Today in Film as Literature, we learned to evaluate how artistic choices develop tone in a text. We also learned how to synthesize multiple texts into a singular claim. First, we learned the difference between connotation and denotation. Denotation is essentially the definition, or what word actually means. The connotation, is what the word means when we hear it, or its "social meaning." What the connotation is can be based on three things: Attitude, which can be negative or positive, Audience, which can be formal or casual, and Context, which can be sincere or ironic. The same ideas can be applied to how the tone in a scene is analyzed. In class we analyzed two scenes, both of them having to do with coin tosses. The first was the coin toss scene from No Country For Old Men. This scene had a very unsettling and foreboding tone. This can be attributed to how calm Anton seems while he is talking to the man. His strange, curt questions confuses the man he is talking to as well as the audience. Also adding to the unsettling tone was the directors' choice to entirely leave out any non-diegetic audio. The other scene we watched, from The Office, was on the opposite end of the spectrum. It had a very casual and comical tone. The extremely histrionic and over-the-top scene is so ridiculous that it is impossible to take it seriously. The music in the background is way too epic and out of place. Michael performs seven coin tosses in slow motion. It all adds up to a scene that is very casual and ironic as opposed to the scene from No Country for Old Men.
I will use this method in the future for analyzing other scenes from my favorite movies. Take this scene from The Dark Knight for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFHccsaTakg
This scene starts out with an uncomfortable and unsettling tone, and gets more and more frantic as the scene progresses. The Joker's calmness and the complete lack of non-diegetic audio, as well as the shocked and scared looks on the partygoers faces create the unsettling tone. As the scene progresses, a droning tone starts to play in the background and gets louder and louder as the Joker gets angrier. This makes the scene frantic and foreboding, as if it is building up to something horrible.
Great understanding of what we did in class, and your example extends naturally into the world outside of film. You've got some really strong tone words in this post, and I encourage you to consider how these words can help to elevate your vocabulary in all cinematic type discussions. Thanks for posting a link to that clip! It makes your analysis so much more helpful as a resource.
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