Bitting 1 Michael Bitting Professor Brian Brooks CRTV 120 9 December 2010 Citizen Kane Synopsis The most

significant contribution to cinematography came from the use of a technique known as deep focus in Citizen Kane. In focus at the same time, as opposed to having only the people and things in the foreground in focus, deep focus refers to having everything in the frame, even the background. Deep focus encompasses the combination of lighting and camera lens. Mise-en-scene becomes more critical, with deep focus; a filmmaker can showcase overlapping actions. In the scenes that depict Kanes loss of control and his personal isolation, it gives the audience a clear view of the space Kane commands as well as the space over which he has no power, which deep focus becomes more effective. Another innovation found in Citizen Kane was a technique called wipe, where one image is wiped off the screen. The chosen cast for Citizen Kane was very classical because none had ever made a movie before Orson Welles brought them to Hollywood. Their

Bitting 2 acting, helped them place themselves in each scene, which correlates with deep focus. What makes Citizen Kane such a cinematically important film is the combination of unique techniques, not a singular one. Creative storytelling techniques as well are what Citizen Kane employs. Citizen Kane portrays a long period of time realistically, allowing the characters to age as the story goes on, as a biographical film would describe. The character Kanes story unfolds in overlapping segments that add more information as each narrator adds his or her story, instead of being told in a linear. Flashbacks were another innovative approach to storytelling of Kanes life. There are unreliable narrators whose own opinions and interpretations affect their accuracy. In the end, leaving viewers with more questions than answers and inevitably invokes sympathy rather than contempt, the storytelling techniques succeed in entailing Kane as a tortured and complicated man. Citizen Kane, with its innovative use of lighting and shadow, could be arguably being a film noir. The advanced and creative potential of cinematic technique was introduced in Citizen Kane, ahead of its time. Multiple of innovations made Citizen Kane critically and skeptically the most exciting movie in the history of cinema at that time, along with many Oscar nominations for the film during its time.