Film study sheet · 5 of 11
Promised Land
Cultural concept: Environmental justice
Gus Van Sant · 2012 · a gas company salesman arrives in a struggling farm town to buy drilling rights, and the town must vote.
Open the full film study Official trailer
Created by Madame Carole Paoli Pompougnac · https://trame-lycee.netlify.app/films/promised-land.html
Film credits
| Title | Promised Land (USA, 2012) |
|---|---|
| Director | Gus Van Sant |
| Screenplay | John Krasinski and Matt Damon, from a story by Dave Eggers |
| Cast | Matt Damon (Steve Butler), John Krasinski (Dustin Noble), Frances McDormand (Sue Thomason), Rosemarie DeWitt (Alice), Hal Holbrook (Frank Yates), Scoot McNairy, Titus Welliver, Lucas Black |
| Cinematography | Linus Sandgren |
| Editing | Billy Rich |
| Music | Danny Elfman |
| Distributor | Focus Features |
| Running time | 106 minutes |
| Release (USA) | 28 December 2012 (limited) · 4 January 2013 (wide) |
| Rating | R, language |
| Awards | Special Mention, Berlin International Film Festival 2013; National Board of Review top ten films of 2012 |
Film language, with examples from the official trailer
Timecodes are approximate (± 2 s). Pause the trailer and check each example yourself.
Shots
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| establishing shot / extreme long shot | shows the place; people look tiny |
| long shot | a whole body in its setting |
| medium shot | from the waist up |
| close-up | a face fills the frame: emotion |
| extreme close-up | a detail: eyes, a hand, an object |
| two-shot | two characters in one frame: a relationship |
| over-the-shoulder shot | we watch one character through another’s position |
- ≈0:15establishing shot of green hills and farms: the land at stake
- ≈0:27aerial shot of a road between fields: the outsiders arrive
- ≈1:21long shot of the school gym: the whole town meets
Angles
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| eye level | neutral, we are equal with the character |
| high angle | camera above: the character looks small or weak |
| low angle | camera below: the character looks powerful |
| canted (Dutch) angle | tilted frame: unease, a world out of balance |
| bird’s-eye view | straight down from above |
- ≈0:27high angle from the sky: the land looks like a map to buy
- ≈0:45eye-level close-up on a farmer’s smile: the human side
Camera movement
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| pan | the camera turns horizontally |
| tilt | the camera moves up or down |
| tracking shot | the camera travels with a character or a car |
| zoom | the lens brings us closer |
| handheld camera | shaky, urgent, documentary feel |
| crane / aerial shot | the camera flies above the scene |
- ≈0:33camera inside the moving truck: we travel with Steve
Lighting & colour
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| high-key lighting | bright, few shadows: optimism |
| low-key lighting | dark, strong shadows: tension, mystery |
| backlighting | light behind a character: a halo or a silhouette |
| natural light | sun, windows, candles |
| colour palette | the dominant colours of the film |
- ≈0:15soft natural greens: a pastoral, idyllic look
- ≈1:03warm, colourful bar lights at night: the community’s social life
Sound
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| diegetic sound | the characters can hear it (a radio, a piano on stage) |
| non-diegetic sound | only the audience hears it (the score, a narrator) |
| voice-over | a voice we hear over the images |
| score | music composed for the film |
| silence | no sound: a shock, a pause |
| sound bridge | a sound that continues into the next scene |
- ≈0:00 to 0:24Steve’s voice tells his own story over the images
- whole trailergentle acoustic music (Danny Elfman) that becomes tense
Editing
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| cut | a direct change of shot |
| cross-cutting | alternating between two places or stories |
| montage | a fast series of shots that compresses time |
| fade to black | the image disappears: an ending, a pause |
| intertitle | text on screen between images |
| slow motion | time slows down: importance, emotion |
- ≈1:27a video call with the company: the distant power behind the deal
- ≈2:09actors’ names on green landscapes
Step into the period
Daily life
- 2010s rural America after the 2008 financial crisis: farms in debt, closed factories
- Laptops, video calls, but life centred on the farm, the bar, the school gym and the town meeting
Music
- Indie folk: The Milk Carton Kids wrote three songs for the film
- Bar bands and karaoke
Fashion
- Flannel shirts, work boots, caps, and the salesman’s new flannel shirt to “fit in”
Places
- The fictional town of McKinley, filmed in Avonmore and Armstrong County, Pennsylvania
- The Marcellus Shale region
Historical landmarks
- 1947 First experimental hydraulic fracturing of a gas well, in Kansas.
- 1949 First commercial fracturing treatments.
- late 1990s New techniques (slickwater fracturing, then horizontal drilling) make shale gas profitable in Texas’s Barnett Shale.
- 2005 The Energy Policy Act excludes most fracturing fluids from the Safe Drinking Water Act’s underground injection rules.
- 2008 Drilling boom in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale; New York starts a de facto moratorium.
- 2010 Gasland, a documentary about fracking, is nominated for an Oscar.
- 2012 Promised Land is filmed in Pennsylvania and released on 28 December.
- 2014 17 December: New York State announces a ban on high-volume fracking.
- 2016 The EPA concludes that fracking activities can impact drinking water resources under some circumstances.
Sources: Focus Features, Promised Land · US EPA, final report, December 2016 · New York State Department of Health, 17 December 2014
Sentence starters for your sheet
- The aerial shot turns the land into…
- The voice-over makes Steve…
- In 2012, many farm towns…
To close: a place, then exchange
Where is each character’s place at the start and at the end? Then: political · emotional · general interest · human rights, then go deeper: what passes between the characters, and who do they become?
From the place they find or lose, the deepest exchange in this film is…