The Truman Show

The Truman Show is a film that held up a mirror to our society. Based upon a reality show that centers around a man, Truman, who is the only person who isn’t in on it. The show adopted Truman as a child and has followed him since he was a baby. The world that he lives on is completely artificially. All of the poeple that Truman encounters on a daily basis are actors, and Truman is merely reacting to the reality that they attempt to create for him. A mastermind director known as Christoph has orchestrated his reality. The film itself is a reflection on our societies infatuation with voyeurism and reality. It also comments on the connection that our society has with the digital world, for example when transmission cuts the two woman wake up as if they perceived the disruption.


Christoph is the Genius behind the Truman Show, he is able to orchestrate drama to keep viewers interested while still maintaining a reality for Truman that keeps him confined to his own world. Christoph exploits Truman’s own real emotions through creating situations that will evoke real emotions. Suddenly, at the opening of the film, Truman’s reality is shattered – literally – when a light falls from the sky. This begins the eventual decay of the alternate reality they have created for Truman.


Christoph has a sort of paternal feeling for Truman, but not the person – his creation. Christoph has managed to created this iconic being –Truman – through the use of dramatic effect such as music and camera angels. The movie shows us the great detail which goes into the construction of a scene in The Truman Show, when Truman reaches one of his great moments – being reunited with his father. Christoph maintains total artistic control over that moment, he is literally directing a moment of a persons life. This is just another example of how Christoph is the God of Truman’s world. He, literally, is able to cue the sun.


The details in the film are amazing, for example when Truman goes into the Travel agent and is met with posters of horrible things like a lightning bolt hitting a plane. the entire world in which Truman lives reacts to every misstep. For example after Truman’s father breaks back into the set, the next day a newspaper remarks that they are attempting to clean up the homeless.


The film was shot in ratio more similar to television that film, which helps to immerse the audience more in this reality that is supposedly televised. It is a commentary on our society and how the lives of people have become fodder for our reality television. The whole idea of the melding of reality, television, and film are great forces at play in The Truman Show. The viewer constantly has to be aware of if what they are watching is the film, or one of the shots from the television show. The movie is able to make this more obvious to the viewer through the use of the distinct camera angles such as the fisheye, the "button cam", the camera on the dog, the carbage can, and countless other angles. Truman's entire world is rigged like one giant set, always orchestrated to get the best angle. This can be seen when the camera follows Truman from the rear view window of the car.


The last hurrah of the Truman Show is his escape. SInce a young age Truman had been engraned with a love of exploration. The powers that be a constantly trying to quell this adventurous spirit. The travel agency is one example, but even as a child his teacher explains that there is nothing left to explore. It soon became obvious that a more drastic way of keeping Truman on the island was needed, this was when Truman's father was killed off. His father was drowned at sea. This created a very integral emotional and psychological barrier to keep Truman contained on the island. They are constantly using fear to keep Truman on track, such as the use of the dog. Eventually thought, things must come to an end. Just as Truman's love interes has the pin which asks how this will all end, the viewer wonders. Eventually after a tumultious escape through sea, Truman finds his way to the edge of his reality. Christoph apears as a God-like figure speaking from the sky. Truman walks up a staircase which blends into the sky painted wall, which is an amazing metaphor of the melding of the real and fake. And as he takes his last bow he says -- "Good afternoon, Good Evening, and Good Night"

Conceiving Ada

This film is very unique. It allowed us to see the way that a director can utilize a digital set. I found this idea to be an interesting concept. It is a good way to save money, but personally I think that the lackluster performance of the actors could be contributed to this lack of a tactile setting to use for the performance. The way that these digital sets where created was that the director went around to several houses and photographed them, then she put her actors against a blue screen and put the two together in post production. Though this is said to make some sort of artistic statement in the film, it was also done because of the limited budget for the film.
What made this film important to our class, however, is its discussion of the digital world. Ada, refers to Ada Lovelace, for whom a whole digital language was named. Ada was the daughter of Lord Byron. It also refers to Charles Babbage, who created one of the first devices that could be referred to as a “computer”, which is the difference engine. This device was actually a large mechanical device which could compute numbers. This film centers around the idea that Ada could help Charles perfect his design.
Ada also eventually comes into contact with Emmy, through a completely surreal set of circumstances. Emmy creates a digital bird, which is similar to the one created at MIT. This bird is a digital version of the mechanical one given to Ada by Charles Babbage. Through some interesting channel of communication this bird is able to link up Ada and Emmy. The film describes it as using digitized DNA of something of that sort,b but really the film does a bad job of making this concept clear to the viewer. Emmy can see into Ada’s thoughts and communicate with her. This creates some sort of gap in time and space that the film tries to explain, but fails at.
The woman who created this movie is full of interesting concepts, and I have been able to gain a greater understanding of this film by learning more about her. She is very concerned with escaping herself and creating new individuals, which she considers “art.” In class we viewed some of her “art” which consisted of her making random, and as she insists “personal” confessions into a video camera. This woman also created another form of “art” which involved her going out as another person some days. This escapism that the “artist” is so concerned with is a major theme in the movie, in my opinion. It seams the artist is always looking to escape herself, just as the character in the film is so concerned with finding this new person. In the end this also becomes significant because Emmy declares that she will let Ada live on through herself to let her accomplishments be recognized.
This film was an interesting choice for the class. It served to show us that a filmmaker could choose to use a digital set, instead of a real one. This has become an interesting topic in filmmaking because of the increasing popularity of Blue Screen epics such as Star Wars. This film, however, shows us every negative of the blue screen being used in film. The actors, who were not amazing to begin with, are further debilitated by their lack of surroundings to react to. The sets are so fake looking that they take away from the story in some parts.

johnny Mnemonic

This film is one of the first ones to strongly introduce cyber-punk. This cyber-punk movement was created by William Gibson who wrote the original story as well as the screenplay for the film.

The story centers around Johnny Pneumonic who has the ability to store large amounts of memory is his brain. This memory is used to store sensitive information, for which Johnny acts as a human currier. In order to gain the amount of memory that he can use for this storage, Johnny had to give up his childhood memories. This makes one wonder about whether he had something tragic to give up, or whether he just really needed the job. In any case, the removal of his childhood memories has greatly affected the way that Johnny views the world. He is very selfish, as made obvious in the "Room Service" scene. He has become so selfish because he cannot remember a time when any truly cared about him, such as his childhood.

This film is interesting got view because it started out with such promise, in the form of the genius writer William Gibson, but fell short because of a bad director who was actually used to doing feature film’s William Gibson was a very talented writer who actually coined the term "Cyberspace”


Gibson was able to put the intricate digital world into his own form of poetry. Also his concept of having Johnny be able to act within the cyber world was very unique.

Where the film went wrong is the director, Robert Longo. He was known for his visual arts, not his films. Because of this a majority of the acting is horrible. It seams Longo was more concerned with the surroundings that the actors inhabited that their acting itself. Because of this a lot of the scene constructions are very very good, but the acting is quite the opposite. An example of the beautiful staging is the chase scene that looks like Kabuki Theater. All of the movements are very graceful.