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Film Analysis Notes...

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Film Analysis Notes

 is a film that was released in 1998 and was directed by Gary Ross. Pleasantville The story centers on two siblings who wind up trapped in a 1950s TV show, set in a small Midwest town, where residents are seemingly perfect. In their attempts to fit in, the two become more aware of social issues such as racism and freedom of speech. The scene in which I am going to analyse (1:07:20- 1:10:40) is a scene which has a lot of impact on the film. In the film, it happens in between where the tv show world is changing from a black and white world to a colour world. The scene opens up with a shot of some black and white flowers and goes up to a medium shot of Betty Parker The medium shot shows that she is wearing a scarf over her head and has her hands on her upper chest. This is showing us that she is feeling embarrassed about being in colour and that she is hiding something, which is her black and white makeup to hide her “coloured” face as we saw in an earlier scene when her son helped her by putting the black and white makeup on her. She then walks away and we go into a close up of Betty's face. It then goes to a character point of view shot to show us what she is looking at of a mural on the side of the soda shop which is painted in colour. We then go back to the close up shot of her and we see that she is shocked about the mural and that it has really taken her interest. She then is seen coming into the soda shop with a medium shot. We then have another character point of view shot where she is looking at the owner of the soda shop painting with colour paint. The lighting in this part of the scene is low key lighting Then there a lot of close up shots of the different paintings that he has been working on and the expressions on the two characters faces about these paintings.

There is then a close up on a particular painting of a woman who is laying there crying and when Betty points out that the woman is crying it does a close up to Betty as she starts to cry. Then the close up continues as Betty wipes away her tears but in doing so, ends up wiping away her makeup and reveals the colour underneath. It then flicks to a close up of the soda shop owner and shows his expression when he notices the colour spot on her face. Then it flicks to an over the shoulder shot It then flicks between close ups on her face to close ups on his face as he wipes the makeup off. it goes to a close up of the side of both of their heads which once again reinforces that intimacy feeling before fading out....