Homeland Episode 1Research

Series Name: Homeland

Season: 5

Directed by: Lesli Linka Glatter

Synopsis: About 2 and half Years has passed since the last season Carrie Mathison is now an ex-CIA agent trying to start a new life in Berlin, Germany with her daughter away from her past life of an agent. This comes to an abrupt end as 1361 classified files were stolen by the CIA in which Carrie's firend Laura, has recieved a portion of the stolen documents and Saul Barenson and Peter Quinn arrives in Berlin the moment the files were stolen. The CIA begins to leak into Carrie's new life in Berlin. Carrie after requesting help for safe passage for a refugee camp in Beirut, was kidnapped a couple days later by the men who worked with Abu-Nazir in response to her call for passage. The meeting seemed to have gone in failure for Carrie and was sent home.

My own thoughs: What I like about the episode is how it started off with a clean slate of equilibrium after the 2 year timeskip. It gave a small revival to the series by starting off with a clean slate. We have a former CIA agent living a new life in Berlin, far away from the CIA life with her daughter and boyfriend. Things goes well until there was a Hack attack against the CIA where classified data was stolen which originated from Berlin. The moment the hack attack took place is where the equilibrium collapsed and since then, the episode was then spent alternating between Carrie's life in Berlin and the CIA's activities reaching Berlin with Saul Berenson, Carrie's former mentor and Peter Quinn a CIA Black Ops agent.

In terms to Camera movement, the camera style for the episode was mostly if not entirely done by freehand. This method of camera movement gives the feeling that we the audience are there at the exact moment as it mimicks a first person shot, with very small subtle movements throughout every scene. The type of shots used in this episode ranges from over the shoulder shots, shot reverse shot, two shots, mediup close ups and panning shots. What I like about the camera work is mainly how the it was done in freehand to create that realistic feel that we are there at that exact time and place and it's my main source of inspiration for my project.