Genre Research: Secret Obsession

After talking with my group, we decided which movies we were each going to watch. The first movie that came to my mind that used a crime genre was "Secret Obsession." In this movie, a women loses her memory and is brainwashed into believing that a stranger is her husband until she realizes the truth and attempts to escape. A lot of thought was put into this movie regarding its camera movements, camera angles, mis-en-scene, and sound. I tried to pay attention to the small details that have the biggest impact and took note on them to better understand the conventions of crime movies. In this movie, the camera movements used most often were tilt, tracking shot, and zoom. These camera movements were used to make sure that there was more intensity in each scene depending on what was occurring. There were a variety of camera angles used as well such as establishing shot, medium close up, medium shot, close up, extreme close up, dutch shot, long shot, aerial shot, three shot, two shot, point-of-view shot, and over the shoulder shot. These camera angles used help the audience know the importance of each thing being shown in a scene. For example, the alternating low and high angles used signify that Brenda Song is weaker than Mike Vogel. 

The mis-en-scene used in this movie was essential in creating the correct concept and environment for the idea that the directors were trying to convey. The costumes in this film were casual and reflected typical clothing that one might wear on a normal basis. Additionally, in the hospital, the nurses were given scrubs to wear and in the police station, the officers were wearing their uniforms. In the movie, the types of lighting used varies profoundly. For one, during the night of the car accident and the murders, the lighting is very dark and there are many shadows. There is also plenty of articial lighting and natural lighting seen as the characters are inside of a building and when they are outside with sunlight. The acting used in the movie is very dramatic and well thought out as all of the people seen act accordingly to their role. The makeup displayed in the movie was extremely appropriate. For example, at the beginning, Song had her macara smeared because of the tears and rain, which also caused for her hair to be soaking wet and she also had blood on her face from the car accident. Towards the end, Song had a large bruise on her ankle and scratches on her face made by sticks and twigs from her fall. Some props seen were a knife, keys, lighter, rope, gun, flashlight, computer, and a walking cane. Most of these props fit the conventions for typical crime movies as they help set an omnimous and thrilling mood. The settings utilized included a hospital, a police station, a bedroom, a garage, an office and a tattoo parlor. This variety in settings helped develop a sense of where the scenes were occuring, especially with the help provided by the establishing shots.

The sounds used most commonly were diegetic sound, non-diegetic sound, dialogue, incidental sound, and ambient sound. The editing techniques that I noted were reaction shots, eye-line matches, jump cuts, action matches, graphic matches, cross cutting, cutaways, dissolves, and fade outs. In this film, there were a couple elements that I liked and disliked. I liked the flashbacks that Song would occasionally have during the film because it would share with the audience small hints as to her background which would help us uncover the mystery. I think the parts of the film that I didn't prefer were the unneccessary scenes that lacked the tension and suspense seen in other parts. All in all, this movie fit the majority of crime movie conventions and yet was able to incorporate some new aspects that challenged them.