Oral Presentation Part 5

V. Film Language and Representation
     Characters are represented as authoritative, they know what they are doing because they are highly trained naval aviators. Maverick and Iceman both have ranks of Lieutenant and therefore give them a sense of superiority to any enemy that might pose a challenge. In this five minute extract, there arrogance, especially Iceman's, gets the better of them.  This occurs when Iceman insists on taking the shot on Jester when he clearly knows Maverick has a better shot. His wait in time when he says "20 more seconds and I got em'" proves his selfish desire to be placed as number one in his class of Top Gun.
     The style in performance is a country side attitude where the effect proves to irritate the fellow pilot Iceman. Maverick and Goose are a tag team - they first demonstrated this in the beginning of the movie when they approached Charlie with the song "Loving Feeling" and now they prove themselves as true partners in the cockpit. Mavericks "tallyho" phrase and Gooses "its the bottom of the ninth" baseball reference just before shows a spirited enthusiasm towards earning the number one rank. Iceman displays a bad boy persona where he doesn't respond much to anything but shows his capabilities through actions. In this case Iceman fails causing Maverick to fail. This connects back to the theme of never leaving your wing mans side.
     At around 1:05:26 the wide shot follows the pilots downwards as the airplane moves into the shot merely emphasizing the descending action the pilots are doing. Similarly, when the the airplanes begin an ascension then the camera pans drastically upwards to represent speed and direction of the aircraft. Also 1:05:38 wee have a close up shot of Maverick inside the cockpit as he is flying. The camera is shaking extremely to emphasize the g-forces that are acting on the aircraft, along with the turbulence and environmental factors. Lastly, we get a point of view shot of the aircraft but not the human. The camera gives the audience an opportunity to trully see the orientation of the aircraft when in flight especially during a battle.
     In this sequence a lot of uses of direction matching occurs. The directors intent with this obviously is to make it as easy as possible for the audience to keep track of the fighter pilots so that we know who is shooting at who. Also, relevant in the editing and also very important is the position match. Maverick close up is titled at about a 45 degree angle and when it cuts to the POV of the F-14 thenwe see a similar orientation so that we know what Maverick is looking at.
     In the very beginning of the sequence the color of the shot is tinted orange. This warm color represents a passion for flying that these pilots should and obviously have. Additionally, the lighting throughout the extract is relatively simple. The dog fight occurs in day time and therefore [sunlight] cannot be controlled. The shadows that fall off the characters are meant to be accurate and with the director, he is merely trying to create the most realistic environment for the audience to believe and accept.
     As mentioned before, the meaning of the added effects of sound are added to provide a realistic notion of what it might be like in a cockpit in the case of an emergency. At around 1:07:00 Maverick is induced in a flat spin where he loses complete control of the aircraft. A horn goes off signaling that there is obviously something wrong and the sounds of the engines blowing out we hear the engines decrease in noise. The music fades completely because it is not necessary to the development of the scene especially sicne random music does not play during an airplane emergency incident.
     Once again, the directors intention with any aspect of this extract was to provide a form of realism. For location, based on my experiences i know for a fact that military aerial training excercises occur over large amounts of desert and designated water territory. This dog fight occurs over a desert plain type of region and adds to the realism of this shot. As for the mis en scene, the pilots can only wear one thing to provide realism, a jump suite. Also, how else is a dog fight going to be conducted without a fighter jet and more specifically an F-14 Tom Cat. These concepts to provide realism are so simple that they might be forgotten. But its the simplest things that provide realism to a shoot and therefore it is essential for a director to nail those key simplicities and incorporate them into a shot.