McIntyre, Mise en Scene in Super 8

Super 8 is both an action/thriller movie about an alien invasion and also an adolescent story, offering a unique perspective about what happens when kids and adults respond to an stirring event--an alien invasion. Both groups operate off various levels of knowledge. The children in the movie come into the situation quite oblivious to what's happening, go on an adventure, and end up the unlikely heroes to a problem most would consider beyond their grasp. The adults in the movie are a little more aware of the problem coming in (or a lot, considering the military) but need the children's perspective to--quite literally--save the day.

While the military and the children remain somewhat aware of the other's presence and significance in trying to deal with the alien, a very dramatic scene takes place when the two meet face-to-face for the first time in the school, where the children have just finished doing research that has humanized the alien and helped the children realize its motivations. The military takes the children away in a school bus, which promptly gets attacked by the alien.

While I couldn't find a still of good quality of that actual scene, it operates in much of the same way as the scene where the alien takes Alice (hence the picture). The lighting key remains dark, blue-toned. It's a dark situation--Alice is missing, strange men have the boys, and no one is sure what's going to happen. Further, the scene is at night, calling upon the stereotype of bad things happening in the night. The humans are not at their own mercy--they're at the mercy of the alien.

The shot uses open form--we don't see the alien clearly, heightening the tension. We see what the humans see--large and insect-like limbs rocking the bus back and forth. The fact that there is a world happening outside what we can see is frightening, and we get a sense of what the characters are feeling.

The characters in the shot remain for the most part in the center--it is their perspective we witness, in particular the children's. The children hold the dominant position. We watch them. However, they're being dominated by a force we cannot see, which has creepily been placed in the subsidiary position. The shot rocks back and forth chaotically, and while the focus is on the main characters, the focus is never controlled. The humans in the bus certainly don't feel control. While the children sit caged in the back of the bus, away from the military men, the military moves toward the children during the alien attack. The alien becomes a bigger force to reckon with than the children are. The military asks them for help, and they respond by screaming. They're under attack, after all. That's all they can focus on.