Blackpool Essay

What do we learn about the characters in this scene? How is this reinforced through the key MICRO elements?

We learn that the family are wealthy and have been well bought up through the lots of gold frames, gold mirror and gold items that are in the house scene. We also learn the father is very protective of his daughter, and the large family home gives the feel of a typical family. The father is anxious of her newest boyfriend and we learn this through the sound and speech from him. We are also taught that the daughter has had previous experience of ‘tattooed’ boyfriends and the father hasn’t approved of them. We learn the daughter’s newest boyfriend works at the theatre and the mother is the peacemaker. From the fathers blunt tone of voice and use of language we are lead to believe he doesn’t approve of his daughters newest boyfriend and thinks he is too old to be in a relationship with her.

The use of the medium close up and extreme close up shots show us the close up expressions of the father. This shot lets the audience see the emotion of the character and lets us focus on his actions.

The long shot lets us see what time of the day and where the scene was set which is really useful to let us start to judge the scene.

The crumpling when the 2 younger characters get off the sofa and the pacing and walking in the bedroom sounds set the tense quiet atmosphere for this scene.

We learn the characters are all quite causal, because the use of make-up is natural with a day-to-day style and the costumes are casual and not formal.

Throughout this extract, sounds play a big part in us learning about the characters. The calm opening music along with the large family home backdrop makes us think the extract will be calm and relaxed, whereas when  the characters start talking the atmosphere suddenly changes to quite a tense atmosphere, making us realise the father is very protective and particular about who his daughter falls in love with.

The atmosphere isn’t tense throughout the whole extract though, and the faint use of ringing, tinkling and laughing lightens up the mood of the extract.

The backlighting of the characters is used to make us realise the extract is mainly focused on the characters and so this makes our focus turn to this part of the extract.

The main facial expressions used throughout this extract are happy, sad, laughter and anxious. All of these facial expressions are used to portray thoughts of the characters and most of these are filmed using close up or extreme close ups to really make us focus on the emotions.