This scene much like scene 2 can be split into almost two scenes, despite how I wrote it on the original script. The scene opens with a medium shot of the man sitting on his grave. He is positioned to the right of the shot and the rest is looking along at the other graves and the person who has come to look at a grave. The man is looking away from the camera making the audience focus on the action of the other person. I did this to highlight the isolation and ignorance the man is feeling. This shot also anchors the film in the reality of the graveyard, which makes the audience think that nothing fantasy about the plot is going to happen; he’s just a drunk washed up man moaning about his life. The start of this scene is meant to add to his life story and the almost autobiographical feel the film has. There is also a small satirical joke when the man is talking about doing a Jackson Pollock at the age of 4. This is another piece of humour that this man has, that only people with knowledge of who Jackson Pollock is would find funny, adding another layer of depth to the man.
When the man is talking about graduating and getting married I wanted pictures to flash up of those events to give the viewers visual stimulation of what he was talking about. However we decided against because staging a wedding and a graduation was well beyond the limits of the film. However I did want to add to the humour of the character when he calls his sister Einstein. Again in the same vein as Fight Club I got a picture of Einstein and cut the split the scene, with the picture fitting in between. This was difficult technically as we had to record a sound bridge over the picture of just one phrase 'for a sister'. We had to get the timing right again and it proved difficult to get the voice coherent with the original. Despite the difficulty I believe we pulled this off with the help of the musical score and by adjusting the volume of his voice. It’s not perfect but it achieves the desired effect.
The scene then follows along the parallel lines with the second scene with a series of flashbacks referring to what his life ended up like. The flashback starts with an over shoulder shot of the married couple sitting on the sofa watching daytime TV. This flashback is signaled by the change in music. This music builds up throughout the flashback highlighting how his life dived into depravity. I used artificial light in the 'family scene' to make everything positive, this is to contrast the next flashback of him drunk and alone, in which the scene a dark. We used a small bedside lamp for the only light in the 'drunk alone shot' in contrast with the room lights and 3 other lamps being on in the living room shot. I also gave another parallel with the sound of the TVs, the first just day time TV mumbling along much like his life, then in the other the horror movie and the screaming symbolizing the idea that his life has been shattered. The music combined with the screaming of the film culminates at the end of this flashback showing how disastrous his life was. There is then a fade back to the present with the scene ending with a close up of him talking. These close ups were used to keep cohesion in the film.
I feel that this scene was on the whole successful, and the flash back scene was more finished then the one in scene two. I feel this was due to the contrast between the shots of him with his wife and the shots of him alone. This portrayed how the mans life had gone from light to dark. I think the weakness was the flash to Einstein, yet it shows attempts at learning and fitting new techniques into my film trying to add other dimensions. If I were making the film again I would have squeezed in a few more pictures flashes, to add more interesting shots and comedy into the film.
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