Elements of Design

Jamie Field

Elements of Design

ENG 225 Introduction to Film

Prof. Annemarie Hamlin

03/16/2013

I chose to do a clip from the movie Training Day. I love this movie and I have seen it many times. This movie is about a 13- year veteran in the police department named Detective Sergeant Alonzo Harris, played by Denzel Washington, and a rookie wanting to join the narcotics squad named Jake Hoyt, played by Ethan Hawke. The whole movie is basically Jake’s ride along with Detective Harris in which Jake must prove that he can handle the pressures of being on the Narcotics team. As the movie goes on we discover that Detective Harris isn’t exactly who he seems to be and Jake is actually being set up to take the fall for the Detectives scheme.

The director is Antoine Fuqua. He made this movie about people he actually knew, in a life that he related to personally. His vision was to show people the harder side of Los Angeles and to show just how desperate and corrupt people can be, including people we look up to such as police. A lot of the scenes were shot in areas of L.A that most people won’t ever see or dare to go. He wanted to capture the darker side of the city and it’s people. The production designer is Naomi Shohan. Most of the scenes were actually shot on location but for the sets that had to be designed she actually went to the streets and neighborhoods herself and researched so that each stage that was created resembled the on site locations exactly. She gave them that same “hood” feeling as if you were actually standing there on the streets. The whole film was almost all done in sequence by Art Director David Lazan and Cinematographer Mauro Fiore. Their goal was to make the movie as if we were following two cops, Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke, through out one whole day. The challenge to do this was to compress all of the action and events in to a brief time frame.

I chose the clip “Jake pleads for his life.” (Training Day,2001)In this clip the lighting...