend in the future. Another transition then happens at this clip, which then shows an older Owen,  symbolizing how Owen had matured and how the show shaped him.

The principle of the rule of thirds is clearly used in this shot, with our main focus point being on the bottom right corner of our screen. We can see the conflict in between Owen and his mother, with their body language showing Owen being closed off from his mother. This shot utilizes shallow focus to still focus on the two main characters (can be classified as a two shot), even with the larger field of view in frame.

(TW: EPILEPSY) The sounds of agony and pain heighten this clip, giving the viewers a sense of panic when watching. The screams we hear from Owen also sound like they're mixed in with a woman's screams, which eludes to the ties he has with the character Isabel. 

Contrary to the past clips, this one shows Maddy. This shot is one of my favorites from the movie, since it has such beautiful imagery. The clip shows Maddy under the projections of an artificial planetarium, which we can assume symbolizes how the world felt around her when she was gone for so many years. We, once again, see the rule of thirds principle being used here, with the focus point being Maddy, who is in the middle bottom of the screen.