American Beauty directed by Sam Mendes is one of my favorite films. Mendes’s sensitivity to each character’s unique point of view in the suburban world of the film is highlighted in this scene.

Sit-down dinners are often used as a familiar way for the audience to understand the relationship between characters. In this scene Mendes uses simple, direct coverage to allow the character’s to play out by themselves as tension rises.

First he establishes the set up with a wide angled shot. Something about the family seems off. Placing the dining table in the center of the room and frame creates a focused, intense view of the family. These wide shots emphasize the distance between each of them in space and in their relationships.

Typically in dialogue heavy scenes the talking person is in a mid-shot with the listener’s shoulder in the foreground, out of focus to the side of the frame. Mendes chooses to just have one character in the mid-shot which so we can fully appreciate the subtlety of their reaction and it makes them seem oddly far away like they’re in a court room on trial. 

Wide shot of the family of 3 establishes their spots for the scene. A clear even space between each of them. They are fixed in their seats even though they are yelling at the top of their lungs.

Kevin Spacey’s deadpan, sarcastic acting style is showcased in the climax of the sequence where he slowing raises the plate about to throw the asparagus that he previously was so desperate to obtain. The audience doesn’t know what he’s going to do for sure.  A clean upward tilt captures Lester’s dangerously slow rise from his seat. This shot takes its time, the way Lester does, relishing in his thought of throwing this platter of damned asparagus. The camera movement subtly follows his him as he retracts and is static when he is.

I think this scene is a great example of how simple camera movement and coverage can present a drama.

I’m really excited to be doing this course! Class has been very hands on and challenging so far. On the topic of being hands on, this studio has introduced me to a perspective of filmmaking. Majoring in Cinema Studies highly theory based. Its been very refreshing to focus on the practical side. E.g Clockwork orange one shot. I never thought about how economic one shot can be as well as its cinematic effect.As someone who avoids tripods like the plague, Using these huge sony EXo cameras has been difficult.

WEEK 2 EXERCISE; 4 SHOTS WITH SCRIPT 

Working in a group of four on an impromtu script has its challenges and here’s how our group approached the task and some things I learned the experience.

When we got the script we read through and decided to draw our own individual story boards. We then presented to eachother and discussed some ideas that stood out.

To come up with my storyboard I first read through the script a few times. I tried to imagine what Bob and Beatrice might be feeling. I concluded that Bob was unsure, reluctant while Beatrice was mysterious and a catalyst for the narrative. To decide on 4 shots to tell the story I picked out key dramatic hit points in the script. In particular I wanted to have an element of suprise with Beatrice’s arrival. To do this we had her off screen and had her say her line while Bob looked over his shoulder in search of the source of the voice,

Going through each group members storyboard we found some shared ideas and found ways to joined them up logically.

Pro: Each person got to share their ideas so no one felt left out and we had some structure to our approach.

Con: Having 4 different story boards for one script is time consuming when deciding between them.

When watching it in class we noticed that the footage was over exposed, which is difficult to notice when

We also made the mistake of recording through watching the viewfinder like a screen, not through the eyepiece, which is part of the reason we didn’t notice framing awkwardness and overexposure.

Robin asked us in class what we thought about cutting from wide shot to wide shot. I think that, after watching it back its clear  that the sequence seems unbalanced. Instead of going CLOSE UP, MIDSHOT, WIDE SHOT, WIDESHOT we could have done something more like CLOSE UP, MID SHOT, CLOSE UP, WIDESHOT

American Beauty scene analysis

Week 2: Bob, Beatrice 4 shots and Spare ticket