Film style is recognizable film techniques used by a filmmaker to give their film feeling. The techniques include cinematography, mise-en-scene, editing and sound. The style depends on the story, and the how the filmmaker wants us, the audience, to feel. The Hurt Locker, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, and Fight Club, directed by David Fincher, are two iconic films that share the motifs of masculinity, the seconds between life and death and lost identity. Both directors have a “particular stylistic option because it suits the stories they’re telling” (Film Art 304). The Hurt Locker has a realistic style to make us feel like we are there, and Fight Club has a hyper-real style to make us feel like something is wrong. The Hurt Locker is a documentary style film that follows an American…show more content… The film was actually shot in Jordan “because it has a sizable population of Iraqi refugees” that Bigelow employed to be extras and to be part of the crew (Thomson 5). She also used real U.S. military gear because she thought it was important to get the specifics right as real soldiers are part of her audience. To further the realism, Bigelow used natural lighting. We see natural lighting every day and in the film, it functions to make us think that the characters are real people in everyday life too. Shooting in Jordan, Bigelow said, “The sun was guaranteed, and there’s no movie light that gives you that kind of intensity. So instead of using electricity, we just used the sun” (Thomson 6). In scenes that Bigelow needed more light, she reflected sunlight light off of mirrors or hid diffused tubes of light. Natural sunlight is typically blue and gives a colder tone to the film, but it also illuminated the characters’ faces so that we can really see their emotions. The raw and accurate mise-en-scene makes it possible for us to give into the willing suspension of disbelief and think that we are
