Paper 2, Practice #1 (Fargo)(compare/contrast notes & responses)

10/22/20

Example candidate Fargo notes

Personal Fargo notes

Camera seems to follow the characters in the first viewing… sweeps behind the furniture before finding a person and zooms in

Follows up to be looking up at subject (low angle shot) Immediate camera direction by sound of voice…. follows subject until out of view.. switches to new view and set... wrench sound, fixing something?

New subject comes into view…husband? - yes… fixing washing machine, old washing machine… friendly couple… camera switches back and forth when different people talk.

Wife aggravated in washing machine now completely broken… starts teasing him about not being a real man…husband starts to get offended… we see his thoughts by the camera switch to the hammer… murders her.. tries covering up.. changes clothes

Phone call with mysterious man… do they know each other? – known by name at least… gets gun… practices encounter?... setting him up?

COMPARE / CONTRAST

Both notes have ideas of different angle shots as scenes go by. They include different sounds and the overall mood of the clip. However, the example notes are in greater detail whereas my personal notes are taken as the clip plays and put as simple as possible for memory. Also, the example notes are put into categories, such as sound and effects, which probably made it easier for the candidate to refer to a specific note. Furthermore, my personal notes look more into detail of what's actually happening in the scene rather than the basics of it. My personal response also asks questions and then answers them as the clip continues.

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Example Fargo candidate response

Personal Fargo response

Camerawork: In the beginning of this clip, the camera scans the house from behind the furniture, until finding a woman. Once the camera found the woman, it slowly moved towards her from a low angle shot. Once she shouted out her husband’s name the angle of the camera immediately changed into an over-the-shoulder shot in the direction the voice came from; it stays this way until the woman disappears behind the door. Once she disappears, the camera shows the stairs, but as she reaches the basement floor, the husband comes into view over-the-shoulder. Soon after we get a view of the couple talking back in forth by over one’s shoulder. When testing out the washing machine, the camera switches back and forth between the couple showing the back of them, so that the audience could see what’s happening with the dryer, and showing the couple’s faces, to help the audience deviser good from bad through their facial expressions. The camera zooms into the dryer, anticipating that something was definitely still wrong with the washing machine. Once things begin getting tense, instead of an over-the-shoulder camera angle, medium shots are used to film the waist up to let the audience see their faces more. For the duration of the violent scene, the camera shows no action rather than the movement of feet and the view of the husband doing such actions.

Sound: The sound of this clip is used for indication, suspense, and prediction. The clip has no music in the beginning; the only sound being silence, footsteps, and two people talking. This could indicate that something bad is about to happen, or it could tell the audience that the woman wants to have talk with her husband. The use of the screwdriver noise in the beginning helps the audience predict what the husband is doing. Later in the clip, suspenseful music is played after the husband murdered his wife. This music tells the audience that he is nervous and doesn’t know what to do next. The music stops before he starts talking again, this time over the phone. After the phone call, the suspenseful music plays again following by the loading of a gun which is intended to make the audience confused and try to figure out what will happen next.

Mis-en-scene: The environment of the two subjects is dull and outdated. The lamps in the house are not very bright and have a warm tone to them and the house does not have a lot of color. Also, when the husband has to make a phone call, he uses an old-fashioned one. In other words, the house and its décor are not modern. This can conclude that the house the film takes place in around the 1980’s. The costume of the subjects suggests that only the husband works, or that the wife didn’t go to work that day. The husband wears office clothes which means he doesn’t do “manly” work, which follows the theme of the argument.

Editing: Lots of editing took place in this clip. To start, the washing machine scene had to be edited to display a machine that was about to explode, with affects like smoke and noise. The film used affects to make it seem like the husband was hitting the wife with a hammer while also making the blood spill and splatter look real. Finally, the phone call had to be edited to sound like it was a conversation through the phone rather than just two people talking clearly to each other.

COMPARE / CONTRAST

Although the notes from the example candidate response are similar to my personal notes, the candidate responses look slightly different. To start, the responses are formatted differently; the example candidate response was put in paragraph form while my personal response was written with four different bullet points, each being a paragraph long. Being in paragraph form, the example candidate was able to explain every detail from the scenes as they went by, rather than creating different paragraphs specifically for sound, editing, etc. However, the two responses contain similar ideas. Particularly, both responses talk a lot about the different camera angles, including low angle shots and over-the-shoulder shots. They also both have very similar descriptions for the setting (Mise-en-scene) of the clip.