Critical Essay Sample on Free Man of Color

Introduction

Charles Smith wrote the book of Free Man of color narrating the story of John Newton Templeton. The freeman of color is a film which was originally made by John Guare. The film consists of a set of events that took place in New Orleans in the year 1801 even before the Louisiana Purchase era. The story behind the film revolves around John Newton Templeton who was a freed slave that was given education and the power to govern Liberia just the way the white men wanted of him. Charles Smith describes the Freeman of color as a little-known anecdote from the American racial past (Smith, 2005). The film is a set of energetic culture that actually existed before law and order were being practiced. Furthermore, the culture used to exist before class, racial and when the political lines were drawn. The choice for the elements of design for this play is the color, line, dimension, and texture. The attached images below express the design of choice in the film.

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The first image is the overall unifying picture that actually introduces the audience to the film story. The picture fits the introduction part of the film in various criteria. First, the color of the picture is completely black and white only (Smith, 2005). The color represents the historic life of the past that was simple. The texture of the picture is represented by the visibility of a guy including the words that shows the topic of the filmmaking the background to be black.

The second image represents the lightning scene of the film. One of the lightning scenes is expressed in the middle of the film as the first light design. Here, the three actors sustain a formality and reserve that feels absolutely right for the time period (Smith, 2005). The yellow light's color creates an emotional response of the characters' moods including the two gentlemen' simple wooden set as well. The line and texture of the shape shown through the lights are used to guide the audience eyes to the movement of the characters during the show.

The second light design shows a picture that represents a bright color which illuminates the environment (Smith, 2005). The light is used to brighten the moment since it was at night time hours contributing to the cool atmospheric mood of the environment.

The third and fourth lightning images apply both the line and texture designs. The shapes of the blue light are used to guide the audience's eyes to the exact location of the characters forming the exact mood for the scene (Smith, 2005).

The fifth lightning image represents uniformity due to one blend of light color in the picture (Smith, 2005). The intermingling of color creates a balance showing order which I think contributes to the mood of the scene showing harmony all over.

The third image represents a scenic picture example withdrawn from the film. The picture shows the characters Mos Def (left) and Jeffrey Wright. Here John appears with the thick, heavy stack of papers consisting of about two hundred and fifty pages. The design element applied in this image is a dimension (Smith, 2005). The book is equally held by the characters show an estimation of the dimension of the book. The book appears to have physical properties like long length, thick due to its many pages and also heavy.

References

Smith, C. (2005). Free Man of color: A play in two acts. Woodstock, Ill: Dramatic Publ.