Knowing

Knowing is a film made in 2009 directed by Alex Proyas and starred Nicolas Cage. Knowing is a thriller/disaster film. The plot is students in 1959 leave behind a time capsule containing student’s drawings of their ideas of the future. A girl named Lucinda Embry puts in a page full of random numbers although she is stopped before she completes the page. That night however she is found in a closet, where she has scratched the rest of the numbers on the door with her hands.

In 2009, the time capsule is opened and finds its way to Nicolas Cage who soon realises some of the digits represent the dates and death tolls of every major disaster over the past fifty years, and suggests three disasters still to come. John (Nicolas Cage) goes about finding more about the mysterious forecasts which finally ends the world while sending caleb and abby with aliens.

Knowing starts with the brand logos of summit entertainment and escape artists animations and sound affects to accompany the logo to grab the attention of the audience and show off the brand. To reinforce this the summit entertainment text shows again fading in and out with a assortment digits related to the film. At this early stage the folly artist has already added the sounds of whispers and an errie sound track setting up a spooky atmosphere. As the non-digetic sound crescendos Nicolas Cage appears in the text, this shows the quality and style of actors and film will be. The first shot cuts quickly away from the sky into a close up of a girls face showing a deadly serious loo, the camera then zooms out slowly expressing the importance of the shot. Then it cuts to an establishing shot of a school play ground text at the bottom clearly shows the place and time (Lexington, Massachusetts 1959) digetic sound is all that can be heard at this point. Enforcing the unreal nature of the girl showing that something is very wrong or odd about her in someway rising the tension of the viewer. The shot cuts again swiftly on the a bell sounding the camera facing towards the door of the school, a teacher calls for Lucinda to come back inside however a quick cut to a close up of the serious looking girl with the non digetic whisper soon shows that she is hearing something the others can’t. This scene raises a lot of questions about the whispers like who/what are they coming from and why can only she hear them allowing the film to hook views into watching more. The scene ends with a shot of the sun and sky where the sun light shines over the scene creating a good cut into the next scene also perhaps providing viewers with the suggestion that the whispers are from other worldly things. The next cuts leads the audience to a class room where the teacher has shown that the odd girl from before has won and thus the school has decide to use a time capsule. All the students are asked to draw a picture however Lucinda fills a page full of numbers while the sound of the non-digetic whispers comes back on. This is shown through shot reverse shot from teacher to student and through match on action as the teacher notices the numbers instead of a picture. A close up reaction shot shows a look of huge concern from Lucinda as the paper is taken away from her. The shot then goes black with the non-dietetic ghostly whisper.