Editing: CGI, text been added to explain the historical background to the conflict of the roman period. It also explains that we are going to see the barbarians in Germania trying to resist the roman conquest. This helps the audience understand what we are watching, it is a convention in historical films.

Sound:  We hear orchestral music that sounds ancient and foreign including a chorus singing but without words. The mood is calm with a melancholy theme. This is mingled with a gentle laughter of children which gives the audience a sense of the man missing his home. This shows us the man misses home and is not excited about being on the battle field.

Mise’en scene:  We see a man running his hand through the corn field. By his ring we can tell he has a wife and a family back at home that he is romanticising. The un- harvest crops represent ‘is he going to be home for harvest time?’ The music is slow and it matches his emotions of sadness, it also matches his pace through the crops.

Editing: A straight cut takes us to reality, the man’s face in a close up on the battlefield. There is a deliberate contrast between this and the previous scene to emphasis the comparison between his dream and his reality. The dream was in a corn field where the colours were bright and seemed more joyful but the reality was a dark background to show how he felt about the upcoming battle.

Sound:  There is a sound bridge between the cornfield and the battlefield. The effect of this is also to show the man’s opinion on the battle. The sound for the cornfield was a sad song showing that he misses his life at home. Another way showing he misses his home life was when the sounds of the children appeared, this shows us the man has a family at home that he is thinking of and missing. When the man is walking through the battle field the music gets more intense and fearful, showing us the man is afraid of this battle and doesn’t want to be there.

Camera work: An establishing shot of the battlefield is shown which shows us a wide shot of the battlefield and soldiers to give us an idea of the scenery. We also saw a dark, gloomy, frightening shot of a forest in the background which gives a mood of fear to us. We know the enemy is hiding in this dark mysterious forest which makes us frightened and anxious to watch. A tracking shot of Maximus is important because it shows him to be an important man that the other men look up to. All the men are lined up and clear a path just for Maximus, portraying him as royalty that the other men idolise.

Antagonist:  The other men are considered the villains because they are rowdy and frightening. They have aspects that some animals we are frightened of such like lions as they had hairy faces. They are loud and un-humanly which makes us think of them as monsters.