The Truman Show Essays

The Truman Show Essays The Truman Show Paper The Truman Show Paper National Product of a small country. You have to remember the show has no breaks for adverts so therefore there are product placements throughout the film. For example every morning Truman is always pushed against a billboard for a few seconds by the two twins advertising Kaiser chicken, etc, Mococoa drinking chocolate, the Chefs Pal, etc. Even though the show has a very retro feel to it, the cars in the programme are always the latest models and are always the top brands of car. Trumans car itself is very new and made by one of the worlds top brands. By the show having the latest brands of car it means the Truman Show producers can ask the car companies to pay top dollar in order to have their car featured on the show, It also probably works out cheaper for the shows producers to have car companies provide cars then them buying prop cars. We are informed in the film that everything in the show is for sale and everything is available from the Truman Show catalogue, for example you can buy Truman cushions, t-shirts and baseball caps. When we are in Truman bar there is an old episode playing when Truman meets Lauren for the first time and the member of staff tell us, all you can watch that on the Truman Show video collection. The viewers can even buy videos of the Truman Show, to watch at their pleasure. I think this could be Peter Weirs way pf telling us that the modern world is full of product placements and advertisements, that the world us a very commercial place to be living in, in this century. In the last half of the film Truman starts to realise that everything isnt quite what it seems and that something is seriously wrong in his life. In Seahaven all the cameras are hidden; in the radio in Trumans and behind the mirror in Trumans bathroom. There are many cameras in different positions so the viewers get a better view of what Truman is doing. As for us (the viewer watching The Truman Show film) the whole concept of the film is not reality, but the worlds of the production team and the audience of the T.V show are filmed as if they are. Peter Weir does the opposite of normal filming i.e. we can see the mask of the camera lens i.e.when Truman is in his car and the camera is behind the dial in his radio. Peter Weir shows us the mask of the camera because he is creating a surveillance theme on Truman and to show that its not reality. Peter Weir also used hidden cameras in surprising places like in the mirror and the dogs collar. This distinguishes that we are watching the world of Seahaven (The Truman Show T.V). Peter Weir uses high angles at Truman meaning that he is the star of his own show. There is also a shot were the camera turns upside down, the camera was in the pencil sharpner and whilst Truman was sharpening his pencil the camera was upside down this also suggest that Trumans World will turn upside down and that everything will change sides. Christoff the director of The Truman Show T.V also does adverts for the show because The Truman Show T.v is being broadcasted world wide and will have a lot of dedicated fans buying products that are advertised via the show. When Meryl is advertising the multi purpose knife/kitchen gadget, Meryl is in the centre of the shot and purposely holding the product so the camera will have a good direct shot at the product. Our perspective is manipulated, as the product is shown bigger then it is in real.The camera does a close up on the product to show the viewer what they are advertising. When Meryl has stopped advertising, Truman asks her what the hell are you talking about! he says this because he had noticed a change in Meryls behaviour and wanted to know what was going on. The whole concept of advertising is to separate money from The Truman Show t.v ; this is the real motivation behind the show.  Wendy Stites, the films visual consultant chose the costumes for the actors to ware. Wendy got her ideas from a book called Everyday fashions of the 1940s. Wendy worked with Marilyn Mathews a cloths designer, Marilyn said Our challenge was to avoid making costumes too Cornish and also not to make them too tied into a specific period of time. By this they concentrated on checked patterns (which Truman wares) and red,black and yellow are worn by the other actors. Truman stands out because he often has creases on his cloths and the texture is rugged. All the other chracters i.e Meryl wares clothes that are perfect with no creases or any signs of ware. Meryls cloths are steroetypically feminine; as the colours she wares are mainly pink and femine colours. We often saw that trumans clothes were rugged and had creases on them. This may suggest that truman is having a mid life crisis.