THE STANFORD PRISON

EXPERIMENTFilm Trailer Analysis

What was the Stanford Prison Experiment?

This film is based on a true story when in 1971 a Stanford professor of psychology decided to start an

experiment to show what confinement does to prisoner. He used boys for both the prisoners and guards.

They asked questions such as: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU PUT GOOD PEOPLE IN AN EVIL

PLACE? DOES HUMANITY WIN OVER EVIL, OR DOES EVIL TRIUMPH?

There is a lot of violence between the prison

guards and the prisoners. As the trailer goes

further one and so does the experiment, the

violence get more serious.

As the prison goes into more and more chaos, the shots are

edited together quicker and quicker portraying the anguish

and panic of both the prisoners and guards.

The use of the words “shocked the

world” makes people intrigued about

what is so shocking that the whole

world was shocked.

The camera is set to watch them at all

times. This foreshadows that

something bad is going to happen or

that they are going to have someone

controlling what they are doing.

The close up of the food that they are

forced to eat shows how much like

prisoners they were actually treated. The

close up implies to the audience that they

are deprived of a lot of things.

The use of the tracking shot, following the

professor shows the way that the people in the

experiment are going to be watched.

Also he is walking outside and it is nice weather

and bright, but then once the experiment starts

he is sitting in a dark dingy room, the complete

opposite, this could show the downward spiral of

the boys spirit and wills.

The audience is only ever

shown views of what it is like

to be one of the guards, the

narrations is the instructions

that the guards are given, this

could be so that, at least to

start with, the audience don’t

sympathise with the prisoners

who “are in the wrong”.

The over view of the boy’s photos gives it a very

clinical and impersonal feel as they don’t even have

names with the picture, this is much like the prison

as the prisoners are called by a number rather than

their name.

Representation

The fact that these characters are

dressed in shirts and ties, one of

them has glasses and they are all

writing in notebooks portrays them

to be smart or “geeky” which implies

to the audience that this in the

Professor and some of his students

that are helping him.

Also the mise en scene of this scene

is very 70’s which sets the scene

really well for the rest of the film.

This is one of the boys interviewing for the

experiment and he looks very different to the

Professor. He is wearing an open necked shirt

and is leaning back in his chair and looks a lot

more relaxed and as if he doesn’t really care. He

thinks that he is cool, this is shown when he

says “No one likes guards do they?”

The time at which it takes the prison guards to get into character is very

quick which could imply that they will get too into character and take

things too far. The use of the same outfits and the sunglasses make the

guards all look the same and humanise them slightly. This was one of the

purposes of their outfits.

The drab colour that are shown throughout the trailer make the situation

seem really bleak and dire.

The guards force prisoners to do push up

when they did something wrong, this shows

the sudden change that the guards went

through. They seem to get more and more

aggressive as the trailer goes on and are make

out that these people are actual prisoners

rather than people in an experiment.

The prisoners are shown to be more

innocent than the guards and aren’t

doing anything that they shouldn’t.

The closeness of this prison guard to the

prisoner shows that they try to be

intimidating and are asserting their power

over the prisoners at any moment they can

The fact that all the guys are shown from different distances

could show how individual all of them are and how different

their personalities are, but this changes as they get into the

experiment when they all conform to the roles that they have

been given.

The use of the high angled shot makes the audience aware that even though there is guards and prisoners the is a

greater thing (the professor) controlling them.

Furthermore as the prison descends into chaos the storyline isn’t explained as well meaning that the audience will

want to watch the film in order to know what events lead up to certain things happening.