The Bourne Ultimatum Analysis

The Bourne Ultimatum Textual Analysis 
The Bourne Ultimatum is the third film to be released based upon the novels written by Robert ludlum. Matt Damon plays the lead role of Jason Bourne an assassin for secret a secret devision named Treadstone. After falling into the sea during a mission he completely looses his memory and suffers badly from amnesia. He is now trying to escape from the police in Moscow and carry on his journey to find out exactly who he is.

Use of Camera
The Bourne Ultimatum  has a big range of both camera movements and angles. Director Paul Greengrass decided to take a very different approach when filming which totally overlooked text book style camera work and the basic rules that most production teams follow when shooting a film. A lot of the shooting involved camera men holding the camera freehand and almost shaking the camera as they follow a character in a chase. The idea of this was to make the chases more intense and make the audience feel as if they were almost following the chase themselves. There is a mix of high angle close up shots looking down and tracking the footsteps of Bourne, long shots of Bourne as he goes past a particular area as if somebody is looking onto the chase. This enables the audience to clearly see he is injured as he has a limp. There are alot of close up shots as he goes through the chase sequence showing that he has no particular emotion about what he is doing. Also the camera is constantly cutting from shots of Bourne to shots of the police following him. this keeps the audience updated with the chase and lets them see if the police are getting any closer to tracking him down. 
Lighting and Colour
In this film lighting and colour is used in many different ways to effect the film itself. The first chase seen when the film starts is shot at night so a lot of low key lighting is used so that the audience can see that it is supposed to be set at night. A lot of the lighting they use makes it look like the only thing lighting up the street are the street lights. This is a very clever representation as in the real world the street lights would not be able to light up as much of the scene as they do in this film. In the film the lighting on Jason Bourne is also very low key and shadows parts of his face throughout the scene. This shows the audience that he is a dark character and he is very ruthless in what he does and does not let anything get in the way of him. This makes the audience want to carry on watching the rest of the film. High key lighting is used later on in the film in scenes that is shot during the day time when he is not being chased by the police, although a lot of the lighting is low key to go with the dark character and dark storyline.

Mise en Scene
A film with such a big budget such as The Bourne Ultimatum has to get the mise en scene spot on. In order to do this they had to get the sets to look as realistic as possible, and use correct props to go with it and also make sure the costumes and the actors looked like they go with the film. In this film actor Matt Damon wears a very simple set of clothes. He wears balck jeans, a dark blue t-shirt and a black jacket. The dark colours help to add to the dark effect they are trying to achieve with the character and as the clothes are very normal and everyday, it gives the audience a chance to associate with him. It shows that when Bourne woke up for the first time after suffering from amnesia, he thought he was just a normal person and represents this through the clothes that he wears. Another good part of the mise en scene in this film are the props. In the chase sequence bourne is holding a pistol representing him as the villain and there are all sorts of police vehicles including cars and helicopter after him. This helps show the severity of the trouble he is in and makes the audience wonder how he is going to get away. 
Editing
Editing in the Bourne was one of the key factors to the success of the film. The film is a complete action packed chase from start to finish and the editing helps acompany this very well. Editor Christopher Rouse used a series of quick cuts from start to finish keeping the action quick and exiting. The concept is that anything could happen in the blink of an eye so keeps the audience very exited to see what is going to happen next. The way bourne's mind works is that he is constantly on the move and constantly thinking different things. In order for the audience to be able to relate to this Rouse used this method of quick editing so that the audience almost feels what he is feeling. other types of editing that would have been done would be adjustments to the brightness and visuals of the film. This film won an academy award for best editing presented to Christopher Rouse. He tried a completely different way of editing the film and it paid off. The editing in this film has revolutionized the way action films are filmed and film makers will definitely have a look at the technique used in this film to see what they can put into theirs. 

Sound
The sound in The Bourne Ultimatum linked in with the picture extremely well. There is a good mixture of diegetic and non-diegetic sound that makes the film a lot more exiting than it would be without it. Throughout the chase seen you can hear very fast paced and high energy music that keeps helps to keep the audience relate to the constantly moving character. Throughout the chase scene you can constantly hear diegetic sound such as police sirens and police talking and shouting, making the audience constantly aware that he is still being chased. This picture received an academy award for best sound and another one for best sound editing.

The Bourne Ultimatum has taken all these techniques used by film makers and taken it to the next level. They have tried lots of different techniques including the shaking camera that makes you feel like you are in the film following the action. This was a very risky thing to do as this type of filming had not been tried before. But this paid off and ended up making the film earn $442.8 million worldwide due to the speculation in the media of their new techniques.