Scene 1 - Shots 1 to 3 - Want Me To Kill Him For You?
SHOOTING SCRIPT:
CHAPTER 1 INT. FITTS HOUSE - RICKY'S BEDROOM - NIGHT
On VIDEO: JANE BURNHAM lays in bed, wearing a tank top. She's sixteen, with dark,
intense eyes.
JANE
I need a father who's a role model, not some horny geek-boy
who's gonna spray his shorts whenever I bring a girlfriend
home from school.
(snorts)
What a lame-o. Somebody really should put him out of his
misery.
Her mind wanders for a beat.
RICKY (O.C.)
Want me to kill him for you?
Jane looks at us and sits up.
JANE
(deadpan)
Yeah, would you?
FADE TO BLACK.
Like Citizen Kane, we open with a scene from the end of the movie. And just like Kane, the scene immediately presents the viewer with a great number of mysteries: who is this girl? Why does she want her father dead? Who does that offscreen voice belong to offering to murder her father? It's also notable that the mystery of Kane revolves around the symbol of "Rosebud", while in AB, there is the recurring symbol of actual rosebuds.
To start the film with no opening credits and immediately hit the viewer with a grainy, low quality video is unexpected and quite jarring. The shot immediately grabs the viewer's attention. The high contrast also serves to support the very sinister dealings going on in the dialogue, particularly as she sits up (see shot 3)
There are also the unseen cultural implications of the shot. Video in the media (both then and now) has always been associated with the qualities of truth and authenticity: the use of "amateur video" capturing events shown on news stations, on-the-fly documentary-like shows like Cops, home videos, security cameras, etc. (and indeed, the original script had this very video being submitted in court as evidence to Lester's murder). This very first shot represents the beginning of a motif that Mendes will use throughout the film to visually support the major "look closer" theme of reality vs. fantasy, truth vs. facades. The implication is that this is the real uninhibited Jane we see here, and this portrait of her will indeed contrast sharply with the Jane that we see a few scenes later shot in regular 35mm.
The scene clearly paints a very negative picture of both Jane and the unseen camerman (Ricky), particuarly given Jane's reason for wanting to murder her father - simply because's he's a "lame-o". It purposely misleads the viewer into aligning themselves against these two "scoundrels" by taking the scene out of its context.
To start the film with no opening credits and immediately hit the viewer with a grainy, low quality video is unexpected and quite jarring. The shot immediately grabs the viewer's attention. The high contrast also serves to support the very sinister dealings going on in the dialogue, particularly as she sits up (see shot 3)
There are also the unseen cultural implications of the shot. Video in the media (both then and now) has always been associated with the qualities of truth and authenticity: the use of "amateur video" capturing events shown on news stations, on-the-fly documentary-like shows like Cops, home videos, security cameras, etc. (and indeed, the original script had this very video being submitted in court as evidence to Lester's murder). This very first shot represents the beginning of a motif that Mendes will use throughout the film to visually support the major "look closer" theme of reality vs. fantasy, truth vs. facades. The implication is that this is the real uninhibited Jane we see here, and this portrait of her will indeed contrast sharply with the Jane that we see a few scenes later shot in regular 35mm.
The scene clearly paints a very negative picture of both Jane and the unseen camerman (Ricky), particuarly given Jane's reason for wanting to murder her father - simply because's he's a "lame-o". It purposely misleads the viewer into aligning themselves against these two "scoundrels" by taking the scene out of its context.
posted by Unknown at 10:04 AM
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