Formal Elements In The Film Zootopia

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Formal Elements Essay: Zootopia Zootopia (Byron Howard Rich Moore 2016) is an extremely successful film about a bunny named Judy. Within the film there are many direct and obvious themes, but a more implicit theme that I found while watching was, Our preconceived fears about certain groups as a society are directly reflected in Zootopia. I will be using the formal elements: camera angle, camera distance, and sound to argue my point. In the scene I will be analyzing, Judy just finished her press conference and claimed that all predators were savages. She gets off the podium and has an encounter with her friend, Nick, who is a predator. He is mad that Judy made this general statement about predators. Nick scares Judy and acts as though he has …show more content…

The camera angle that the film uses is a low-angle shot. In cinema, a low-angle shot is when the camera is positioned below eye level and looks up at the character. When the director uses a low shot, they are trying to empower the subject of the shot. The audience is supposed to feel less in control than the character that is being looked up to. In the scene, Nick is the character with all the power. The audience is being put in Judy’s shoes and use of a low shot camera successfully does this. In the scene, we feel all of the automatic fear that is triggered within Judy from her past experience with predators because the low shot puts us in Judy’s body. Nick’s species categorizes him as a predator, however in the film Nick shows no sign of savagery. The low shot emphasises that Nick is empowered and is extremely bitter with his friend, thus bringing out Judy’s preconceived fears about predators and exposing the underlying fear that has become so prevalent in our society today. Zootopia, being a children's film, one lesson kids could take from this scene and into society is that; just because you are afraid, does not mean that you are automatically right. This is displayed in the film because Judy is afraid of Nick, even though he did not do anything to …show more content…

Sound is an extremely important element to a film. Music, the sound chosen in this scene, is categorized as non-diegetic, which means that the music is not in the story world. The directors use deep, dramatic, intense music when Nick is interrogating Judy about her speech. The music in the scene helps the audience feel the anxiousness that Judy is feeling towards predators, particularly Nick. As the music plays in the background, the intensity of the scene grows immensely. The directors use the music to help heighten the emotion during this encounter and reveal Judy’s inner fear of predators that gets the best of her in this

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