The Art of Filmmaking - Essay Example

Staging depends a lot on the scope of the movie’s story with respect to area. There are certain movies that move from place to place. There are even movies that move from country to country. For instance, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, moves from Budapest to Moscow. It further moves from Dubai to India. There are also movies that have such stories that action stays in one place. The recent movie, Carnage, is a good example of that. This essay compares the use of studio sets to location filming in the depiction of the city and city life in relation to two movies in particular i.e. Rear Window (1952) and On the Town (1949).

The film, Rear Window, is a masterpiece by Alfred Hitchcock. He has a history of going to great lengths in order to make the audience feel exactly as he wanted it to feel. The plot of the movie is centred mainly in a small area of a neighbourhood. The protagonist of the movie, L.B. "Jeff" Jefferies, played by James Stewart, is confined to his apartment as his leg is broken in a racetrack accident. He stays in his apartment and looks at the people in his neighbourhood. He casually observes their behaviours as they go about their lives.

He is occasionally visited by his girlfriend, Lisa Fremont, played by Grace Kelly. Jeff observes the very suspicious behaviour of one of his neighbours, Lars Thorwald. He assumes that Thorwald has murdered his wife. All through the movie, Jeff never leaves his apartment except at the end when he has to struggle with Thorwald and is thrown down his window. As the action of Rear Window is confined to a small area, Hitchcock shot the whole movie on a set that was specifically built for the same. The movie explores the themes of voyeurism and masculinity in crisis.

As far as voyeurism is concerned, Hitchcock has used the staging almost perfectly. It is important to note that it is highly unlikely that Hitchcock could have found a real location in which he could have shown what he wanted to show in the movie. He needed a very good vantage point for the protagonist. The movie opens up with a detailed view of the whole scene that the protagonist is able to look at. It is very interesting to notice how the director has crammed various aspects of New York’s urban life of that time in a closed space.