Textual analysis - The note book

Textual analysis

The note book analysis

The location of this opening scene looks like it is set on a real life location. It is based in the countryside by a lake.

At the very start of the opening scene it slowly fades in, there is a boat floating in the middle of a lake. In this scene, they use a long shot, this is to show a view of the sunset and the boat floating up on the water. This helps the viewer know that is a romance due to the type of music being played and warmth of the scene. The fact that there is a boat in the middle of a lake in the light of the sunset possibly foreshadows what is going to come next.

Later on in the opening scene, they’ve now jumped to a different setting, the is still warm but there is now a view of a big white house, birds fly past and sunset is still reflecting on the lake. The slow-pace of the scenes creates a peacefulness linking back to the genre of the film. The shot is still long giving us the full details of each setting.

As the opening scene goes on we get an non- diegetic sound in the background. Non diegetic sound is similar too to voice over or plays as a background sound. We can only hear the music playing as the sequence goes on.

Before the scene ends the shot grows close to the big white house heading towards the window, there we can see the reflection of the sunset and the lake and a old woman standing in the window. This gives the audience a slight hint of the storyline possibly being about an old woman looking back at her past, the reflection could resemble her looking back to what was.

During the start of the sequence we see titles slowing coming in and fading back out during the opening scene, we can see that there is an order of the most important actors.

The characterisation is evident, I can see that the gender is a woman and she is fairly old.

The mise on scene of the sequence shows low lighting keeping the scene calm. The props used lead us into thinking about the genre and the narrative of the film as boats and birds link into romance and freedom. The colour design is also calm linking in with the setting as the country shows warm colours e.g. wheat growing.

 

The shots stay long throughout the starting sequence then moving in towards the end, the camera angles also stay the same.