Anatomy of a Scene

Movie spoilers ahead!

Film Humanities Revelation

The first film I chose to analyze was "Boyhood," directed by Richard Linklater and released in 2014. This film was 2 hours and 45 minutes, yet every minute was engaging. Although the scenes within the film felt very slow-paced and detail-oriented, there were various cuts throughout. When the film begins, we are shown a close-up that fades out to a young boy named Mason's face. This portion of the movie shows young Mason living through his parent's divorce. His mother is his primary caretaker, and his almost absent father shows up randomly to provide a fun-filled day. Mason sometimes attends his mom's college classes with her during this time. Then, we experience the first jump cut of Mason's mother returning from her honeymoon with her previous college professor. This relationship is not much better for a young boy to see; the professor was an alcoholic and later became aggressive and violent. Then, another time jump shows the mother leaving the professor and moving her family into her friend Carol's home. Then, there is another time jump with the new father figure also being an alcoholic and often yelling at Mason. On the other side, his biological father has started a new family. In yet another time jump, Mason is dating a girl named Sheena, and we get many tracking scenes with them as they explore the University of Texas. With another time jump, we see Mason's graduation party with the few constant people in his life. In one last time jump cut, we see Mason enjoying his first day at UT with newly found friends.

The second film I chose to analyze was "The Truman Show," directed by Peter Weir and released in 1998. The comedy film was 1 hour and 42 minutes long and showed the life of Truman Burbank without him knowing. The film's start has us hear lively music in the background of an iris lens while we see an incredibly smiley Truman scavenge through town on his way to work. The iris-like lens is to show Truman is being filmed. That night, Truman goes to the beach alone, and it starts storming, rain and thunder transport Truman to the past. He experiences multiple cutaways from his father during his disappearance. Then, the next day the classical and upbeat music starts again. But this day, he thought he had seen his assumed dead father in the town. The music heightened, the angles got more chaotic, and the pace quickened. In the next scene, he looks at and smells clothes hidden in a trunk of a previous lover. This experience causes another cutaway flashback, but this time to college. The girl named Sylvia tries to tell Truman that everyone around him is pretending and watching everything he does. When his car accidentally picks up the network's radio frequency, Truman begins to see nothing is real. He also sees loops and routines in the presence around him. Truman fails to leave Seahaven after multiple attempts by the network to stop him. Then, Truman is dramatically reintroduced to his missing father. The music slows, and crosscuts show them as the father walks closer. Once they finally hug, the music intensifies, and they zoom into a close-up to show the hug. At this point, the network has won, and Truman is back to his daily upbeat music through an iris lens. But he had secret plans and snuck out without triggering the cameras. They later find Truman sailing at sea, and the network tries to storm him out. But Truman prevails and raises his sail. From a very far shot, we see that Truman is still sailing through the ocean until he crashes into the set's wall and realizes. The movie ends with a delighted audience as Truman is finally free.

The scene that stood out to me the most was from "The Truman Show." It was the scene where Truman had finally made some distance between himself and the network. He had faced his fear of water and started the sail out into the sea. We first see him through a very far shot, but then they can get an overhead shot of Truman. Then, they get a medium shot of him and call it the "hero" shot. Once they had decided they wanted to scare him back to the set, the music, angles, and transitions got much more intense. We see audience members, the network, Slyvia, and Truman through multiple crosscuts as he experiences this hazardous weather implemented by the network. They show many different angles to show the intensity occurring while Truman struggles to remain on the boat. We can see the complicated feelings produced from close-ups of his face to his point of view. The camera uses many basic tilts and pans to track the boat's instability. The movie crosscuts the network each time they demand a new angle or weather edition. Lastly, when Truman falls into the ocean and disappears, many invisible cuts show different angles. As a result of the many crosscuts throughout this scene, we can see the emotion of the network when thinking Truman has drowned and their relief when he survives. Although this film remains in the comedy genre, this scene is dramatic. The web and audience were worried, scared, emotional, and sincere. That is not to say the film wasn't a comedy, just that a comedy can have dramatic elements and vice versa.