Analysis: High School Musical 3

Troy and the gang of East High School are going through their senior year, facing graduating and going their separate ways. Coming to terms with the reality of it all, Troy wants to attend the nearby University of New Mexico next year on a basketball scholarship, but Gabriella wants to attend Julliard School of Arts in New York to set her sights on becoming an artist. Meanwhile, Sharpay, the school's shallow and spoiled rich girl, plots to go all out planning the school's final musical show with the idea to add music to her hopes and fears about the future. While Sharpay takes an up-and-coming British exchange student under her wing, her flamboyant fraternal twin brother, Ryan, has his sights set on something different after school. In addition, Troy's best friend and basketball teammate Chad, and Garbiella's best friend Taylor, all have their sights set on their plans after high school and come to terms with the reality of the real world.

I analysed this extract in terms of camera shots, angles and composition, Mise-en-scene, Sound & Lighting...




This extract opens with a very close up of a young teenage boy looking tired and out of breath, making the audience more alert as they need to keep up with the action in the movie. It then pans and focus pulls to a close up of a shot clock which is winding down from about 18 seconds, showing that there is obviously a match being played and time is running out. After the clock had reached zero, there was a long shot of the audience cheering on the better team in the half then suddenly jump cuts to yet another long shot of the opposite teams fans keeping their heads down looking frustrated, this creates the tension between the two teams. There is a tracking long shot of the main team walking through the corridor and into the changing room; almost all of the players have a towel over their head while walking slowly. I liked this shot because it made me feel like all hope was lost for this team and that there was no way of going back into the game and winning.

It is soon apparent that the location of this scene is a basketball stadium. The stands are full of people cheering and supporting their team, cheerleaders dancing on the side line, referees, etc. As the game is going on we keep seeing shots of the coach getting more and more frustrated at what is going on, on the court. This all creates verisimilitude as this is what would actually happen in a real basketball game.

There was a variety of different costumes used in this opening sequence. Starting off with a traditional basketball wear for the players which involves trainers, shorts and a jersey. The coaches and judges are all dressed very formal in business dress showing importance and a higher status in the sequence.

The lighting used in the scene is quite bright at centre court but less bright as you look deeper into the crowd. This shows that all the action is happening at centre court and the viewer isn't distracted too much by the screaming and shouting crowd. However there was a clever type of lighting used in the audience that caught my eye; this was the flashing of cameras, it really made the scene more lively and realistic as it is something we would all do at an exciting event.

The props that were used; a basketball, towels, cheer leading poms, judges table, seats etc. These props were all used to put the scene together as it will look unrealistic without them.

Diegetic Sound.
*Heavy breathing
*Basketball Bouncing
*Crowd Cheering
*Dialogue-when the crowd is chanting, when the coach is implying orders and when the coach and captain are encouraging the rest of the team.
*Buzzer- when the shot clock reaches zero

Non Diegetic sounds.
*Drumming
*Inspirational music in the changing room scene
*Fast paced music when they return to the second half of the game, not a normal soundtrack the team is singing this as they play the rest of the game.

High School Musical 3 was a good movie for me to analyze as it has targeted our age band, so i was able to relate to it although it isn't our choice of a romantic comedy. This kind of movie would not work for us as we are not doing a musical, we are doing more of the traditional romantic comedy.

By Adnan Haliti