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Abstract
This study analyzes the narrative functions of visual persuasive devices employed by the creators in essential scenes in The Matrix. Highly creative, revolutionary visual devices used in The Matrix were enabled by rhetorical uses of color, mise-en-scène, and camera position/framing.
Notes
See for instance Weinraub, 1998; Johnson, 1998; Major, Satchell, Gest, Schultz, and Pethokoukis, 1998; Taylor, Fox, and Johannsson, 1999; Moyers, 1999; Hamilton et al., 1999; Corliss and Booth, 1999; Finkelstein, 1999; Pereira, 1999; and Pappas, 1999.
See Palermo, 1999.
Marking character names with quotation marks highlights the created nature of the movie as a designed artifact; as a writing aid it assists in avoiding inaccurate ontological agency indication. For a similar strategy concerning a “real-life” celebrity, see Cloud, Citation1996, p. 113 (especially concerning her means of designating a media persona versus a flesh-and-blood person).
Although the core technique for “Flo-Mo” had been used in shooting commercials since 1996, the use in The Matrix interestingly combined motion picture photography with still 35 mm photography with computer coordination of photographic principles as old as the Muybridge still photography experiments (Magid, 1999).
See for instance Bordwell, Citation1996; Rushing and Frentz, Citation1978; Sobchack, Citation1992; Terrill, Citation1993; Thompson, Citation1999.
See for a sampling Yeffeth, Citation2003; Lawrence, Citation2004; McFarlane, Citation2005; Milford, Citation2010; Frentz and Rushing, Citation2002; Cloud, Citation2006; or Lee, Citation2005.
This particular “scene outside the scene,” of course, sets up important diegetic, verbal information as the Hugo Weaving character (“Agent Smith”) talks to a police lieutenant character on the street outside the building and ominously tells him (concerning a verbal assurance of an easy arrest) that his men (the arresting officers) are “already dead,” thus signaling to the audience the potential power of the protagonist in the following scene.
For the persuasive importance of screen right positioning, see Zettl, Citation2011, p. 112.
Indeed, according to visual effects supervisor John Gaeta, it took three special effects companies employing a 100-person crew more than two years to prepare and shoot the almost 500 special effects shots demanded by the movie (Magid, 1999).
In the diegetic constructed world of this movie, agents within the matrix (or the virtual reality in which most humans are existing) can transformationally take the place of human cybercharacters when deemed desirable.
The entire quotation is: “An emerald green connotes versatility and ingenuity, whereas grayish green signifies deceitful behavior” (p. 34). The Matrix rhetors, due to the nature of the depicted worlds they were creating, had precious little use for emerald green.
For the ancient roots of meaning associated with light and dark elements, see Osborn, Citation1967.