Analysing Opening Sequences - Friends With Benefits

Friends With Benefits

The film starts with a shot of the production logo and company name with non-diegetic music playing over the top.

There is a clever transition into the world of the characters with a simple graphic match, where the main character, in this case ‘Dylan’, uses his hand to shrink the image as if he was viewing it from his computer.  

We know this because we see a POV shot of him looking at the screen. We are then shown an establishing shot of the office, which gives us an insight to his life, as we can clearly see he works in an office, and also gives us a sense of the setting and time period, as the room is filled with computer screens and technology.

A second graphic match is used to link two separate scenes together with something as simple as a mobile phone. When ‘Dylan’ picks up the phone, we instantly are taken to a completely different location where the person he is talking to is.

 This is a clear use of sound perspective as we can only hear the cars when we see ‘Jamie’ walking down the street. This is also an example of synchronous sound as what we hear matches what we see on screen. Cross -cutting is also used at this time as it is showing two different stories along side each other at the same, and until they meet up with their partner, the audience thinks that the phone call is between ‘Dylan’ and ‘Jamie’ but it is not. This is foreshadowing as it indicates that these two will most likely get together at one point.

When the two couples finally meet, a close up is used on ‘Jamie’s’ face to show the emotion on her face. This indicates that she is really happy to see him. A two shot is also used to show the relationship between the two and in this case it shows that they clearly feel strongly about each other as we see them kiss.  

This is misleading to the audience because it makes them feel as if they are in a stable relationship, but in actually fact he is meeting her to break up with her. Using shot reverse shot, it not only shows the more realistic situation, but it also allows us to see the emotion on each characters face. This is key for this conversation because it is a break up scene.  

Sound

Non-diegetic music is used at the start of the film. This is used to set the tempo and mood of the film. A very upbeat and contemporary song is used to show that the film is set in a modern era and both characters are young. As the main character ‘Dylan’ starts to talk, the music gets quieter so that it does not drown out what he is saying. Diegetic sound is used a lot during the film for example when his phone rings, spilling of the coffee etc. This adds to the authenticity and makes the film seem a bit more realistic. Dialogue is used throughout the extract as it helps the audience know what is going on and adds to the humor of the piece. The dialogue takes priority over the non-diegetic music as it fades when the dialogue enters. Synchronous sound is used during the conversation between the two in the street to add to the authenticity as that is the sound you would expect to hear in that setting.

Overall

At the moment we are deciding between rom-com / psychological thriller/horror for our genre, so we thought we would research both. This was an interesting film to look at as it has made me think that in some ways rom-com is a harder genre for us. The locations and settings are very ordinary and so it is hard to create a distinct atmosphere using mise-en-scene. Dialogue is used a lot, and while we will probably have some dialogue in our piece, as we don;t have external microphones it might be too big a challenge to rely on it as the main establishing technique of our piece.