In Apocalypse Now, the use of lights, shadow, music, complimented the characters in the scenes that they were in. The scene that stood out to me the most was when the soldiers were in the helicopter and the captain said he would be putting the music on soon. When he does it is just so loud and dominant in the scene, and the music choice matched perfectly with what was going on below. All of a sudden the scene cuts to another and the music stops abruptly and i thought this was a very interesting choice because as I remember, it was a well known part of the song and you could finish it in your head once it went out. I thought this was really interesting, and at first i didn't understand why it wouldn't have at least finished the measure of the music but then i thought about what had happened next. There was an attack on the town below, and i don't know if i was looking into this too much but it almost seemed to compare the fact that the music stopped so shortly when you didn't expect it to how the lives of the people in the town below also stopped so shortly.

The scene where Tyrone dies was so well done but not over done. The scene starts off with everyone receiving mail which gets the boys excited because it is the only thing that has connected these soldiers with home for the last several months. Tyrone is playing a tape from his mother and all oaf sudden he dies. The directors choice to keep the tape playing while he was dying was a very effective to the viewer. Not only does his mothers voice continue, but she is saying that they all miss him, and are going to throw a big party when he comes back and to make sure he comes home in one piece. The boy dying was sad enough but to add his mothers voice saying she missed him added something personal to the mix. Before then he was just an annoying young boy off to war, i didn't really care too much about him until i was able to connect his family to him.

As soon as we find out what his mission is there is this curiosity as to who captain Kurtz is and why he is so insane. We wonder what he does thats so crazy, why no one has successfully killed him, and why people follow him as a God. At the end of the movie when we finally meet captain Kurtz we never really see his face. Every shot of him keeps part of his face in a shadow and i thought this was an interesting choice. It leaves the mystery to him. As captain WIllard spends more time around him he starts to wonder if he wasn't crazy at all and that also keeps some mystery to him. Until we meet him its easy for the viewer to hate him, or to at least agree that he is crazy and needs to be killed. We go along the whole journey with captain Willard and when we finally get to the end and expect him to just go in and kill him but then WIllard starts talking to Kurtz and considering his ideas. We start to think about them as well and i think the shadow helps us be ok with wondering.

The final scene when Willard kills Kurtz, we see a moment when Willard considers staying. He kills him, steps out on the step, and then looks over the crowd then turns his face into the shadow, and i noticed it was the same shadow that was on Kurtz when we first met him. I thought this was a really great idea to tie the two characters together for a split second. It gave you a look into the possibility of what he could become. However, Willard choses to go home instead.