Analysis - Scene from 'The Break Up'

I have decided to analyse a scene from the break up which depicts Brooke Meyers (Jennifer Aniston) breaking up with Gary Grobowski (Vince Vaughn). I have chosen this particular scene to analyse because it involves a couple breaking up in a domestic setting (their apartment) and my opening scene also consists of a break up. 

    The themes and ideas in this scene will be similar to my piece's themes and also  my character Kevin will be going through a similar situation. I think the tension that surrounds the break-up in this scene is built very well and they have displayed the importance of what the break-up plays in the plot to the audience very well which is also I am trying to do with my opening scene. The scene begins with Brooke shouting at Gary for not buying her any flowers, but Brooke has previously told Gary that she doesn't like flowers. We understand that like most women Brooke doesn't always what she means and she wanted Gary to buy her flowers spontaneously  Usually at the start of any relationship, the littlest things can mean a lot such as buying the girl a box of chocolates or in this case, some flowers. Because the characters have been together for a long time it appears that Gary possibly used to all of that for her but now he has stopped doing so and takes Brooke for granted. This will portray Gary in a bad light and will create less audience sympathy for him, with the audience favouring Brooke and feeling sorry for her over him. 

   Instead of apologizing and trying to mend the happy, Gary's obliviousness escalates it into an argument. Brooke's body language tells us that she is getting frustrated with him and is starting to lose her temper. I would utilise similar body language and facial expressions for my project with the girls getting frustrated at Kevin and his terrible boyfriend habits. With this particular scene, the audience sympathise with Brooke but because Gary is a likeable character we do feel a little sorry for him.

        As you can see she is trying to keep calm by clenching her fists

Here we can see how shocked Gary is through his facial expressions.

 Whereas Gary is standing there with a puzzled and innocent look on his face as if he hasn't done anything wrong and he thinks Brooke is just looking for an argument. Brooke is walking around stamping her feet showing how frustrated she is with him. On the 34th second,  Brooke walks away from Gary and he follows her. This shows that he does care about her and is dependent, wanting to make amends before the situation gets worse because he doesn't want to lose her. It feels as though he already has lost her when he chases her. What's interesting is that Brooke is always walking away from him suggesting she is running away from the argument and the relationship as a whole. With the costume and make up we have Brooke all in black which suggests that she is dark, cold and perhaps doesn't doesn't care about anyone. We also associate black with death and this costume decision could represent her "killing" their relationship.

Gary is wearing a smart, light blue shirt which could represent that he is an innocent and caring character. This costume decision may have been used to paint an picture of a good but confused character, making the audience feel sorry for him and forgive his mistakes.

   On 2 minutes Gary is finished with the argument and storms into the front room. He doesn't take any  notice of Brooke and plays his video game up until she says 'I'm done'. He thinks this will just be the start of another argument and will soon resolve itself, but the enormity and seriousness of the situation suddenly kicks in and Gary is lost for words. We know from his facial expressions that he is very upset and the shock of her saying those two horrible words and was not expecting to break-up with the love of his life. I would employ his body language in my own scene and have Kevin display the same body language and facial expressions to show that he is upset at his shambles of a love life. 

     Although they are having a very heated argument, there is hardly any swearing apart from at the very end when Brooke is walks out on Gary and says 'shit' and 'prick'. From seeing the argument that they are having, these are not very bad swear words and they fit in and don't sound too rude or harsh. This is the only moment in the 2 minute argument that a character swears. Looking at the certificate for 'The Break Up', it is only a 12A which shows that it is aimed at wide audience and purposely contains little swearing seeing as there may be children viewing the film. My project will also be aimed at a wide audience, so I would take into consideration about only using minor swear words or none at all to keep my certificate a 12A. 

Idea for the Project

Kevin is  not big, he's not clever and he certainly isn't reliable! This is the story of one man and his love-life over the course of five years. Kevin is not very good with the ladies and in the opening scene of House Of Heartbreaks we see him get dumped by 3 of his girlfriends in the same place over and over again as if it's a recurring nightmare. Will he ever find love?  

Preliminary Task

This is the preliminary task that myself, Conner Mcallister and Shehnaz Ali completed which consisted of us filming two people having a conversation in a room. We had to keep in mind all of the shots we were using to use and also we had to maintain good continuity in the film. There were some issues with the task which I will address in this post.

   The first shot depicts myself (Joshua Sandford) walking down a corridor. I feel that we made this shot too long and it felt dragged out. I feel we should have just had a shorter scene showing me walking through one set of doors, which would have made the beginning flow a lot better. We could have also just followed the character with a tracking shot through the doors instead of just cutting straight to the next camera in position by the common room doors. On the 21st second we see me opening the common room doors and then walking in. I feel this was a very good match-on action which made one shot flow well into the other. This is a technique that we will take into the shooting of our main production.

    When my character walks towards Conner we discovered our first continuity issue. This happens on the 30th second when I place my legs facing right and sit down. We then cut to an over-the-shoulder shot where I am facing Conner straight on. This will confuse the viewer and looks peculiar on camera. To avoid this mistake in the future we will make sure that the actor keeps their body in the same position before we cut to a different shot.

   The next error appeared on the 47th second where we  broke the 180 degree rule. We didn't realise that we had broken the 180 degree rule until we edited our piece together. This error will leave the viewer confused about where my character is walking and make them think I am taking a different exit. To avoid this in future we would look back at the shot of me walking in and just film it from that position.

   These mistakes led us to make the decision that we would create a storyboard for our production which will serve as a reference and prevent us from making any errors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqvCP3RJFuw&feature=youtu.be

One of our group members,Connor, unfortunately departed my group and dropped out of school and decided to remove the video off of his channel so I have re-uploaded it to my channel, but have had technical issues in uploading it on to the blog, but as you can see that I once did have it on my blog, but if you follow the link then you will find my preliminary task video.

ideas for project

Here us as a group have drawn a spider diagram showing all the ideas we are going to take in to consideration for the opening scene of our film. All of the ideas are different and we would be capable of producing one of these ideas.

introduction to the blog

Dear moderator. I hope you enjoy reading about my journey on making my opening scene of House Of Heartbreaks.