WJEC Eduqas GCSE Film Studies sample

Cinematography and mise-en-scène The cinematography used in the film was a clever way of showing the divide between the aliens and the humans. Apart from the CCTV and aerial footage, District 9 was almost entirely shot using RED One cameras and was one of the first feature films to use this advanced equipment. The hand-held stressed, jerky footage used when around the aliens gives a sense of danger and threat. In contrast, the much more still talking head footage captured for the interview sections gives the audience a sense of security when around the humans. Additionally, the settings used helped to illustrate the divide and inequality. The film was shot mainly on location in South Africa and a real township was used as the slum that the aliens lived in. The only shack that was created for the film was Christopher Johnson’s shack. All the others were real. The residents of the real-life township had just been moved to new housing elsewhere, so using this location not only gave the audience a very real sense of what living in such situations would be like, but it was also very good for the small budget. Again, this location also clearly echoes the storyline of the film (the aliens being forcibly removed from the township) giving a real sense of art imitating life; however, it also created problems. Everything in the slum was real, including all the props from the animal carcasses to the barbed wire and rubbish. This gave the film a gritty edge and added to the realism of the mise-en-scène. It would have been difficult to replicate such detailed imagery, especially within the small budget, but it also proved problematic for the filmmakers as they would often arrive in the morning to find items had been taken overnight. Despite such set-backs, the squalid slum location set against the sleek skyscrapers of Johannesburg worked well to illustrate the segregation and inequality in the area. Another issue the filmmakers faced was that because Blomkamp wanted the slum to look like a war zone, he took the decision to film the real location in the harsh winter months when residents would burn things such as tyres to provide warmth. The dust and smoke created added to the atmosphere (with Blomkamp describing the slum at one point as looking like the Gaza strip); however, it also made the atmosphere very dirty and unhygienic for the cast and crew, not to mention the equipment, which stood up well to the windy and gritty conditions. To diffuse the harsh sunlight a huge silk sail was flown from a crane. The lighting in the journalists’ material was unaltered to give a realistic feel. Real-life township used as D9 slum ( District 9 ). Key term RED One camera A new camera used in a number of Oscar winning films, which is able to capture sharp, high quality images. 190 GCSE Film Studies