Master and Commander

1)   This film is a historical pirate action movie. The movie fits in the action and adventure genre because there is a lot of suspense as one of the characters spots a shape through the fog, the officer of the watch has to make a decision if everyone on the ship gets to battle stations, the captain then comes out of his quarters because one of his sailors thought they saw a shape. The Captain (heroic protagonist) looks through the telescope with the silence there is fog and open sea to also add to the tension and isolation of the ship in the wide open sea, this is the suspense and jeopardy convention of this scene he is looking through the fog to see a bleak outline of another ship. Suddenly he sees as flash through the fog, cannon fire. He then shouts to his crew to get down to the decks, this shows his place and authority as above the rest of the crew.   This makes the audience excited to see what will happen, the main convention in this scene is speed and motion and suspense and jeopardy as all the crew are all rushing to get to their stations, the editing shows this when the cuts between clips are very fast. Another part that fits in the action and adventure genre is when the two ships start fighting, this convention is combat and conflict which is typical in an action and adventure movie.

2)   Sound: The soundtrack is mostly silent throughout the scene to build up the tension, but when one of the crew call everyone to call to arms there is a drum roll which is an ambient or diajetic alarm bell for everyone to then wake up and get the viewers and the actors hearts racing. when the flashes of the cannon fire are seen all the sound goes chaotic and is very loud.

Camera work: When the character at the start says to the rest of the crew to get to their stations the camera follows the captain (main protagonist) because he is the most important character. Also when the captain is looking through the telescope it shows as POV shot so that we can see what he is looking at. It also shows as two shot as the two characters at the start making the decision to tell everyone to get to their positions. The camera also pans around the ship to show how big it is.

Editing: When everyone is going to their battle stations the clips are moving fast to create some speed to the scene. Also there is just ambient sound in the scene and no non-ambient sound added into it like music or voice overs.