Batman Beyond – Season 1 Episode 07 - Shriek

Joshua Dansby

Title:  Batman Beyond – Season 1 Episode 07 - Shriek

Director:  Curt Geda

Date:  1999

What type of film is this?

The type of television show batman beyond is action, drama & mystery along with its cartoon animation visual style.

Literary Analysis of Film

Batman Beyond is a cartoon animation based on the original batman series but this time it is set fifty years in the future.  Bruce Wayne (Batman) is in his late seventies not able to continue his role of batman and now passes his torch on to teen high school boy named Terry McGinnis.  Terry just lost his father to the joker teenage gang.  After saving Bruce from the joker gang that Terry unconscious led them to, Bruce finally agrees to let Terry become batman.  The setting takes place still in Gotham City but this time fifty years in the future with hovering cars, AI robots, Credits (no more cash), splicing and a new suit upgrade which allows the new bat suit to fly, become invisible, ten times human strength; in addition to the new bat custom, Terry is equipped with a flying bat mobile.  Under the training and assistance of Bruce Wayne young Terry should be a pro in no time!

Aesthetic Analysis of Film 

Camera Angles:  are CU sometimes tilted on a 45 degree angle representing danger something moving fast towards a character and the CU on the characters scared or surprised face.  The episode starts off showing the character sitting down with a black background representing being in that characters mind, showing suspense.  The camera was in WS creeping slowly to an ECU of the characters face and eyes only.

Camera shows a lot of zooming in and zooming out for character suspense.  After showing a bright flashlight in the characters eye on a tilt 45 degree angle, the camera gets a MCU of the person’s hand holding turning off the flashlight at chest height.  

On wide angle lens the camera shows a both of the men talking to each other WS including background than panning to the right slowly and the CU focus on a large stone while the character is saying the sound waves are so strong that it can shatter this rock from a distance while still focusing only on the rock than cut scene back to the two men than a CU on the one guys hand in an iron man suit warming up the machine disks in the palm getting ready to release the waves from his hand.  The camera pans back to the rock right before it shatters at CU range.

The lighting is dark mostly focused on night time representing a sort of dreary setting.  

The next scene is in a business office having a meeting that Bruce was conducting showing him at WS and then a CU of his face when he is talking and when he is getting ready to finish his sentence the camera zooms out showing WS view again then back to CU on one of the office members sitting down to show their face expressions in regarding to how they feel about what Bruce just addressed.  The framing is loose showing the members leaving the room behind Bruce while he is centered on MCU.  After the long meeting when Bruce is outside bout to get into the car with Terry the camera shows WS to show the building he got out with the limo in front the a CU of the driver side opening only CU on Terry the drivers legs than back to WS view showing Terry opening the back door for Bruce without the camera panning. At this point there is no music just the sound of cars going by just to indicate something is about to happen once the car starts moving or when the camera shows the next setting. 

From these few scenes I enjoyed the mature calm moving of the characters along with the WS views showing lots of room disguising the cartoon television show as a real human actor movie.