The Tone of a Coin Toss

Today in class we further discussed tone through examples. Of course this is an important skill to have to understand films, texts we read, and even conversation in daily life.To do so, we first recalled what tone is. The tone is the speaker attitude and it helps us, the audience, determine the meaning of a text or film. The tone can be found on multiple scales such as formal to casual, negative to positive, and sincere to ironic. The tone can be anywhere on these spectrums, it is not a binary.

The next crucial bit of information we had to recall was the examples we came up with as a class for No Country for Old Men. We looked at the coin toss scene with the main villain and store owner for tone. Below is a list of tone words we came up with with evidence from yesterday:

Tone Word	Evidence
Forceful	Tells him to call it, no context given
Ominous	Rants, focuses on wrapper opening, deep voices, shot framing
Blunt	Tells him he married into the business
Candid	The toss is a win/lose situation
Psychotic	Rants about being a coin but not just a coin, monotone, character placement is so close

After reviewing this information, we then watched a film clip in class from The Office. In the scene, three characters are acting out an overly dramatic scene about a coin toss. One character says heads he will assist them, tails he won't, and adds that it's best of seven at the end. There are several cut aways in the scene, and the characters are being overly dramatic despite the humorous situation. Below is a list of tone words and supporting evidence we found for this clip:

Tone Word	Evidence
Awkward	Best of 7, the fact it’s a coin toss at all
Mock serious	Seriousness in contrast to absurdity, action music
Comedic	Best of 7, seriousness and absurdity
Exaggerated	Camera cuts, intense expressions

After coming up with tone words and supporting evidence for both scenes, the class was then told to write a sentence of synthesis for both coin toss scenes. A sentence of synthesis could compare or contrast the tone of the scenes, as long as it was put into one sentence. Students answers were posted on google classroom as comments. My sentence was: The coin toss scene in No Country for Old Men is truly ominous considering what the character is capable of; whereas in The Office the tone is mock serious with seriousness in contrast to the absurd situation. If more examples are necessary, check the classroom page. After forming the sentences we picked out some we saw as good and discussed them during the last few moments of class. Students should be reminded about the upcoming due dates for the Be Reel Blogs (10/18, 11/6) and the due date for the Intertextuality Essay on your summer reading (10/25). Also, level one of Ready Player One is due on 10/22.