Analysis of Pulp Fiction

Pulp Fiction

The scene opens with a mid shot of a couple sitting in a cafe having breakfast/lunch. They are having a conversation about something being too risky. This makes the audience suspicious of the people and very wary of them. But our immediate reaction is that nothing will happen because it is complete daylight.

The shot then changes to a close up of the waitress asking the couple if they want more coffee. The audience become less suspicious of the couple because they speak with a gentle tone to the waitress. the shot then cuts to the women thanking the waitress.

Once again it is a mid shot of the couple but this time they are having a conversation about robberies. The tone in their voices has changed to a much harsher tone and there is in an increased amount of swearing. this makes the audience uneasy because they can guess that they are planning a robbery.

The shot then cuts to a close up of the women and this gives the effect that she is having a conversation with the audience. It then  does the same to the man as though he is talking to us. It repeats this and now the audience are anxious because they know the couple are going to rob the cafe that they are sat in.

The man then gets a gun out of his pocket and the shot inter cuts with a close up of the gun laying on the table. this gives the audience knowledge of what these people are really like, and that they are willing to kill anyone who gets in their way. there is then a close up of the couple kissing which contrasts the view the audience already have on the couple who are about to rob the cafe. He then jumps on the seat and yells at the customers and then there is a mid shot of both people with guns before music plays cutting to the opening credits.

Analysis of Face/off

Face/off

The scene starts with the opening credits on a black background with white wording. The sound starts playing. It is very calm and happy music and it makes the audience feel relaxed and as though the start of the film isn’t going to have something bad happen. It then cuts to something spinning extremely fast past the camera and at first the audience doesn’t know what it is. It then slows down gradually and the audience can then see that it is a merry go round and the focus is a long shot of a man and a little boy smiling. The music symbolises the innocence that the man and boy have. The audience are made to assume that this is a father and his son. The music is then inter cut with a small boy giggling, this makes the film seem as though it is something it isn’t. Whilst we hear the small boy laughing the merry go round suddenly spins fast again. The music is still being played in the background whilst all this is happening. You can’t really tell what time of day it is because the lighting is very dim which doesn’t fit the scene people are watching. Whilst the man and the boy are on the merry go round, you also can see other people on it which shows they are not alone.

The shot then changes to a mid shot of the man and a boy on the merry go round and the man is holding the boys back, showing the audience that he is very protective of the boy and doesn’t want him to fall and get hurt. This is ironic because of what actually happens in the scene. The music plays continuously throughout and there is intermittent sounds of a boy giggling. Between each shot the merry go round suddenly spins fast, this time it stops on a close up of the man kissing the little boy on the cheek, which clarifies that it is a father with his son. The picture then fades away blending with the next shot which is a long shot of the merry go round, being framed by trees and a lot of people walking towards and around it. It is as though the audience is standing on a grass bank looking down onto the merry go round. Suddenly something lifts from the bottom of the screen, filling it and it appears to be a blanket. The blanket is then pulled away, revealing a telescopic sight which the audience naturally assumes to be that of a gun. This creates tension for the audience and this is a total contrast to the earlier shots in the scene which was that of total innocence.

The shot then suddenly cuts to a long shot of a man lifting what the audience were assuming was a blanket uncovering the telescopic sight and throwing it away from him. The man is almost a silhouette whilst the rest of the shot is almost has a sepia effect. There is change in the sound and it is now more sinister. The shot continues with the man then kneeling down behind the gun and then fades and blends into an extreme close up of his mouth with a moustache with a straw in his mouth. The camera then gradually moves up to reveal his eye, moving across to view through the telescope. It shows him looking through the telescope, his other eye closed as though he is looking at the audience. His face is in focus, whilst the end of the telescope is not in focus. The shot is a mid shot of the man and the boy on the merry go round, but it is through the telescope which seems as though the audience has changed their character to that of the gunman. The shot then returns to an extreme close up of the face of the gunman but this time he is moving away from the telescope so the audience can see both his eyes. Again, the face is in focus whilst the telescope is yet again out of focus. It zooms out, and shows the man looking down as though he is in deep thought, which gives the audience the impression that perhaps he is having second thoughts on what the audience expects him to do.

The sound becomes the gentle and calm music that it was before. The shot then cuts again to a close up of the man and boy, the man is holding the boy, but the boys mind is elsewhere interested in his balloons. The man then lifts the boy towards him. It then cuts suddenly to a close up of the gunman with a straw in his mouth then back to the man and boy of the merry go round, this time the boy has his back to the audience and the man is smiling whilst looking at him and holding him. It the moves to an over the shoulder shot of the man. It is as though the audience is there also looking at the boy. It then changes to the over the shoulder shot from the man to the boy. And back again, the man then lifts his hand and runs it down the boys face. We assume this is a sign of love, because of the boys big smile once the audience sees his face again. There is then a mid shot from the side, showing the man holding the boys head and kissing his forehead. The boy is cuddling his father. The father pulls his son towards him which shows how much he loves him and wants to protect him.

It then cuts to the gunman once more looking through the telescope as though he is looking at the audience. The audiences character changes once more to that of the gunman and the shot shows, through the telescope, the mans back. The shot then cuts suddenly to an extreme close up of the gun mans finger pulling the trigger. There is faded out bang and then the shot cuts to the end of the barrel of the gun with smoke and a bullet speeding out, straight towards the audience. The bullet comes straight into the camera until that is all the audience can see. It then cuts to the back of the father, with a ripped coat where he has been shot in the back. The colours are sepia like, therefore you cannot see blood but there is a wet effect near the rip in the coat which the audience would assume to be blood. The man jerks and cuts to a side angle of him falling backwards and he falls off the merry go round, whilst still holding his son. As the man falls the music stops and the audience hears what appears to be a horses whinny as if he has been thrown from a real horse. The shot then zooms in to the merry go round horse, sepia in colour, but the blood on the horses neck is deep red. This shows the audience that the bullet went right through both the man and his son. There is then a shot of part of the top of the merry go round and the balloons the boy was holding are floating upwards.

The shot then cuts to the man quivering on the floor looking up and struggling to crawl and then the camera pans to show his son laying on the floor on his back. It appears to the audience that he is dead. Tense music then starts to play when you suddenly realised that the boy has been killed. The shot cuts to a close up of the gunman opening his eye and zooming in. it appears that he is horrified for what he has just done. The shot then cuts to the man almost at his son, and the camera pans round them as he reaches for his son. He lifts his son and holding realising he is dead and cries whilst the merry go round is still spinning in the background.

The shot then seems like the audience is stepping on to the merry go round where all this has just happened. The music has changed yet again and it is now very loud evil sounding music. Everything is now black and white and in slow motion as it then cuts to a black background with white writing saying ‘six years later’.

Student Questionnaire

Name: Charlotte Bennett

GCSE Results: 

English Language – A

English Literature – A

Maths – B

Additional Maths – A

Statistics – B

Science - B

Additional Science – B

French – A

I.C.T – A

Geography – B

P.E – B

R.E – B

Hobbies:  I have a range of hobbies including: trampoline, reading, and films.

Media interests

Print media:

I sometimes read the Daily Mirror because it is the newspaper that my family buys. I am not really interested in any new papers and I only read them to find out media reviews, TV schedules and sometimes celebrity gossip. I prefer to access news on the internet because it is a lot quicker and I can choose what I want to read instead of having to look through all the other news that doesn’t interest me. The magazine I read is heat because it has everything I want to read in it.

Radio Media:

The only time I listen to the radio is in the mornings in the car on the way to school. I listen to kiss and heart because they play the type of music I enjoy.

Music industry:

I don’t have a specific favourite genre of music; I like a range of music. I enjoy listening to pop music, rock music and a few others. I do access my music on the internet on websites such as YouTube. I think that illegal downloading is wrong, but these days buying albums can be quite expensive and also downloading legally can be expensive and if the young person cannot afford it then they would not be able to listen to the music. But I do disagree with it because it loses the music industry a lot of money and it is not fair on the artist themselves. The music industry might influence our dress because we watch the music videos and see what the singers are wearing and we relate that with being ‘cool’ therefore we want to go out and buy those sorts of clothes. It also influences our attitudes because they are our role models and some people copy the way they behave, and people who are easily influenced will also copy them if they do bad things as well. We aspire to be like the artists one day so by putting the artist in the videos, we watch them and think ‘wow’, making us want to be exactly like they are.

New Technology:

New technology has increased our understanding of the world because with the internet we are now aware of what is happening in other countries that we didn’t have knowledge of before. It has enabled us to communicate with others a lot easier because of mobile phones, skype, internet etc. even in a different country. This means we have a wider range of people that we can communicate with; this increases our understanding of different people and cultures. New technology means that we can now illegally download films and music; this is not very good because it loses people a lot of money. Although there is this argument, there is also the fact that it is good because we can now catch up with certain television programmes that we have missed.

Television:

My favourite television channels are E4, Dave, BBC and Film 4. The reasons are because they have my favourite programmes on. I like BBC because there are no adverts during programmes and I like that because it frustrates me when there is an advert every five minutes. E4 is my favourite channel because it has the things I enjoy watching the most on. Dave is another of my favourites because I enjoy comedy and a lot of the time it has programmes such as ‘Mock the week’ and ‘Never mind the buzz cocks’ which I find funny. I also like film4 because they show films that I may not have seen before. I don’t have a favourite television genre; I enjoy too many different types. The programmes that I have found most memorable in my life so far are: 'Friends', 'One tree hill', 'Eastenders', 'Waterloo road' and 'The X factor'. Some of the reasons are because of the comedy, some are because I have been watching them all my life. I enjoy all these programmes and many of them I have seen almost every episode.


Feature film:

My favourite genres of film are romance, comedy and thriller. I like a wide range of films because I get bored watching the same type of film over and over again. I like romance because I am a soppy romantic who loves a happy ending. I also enjoy thriller because I like trying to work out the plot and the who is doing the killings etc. I enjoy comedy because they put me in a really happy mood because they are funny.

Three films that I found outstanding were:

The notebook

I thought this film was outstanding because I thought the story line was really good, it reminded me of something that could actually happen in real life where a young couple in love can be separated because of parents and class. I liked the way that the director chose to reveal that the couple in love were also the old couple telling the story. In the film, all the actors were incredible, making the love story between Allie and Noah believable and causing us to shed a few tears. The soundtrack to the film was full of beautiful music which created the romantic atmosphere for the film.

Pearl Harbour

I thought that this was an outstanding film because it was based on the war and showed the amount of damage it actually did. The action was amazing throughout the film and it kept me entertained all the way through. Some parts were extremely dramatic and some parts were sad. I thought that this film was outstanding because it appealed to almost everybody, changing from action to romance very well. The actors did an amazing job of acting like the people in the army actually would and it gave a clear view on what the war must have been like to people back then.

Sherlock Holmes

I thought that this film was outstanding because I think that Robert Downey Jr. played the main character really well, creating an errant knight figure. I think that the story line was good because it mis-lead you, and took you off on a tangent which meant it was hard to predict the ending. The film also had a comedy element to it, along with the serious detective story which made the film appealing and enjoyable.

I prefer to watch films at the cinema because the screen is a lot bigger and the sound is better. My favorite cinema is Vue because although it isn’t as new, clean and comfy as Odeon, it is a lot cheaper and being only a student we aren’t earning a lot of money. Vue is also a lot easier to get to in the city and you don’t have to walk a way to get there. I prefer to watch films on my own because I find that I get easily distracted when I watch them in groups because people tend to be loud and talk. I don’t mind seeing a film with a group of people because we can then discuss the film afterwards.

Are you a media producer?

In GCSE ICT I made a short video promoting a group of people to talk to if anyone had problems like bullying etc.

Conclusion

I haven’t felt offended personally by any media, but I think that there are a few adverts that could offend people, for example, there is an advert for adopting a donkey. This advert could offend people because it is quite upsetting. By giving the donkey a voice, saying all the bad things happening to the animals in this situation, it made the advert affect people in the way it wanted to. By people feeling sorry for it and by upsetting people, they give in to giving money which is what the advertisers want. In contrast an advert that I find most exciting at the moment is the advert for the ‘Dell’ laptops. This is because of the song which makes in memorable. Also another advert that is memorable is the ‘Evian’ advert with all the babies skateboarding. This is memorable and exciting because of the comedy element and obscenity of what is happening in the advert.

Pieces of media that have changed my views and the way I think about the world are the adverts asking for donations to people in third world counties. This has changed my views on the world because I feel sorry for the people who are living in these conditions and makes me want to help them. I have realised that these people are not living like this because of there own fault, it is because their family have lived like this and then they are born into it. The country does not have the money to help them. It makes me realise how extremely lucky I am to be born into a society where I have all the essential things that I need.  

If I created my own media text then I would most likely create an advert for television communicating the message about young people in society and the community in England to this day. I would do this to show that not all young people are bad like the stereotypical image that they have.

I have chosen media studies as an option because I am really interested in film and other types of media. Also it will help with what I want to do as a future career in journalism.

 

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