Editing Techniques and Narrative Meaning of V for Vendetta

The editing techniques that James McTeigue has used in the domino montage scene range out to many. Firstly, we will firstly look at the shot/reverse shot. Now this where the two officers are talking in the police station, during this conversation, they get flashbacks to where all the bad things go wrong, such as, when the public people get given the masks and they put them on. When the police officer realises what V is doing and why, that's when the ball drops, thats when V decides to knock the dominoes down, it's to give an effect that he has won his freedom, the publics freedom. This is also a sense of juxtaposition, as the dominoes don't relate to the happenings going around them, however, when it comes to the public eye on watching this, we relate it and it is a sense of freedom, the dominoes are freed and so are everyone else in the country.

As I was saying about the flashbacks in the the first paragraph, you can see the clogs turning in the police officers mind (top left), as the flashbacks are happening it's what happened to cause all of this commotion in the first place. They use graphic: match on action for this as the different images merge in to each other to show the same story. Here you have Evey and V with the body language of someone who's just been given freedom, there is also another match on action during the domino montage scene where Evey is under the bed when her mother is taken, then when Gordon Deitrich was taken from her as she was under the bed.

In this part of the scene it's establishing the area of London and the way it works, now this is a wide angled view of the train tracks that are in London and they have come to a halt, it's at a time like this when the country is rebelling against their government, and you can see this, just by the way the cargo trucks and trains have stopped on the tracks. They won't work for the government whilst they treat the public people with little respect!



James McTeigue also uses rhythmic in this scene, it gives it suspense and makes the viewer wonder where the police officer is taking his information and whether it is going to be much use to them, later on in the film. As soon as the police officer (top left) has sussed out what V was after and why, the music stops and that builds up the tension/suspense even more.


(I also realise the night before that I may have done this completely round the wrong way, if so, I shall redo it this weekend)