Scene #1.....
As the number would suggest, I chose the opening scene of the movie. The movie begins with an establishing or extreme long shot of a field, mountains in the background, an old jeep parked on the side of a dirt road. The only sound playing is that of birds chirping. It is presumably autumn (the gold field), and sunset. Already, the movie has established a sort of melancholy, sad tone which will carry through the rest of the movie.
Soon after, the movie's title song, "Stand By Me" (Ben E. King) begins playing, a slower instrumental version. This immediately reminds the movie of the connection to the lyrics of the song. It also reinforces the heavy-hearted tone of the movie.
The movie then moves into a closer long shot of the jeep, and then inside the car to a medium shot of a man (Richard Dreyfus) sitting in the driver's seat of the car. It is clear he is thinking hard about something, as he is looking down and breathing deep sighs. Again, this reinforces the sad mood of the rest of the movie.
Next it flashes to the man's passenger seat, a close-up shot of a stack of newspapers. The camera zooms in on the headline "Attorney Christopher Chambers Fatally Stabbed in Restaurant." Without saying a word, the audience is able to make the connection between the man in the car and the headline. Because of his mood, it is clear that this is recent news, but not someone he is very close with, at least in the present time (as it turns out, it was a childhood friend.) What we are also able to establish from this is the setting of the movie from the newspaper itself, "The Oregonian", September 1985.
The camera moves back to a medium shot of the man reflecting on the newspaper headline. In the background, two boys move behind his left shoulder on bicycles down. He doesn't notice yet. The camera moves again to a longshot/point of view shot through the windshield of the jeep. The camera stays positioned as the boys drive down the empty dirt road. The man is clearly reminiscing about the boys, and a connection is made between the audience and possibly the man mentioned in the newspaper headline.
Finally, the camera begins to slowly zoom into a close-up shot of the man concentrating on something. The music continues to fade out, and he begins to speak. He says, "I was 12 going on 13 the first time I saw a dead human being. It happened in the summer of 1959, a long time ago, but only if you measure in terms of years."
Scene ends. Flashback to 1959.
What really struck me about this particular scene is the amount of foreshadowing. Every single element of this scene is addressing something that will happen later on in the film. The narrator, like the camera shot through the windshield, will obviously be telling a story from his childhood through his point of view. This becomes clear when he begins to narrate the story. What also struck me is the use of music to establish the mood. It employed a sad, slower version of a popular song, reinforced the feeling of "the end" with sunset and autumn setting, and uses the technique of flashback to enforce the idea that we haven't heard the beginning of his story yet. Further, his narration ("I was 12 going on 13 the first time I saw a dead human body") creates a sense of suspense for the audience. Otherwise, it is unlikely the audience would be captivated by the opening scene. The music eventually fades which closes out this potentially depressing, reminiscent, foreshadowing scene.
As far as teaching film/editing techniques in the classroom, I suppose I'm not entirely sure exactly how or why I would do it yet. With this being my first exposure to this technique, I can however, see the value in taking a part a film the same way a student might be asked to take a part a text. Something that I really want to employ in my classroom is the use of critical lenses to approach a text. Using feminist, deconstruction, post-colonial, Marxist, reader response, etc., lenses to read a text helps the reader determine the author's intended (or sometimes unintended) purpose of their writing. In that same note, I can see using film editing techniques to do the same thing. Again, because this was the first time I really tried intentionally doing this with a clip, I realized a lot of things about the film that I wouldn't have before regarding mood, tone, setting, in conjunction with camera angles and effects. I think it would also be incredibly useful in providing that outside purpose I'm so adamant on finding for the use of using movies in the classroom. Because a film can be viewed as one person's interpretation of a text (just as Stand By Me is Rob Reiner's interpretation of "The Body" by Stephen King), it would be interesting to have students compare a professional movie version with their own. I would love to take an important scene (or a few) from a movie version of a novel, for example To Kill A Mockingbird, and have students complete a similar assignment to what I just did for this blog. In groups, they could closely examine the use of sound, lighting, camera angles, setting, etc., to determine it's effect on the audience. Then they could employ those same techniques in their own movie version. Just as a text positions the reader in a certain way, a film positions the audience. Asking students questions like "what is the director's purpose?", "what is their tone?", "what is the meaning of doing _____?", can help students learn to critically analyze a film in the same way they would to a text. By practicing with movies, they can hopefully be able to apply those same skills to the media they are encompassed by on a daily basis, helping them to be more critically aware, engaged, informed citizens in a changing 21st century.
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