The film I chose for my coursework is called "Idiocracy" the film was realeased in 2006, directed by Mike Judge, the film is a sci-fi, adventure and comedy. I mainly class the film as comedy because it has good jokes throughout the whole film. The film is about Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson) and Rita (Maya Rudolph) who were taking part in an army experiment, which was a top secret hibarnation program carried out by the pentagon, but things went wrong with the hibernation as the Pentagon forgot about the participants which ended up with Joe and Rita waking up 500 years in the future, where the intelligence level of society was dramatically decreased which made Rita and Joe the most intelligent people alive on Earth.
The extract I chose to analyze consists both comedy and adventure. First thing I'm going to analyze is Mise-en-scene, I chose this to work because the extract shows how much the world have changed in in 500 years, the fact that Joe is supposed to be in a "Hospital" is already shocking because we are shown a room that isn't really sterile and doesn't look like a hospital room. Also when the "Doctor" walks in, the audience are shown a man who doesn't seem to know what he's talking about and shows that he isn't a trained professional, we are also shown a prop used with the doctor that develops him, which was a cigar, this prop is really effective because it shows how much things have changed in 500 years, that doctors are walking around smoking while treating patients, this makes the audience shocked about what they see, it's not something we would expect a doctor to do as it's really not professional and could be also dangerous, and further more in today's world people aren't even allowed to smoke inside and the fact that the doctor himself is smoking inside the hospital shows that the law has also changed, in a bad way, people can do pretty much whatever they like, wether it's dangerous or bad. When I was shown the doctor smoking while treating Joe with his problems, I personally felt a bit shocked and confused, I didn't know what to think or how to respond to that, on the other hand I found it amusing that he just walked in smoking not giving a damn about anything, this shows that how laid back society got in the future.
Costume, hair and make-up is used effectively in the extract to develop the idea of society being unintelligent this is shown through the way the doctor is dressed because the audience would expect a doctor to be wearing white and clean clothes, instead we see a doctor wearing baggy clothes, with a red hairband, which suggests that he's wearing his own clothes to work showing that they don't care about hygiene. We don't see much of the doctor's hair but as much as we can see, it's not really looked after, it's just grown down and long and looks greasy, which also shows that he doesn't care about himself. On the other hand we are shown Joe in contrast of the doctor as Joe's clothes are his normal clothes he was given by the Pentagon, nothin fancy just a green top and a white tshirt. Joe's hair is also looked after, it's short and avarage, also nothing fancy. This contrast between Joe and the doctor makes the audience see how much things have changed.
The setting of the extratct is also really effective because when Joe comes to the realization that something is not right, he walked to the window and when he opened the blinds, the state of the world was revealed to the audience and Joe himself. We were shown a world where everything is destroyed and polluted, we were shown a bridge which cars kept driving off and crashing into each other as the bridge was broken in half. We are shown a lot of rubbish just laying around on the floor which shows that the government does no longer care about the state of the world, when we look at world we are shown, we can't see any trees or plants, just rubbish. We can also see buildings crashed and in really bad state. I found that a little bit humoreous, the setting perfectly managed to reflect what year the film was played in. The fact that everything was destroyed it created fear about destopian future, because they realize that things could actually end up like that.
The extract also has really effective performance, Joe effectively achieves to make the audience believe that he's confused, he achieved this by his confused facial expression when the doctor walked in. The way Joe was walking up and down when he was trying to explain what happened to him, created an atmosphere of fear and worry. The way Joe is worried, it makes the audience feel the same way as Joe, this makes the audience feel more involved in the whole film. Joe's mood changes a lot throughout the whole extract, because first when the doctor walked he was confused, then from confused he went to stressed because the doctor wasn't listening to him, and then we were shown that fear, when Joe realized that he's 500 years in the future, he was really shocked, ha achieved to show this fear by standing up and looking around and then finally went to the window and opened blinds to see if it's true. Throughout the extract we are shown Joe through a medium shot when he's sitting down talking to the doctor, this brings the audience's attention mainly on Joe and his body language and facial expression.
Dex Shepard the doctor is really effective in terms of performance because he manages to reflect the stupidity of the society and the audience can see the way people think about certain issues in the future. He achieves by the use of speech, he talks really uneducated, he said "This is that faggot talk we were talking bout" when Joe was explaining what happened to him. This reflects the fact that talking "posh" is not acceptable because it's "faggot talk". Dex Shepard is also reflected as an uneducated, non professional doctor in the film because he doesn't use terms we would expect a doctor to use, he just talks like an everyday low class person, and a doctor is one of the more educated people so it shows that other people are even less educated.
The use of miss-en-scene is used really well in the extract, it perfectly reflects the way the future could be, they used it really well to show how intelligence levels decreased in the future. By the use of mise-en-scene they achieved to show that if we don't take care of our planet and don't change the way we live, things could get really bad, exactly like it was shown in the film. They used a film as "wake up call" to make people realize that we aren't living in a way we should be.