Blog #3: Relationships between shots

For this assignment, I chose a drug deal scene from a movie called Another Day in Paradise. The movie is about a young couple whose drug addiction leads them to commit small time robberies and crimes.  In the movie they team up with an older couple who mentor them on how to live a posh lifestyle through drug dealing and robbery. When they are first introduced to this lifestyle, there is a lot of comedic relief, but as the movie goes on, the relationship between the characters and their risky lifestyles grows seemingly dark.
             In the scene, the older mentor, Mel, is teaching Bobby how to bargain with people when selling them drugs. Mel tells him to just "hang there and look cool", and takes a gun and tucks it in his waist band and sits on a striped couch. The movie takes place in the 70's, and the way the yellow, brown, and red striped couch match the mustard yellow wall suggest that. Also, the characters are constantly chain smoking. Mel is wearing a mustard yellow shirt that matches the couch he sits on and the wall behind him. However, despite all of these colors, the hotel room they're in is pretty dark. I think the room is dark to suggest a gloomy feeling about this lifestyle.
       Once the clients arrive, 70's surfer music begins to play, and there is fast paced upbeat guitar, and the shots quickly cut between Mel and the clients as they negotiate the prices. I think the music and quickly cut shots reveal an exciting, fast way of living that the drug dealers and junkies in the movie experience. The quickly cut shots are definitely obvious, and once the clients mouth off to Mel, the shots begin to include Bobby to capture his reaction to how his mentor deals with it. As the tension grows, the shots between the clients, Mel, and Bobby last longer, until Mel kicks over the coffee table and pulls out a gun. Even though the clients, Mel, and Bobby are all in the same room, they are all in different shots, and the shots are cut so you can see their different reactions. I think this is done on purpose, to create a dramatic effect, also to reveal how unpredictable this lifestyle is, and to speculate how even though Mel and Bobby are a team, they are two different people with two different perspectives on the world. Mel calls his girlfriend to bring the drugs to the room, and the up beat music fades out after the clients leave.