Alfie W's English Journal

in the film hotel Rwanda, in the scene when Paul is driving along the river road the directer has created a lot of suspense through the use of different camera shots and effects.

one of the ways he did this is by allowing you only too know what Paul knows for example when there is a shot of the car you know the road is rough but you don’t know why, either does Paul (hence why he goes outside to check). another example is how you find out that it was dead body’s he was driving over at the same time he does, you find this out from the point of view shot from Paul’s perspective on the person killed with machete this shot is only on screen for a short time which just allows you to work out that it is a dead body and by that time the shot has changed and Paul has jumped away from the body. also during this shot there is the non digetic sound of a machete, this helps add suspense.

in the same scene there is a very unusual shot when Paul opens the door of the car then falls out of shot i think one of the reasons the director has done this is to make it look like he fell accidentally, another reason was to hide the dead body’s. another way he hid the dead body’s is from the use of fog, he may have also used fog for pathetic fallacy because fog is normally associated with fear and mystery which go well with the eary non digetic sound throughout the scene.

another good shot in this scene is the over shoulder shot of paul and hundreds of dead body’s

1
He woke up, ate some toast, washed, put his cloths on, He took them last of his medication, and went to school. the medication was a red, tasteless pill and he didn’t need a drink to take it he had been taking it for a long time, in fact he had been taking this medication as long as he could remember.
Later that day he had science they learnt about greenhouse gasses this interested him. Alfie was a good kid mostly, listened in class, got average grades after school he went to Dr Dave to get another tub of 100 pills Dave said your going to need to start taking 2 pills a day, unfortunately it’s speeding up Alfie asked what was speeding up Dave didn’t reply…
2
He woke up, ate some toast, washed, put his cloths on, took his medication he went said bye to his dad than remembered he needed to take another pill, and went to school. He had science again today they were still learning about global warming, Alfie asked “so we’re killing the planet everyone is ignoring it”, too which sir replied “i don’t know” Alfie would always ask questions he always wanted to know everything there’s one thing that no one would tell him not his mum or dad not Dr Dave and that was what the pills were for nobody at school took pills like his no one told him what they were for he only knew that Dr Dave made them himself and that he had to take 2 EVERY day…
3
it was a weekend so he woke up later then usual, then, ate some toast, washed, took his medication and started playing on his computer he got side tracked trying to find out what his pills were for he had looked on the internet before he had no luck, and once again he had no luck. couldn’t find anything about his medication his friend messaged him on Skype “wuu2”  he typed back “nothing, just a normal day” his friend then invited him over to his house he told his mum picked up medication for the next day and got on the bus to his house…4