Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

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the landscape becomes more colourful. The choice to switch from muted
compositions to epic landscapes with a wider range of colours is apparently
conscious, made in order to convey a sense of overwhelming wonderment at the land
and culture of the native people. For Dances With Wolves, the events, while
important, do not provide the spectator with sufficient information to understand the
events from Lt. Dunbar’s point of view, but his perspective is communicated through
the representation of his surroundings.
A basic, but significant element of perspective is who the viewer experiences
the events through. Daniel Frampton, perceiving a film as the thinking entity as
opposed to the characters within the film, limits the definition of the point of view
aesthetic, but the elements of exclusion are central to this point of perspective
identification. Frampton writes, “In thinking ‘for’ a character the film can give an
impression of their mental state, perhaps, without aligning itself point-of-view-style.
We may in fact be looking at the character while seeing what they are feeling.”
(2006; p. 86) I would position this scenario within my definition of perspective. In
such a case, the events are still filtered through a specific character’s perceptive
position, creating subjective development.
Uses of Perspective Without and Within Horror
The previous example from Sunset Boulevard illustrates how the adoption of
different perspectives within a film can affect the story that is told, but understanding
the character is a significant part of the overall effect of a film. Martin Scorsese’s
film Taxi Driver (1976), for instance, functions almost entirely to understand the
perspective of Travis Bickle. Removed from Bickle, the events within the narrative
are almost entirely, excepting the final shootout, ineffective, anticlimactic and