Ashley Matthews- post #7

Ashley Matthews
3/31/12

Food, Inc. (2008)

Dir Robert Kenner

          Camera moves play a significant role in effectively communicating the ideas in Food, Inc.  Every time we are brought through the grocery store, the camera moves on a dolly up and down the isles at the eye level of a shopper, making us feel like we are behind that shopping cart.  The camera focuses on the millions of processed food products on the shelves also at eye level.  Once we are brought inside one of the meat processing factories where it is told that the workers are abused, the camera switches to P.O.V. filming to make us feel like we are a worker there, scatter-brained and always moving.

         The camera moves on a dolly at a very rapid pace when scanning over the cornfields in Iowa. This is effective in emphasizing just how many acres of cornfields there are which are used directly to make food as well as feed to cattle which then indirectly becomes a part of our food. 

          A part in the film when the 1/3 rule is used effectively is in telling Kevin’s mother’s story.  When we first hear about her tragic story of her son getting E.Coli and dying at the innocent age of 3, she is walking down the aisle at the grocery store and she is moved to the side.  This emphasizes the fact that the processed hamburg product that contained E. Coli had killed her son within just 12 days of consuming.   Toward the end, however, we hear her story about how she went to congress to try to enact “Kevin’s law,” which passed.  Here, she is filmed walking down the hall of the white house with her mother, and they are positioned in the center of the frame.  This camera move emphasizes her as a person and her power as a consumer to make a difference in the food industry.