Sin City

            Sin City is a film that stood out to me. It’s primarily three different people’s stories and they all end up connected. It is based on a graphic comic written by Frank Miller. It is shot primarily in black and white while utilizing color for certain effects. The film uses several different camera angles along with different effects.

Film Choice

            Sin City is shot almost entirely in black and white. The movie also uses smooth-grain film to give it a very sharp picture. I thought it was interesting because you would think of black and white to be grainier. Certain parts of the movie contain color. Blood is shown as bright red. One of the characters is shown in a puke yellow color. The eyes of certain characters are shown in their color to heighten the effect. The film used color to give more dramatic effect to certain times. When one of the characters is chopping up another, blood is being thrown around and is a stark difference to the black and white film. Even the use of white is seen when one of the characters is covered in bandages after a fight with the police.

Camera Angles

            This film, like others, uses different camera angles. In the end of the movie, you are looking down on the mobsters from the roof tops. This shows us that the mobsters are smaller than the women on the roofs and are likely to be the victims.  There are a few examples of low angle shots through the film to give us a sense of a dominating presence in the room. Jessica Alba’s character is shown from the perspective of the audience when she starts her dance on the stage. 

Effects

            Sin City is full of different effects. There is a scene where you are focused on a character’s face and then the focus of the camera changes to a person in the background. When one character jumps out of a window we are caught looking up at him with a sense of movement due only to the building in the background rushing past. Movement is also achieved by the fixed placement of a camera on a car and the outside world rushing past. You know that it is not real, but I believe that was the point of the scene. A character whose ambitions and motives are evil is portrayed in darkness with only half of his face illuminated.

            This movie is a good example of several different types of effects. The lighting, focus, and feeling of movement is exemplary. With being shot in black and white with a smooth-grain film, it gives us a feeling of being in a different world and time. The splashes of color that make it onto the screen that draws our attention to certain objects, characters, or events. Sin City was a great film that was able to maintain its ties to the graphic novel.