Friday, 27 October 2017

Minor Project: Potential Scene- True Romance

This scene is from the 1993 Tony Scott film, True Romance and the scene in question is actually quite niche as it is not in any way an important scene in the film, that being said it is a great example of two actors in different emotional states playing off of each other.
To give this scene context, Alabama is a hooker who falls in love with Clarence (the guy in the scene) who then goes to retrieve her clothes and kill her pimp, he does the latter but picks up the wrong bag and instead just picks up a suitcase full of cocaine. This scene takes place as Clarence returns from killing Drexel and finds Alabama just watching TV. The rest doesn't particularly need explaining as it is in the video above. If we take the two performances in isolation and analyse them we see very conflicting emotions (as I previously stated), we see Clarence on an adrenaline rush of what he has just done and still very pumped up and full of testosterone, this is why he is angry and short tempered with Alabama. Alabama reacts to this in two ways, firstly she is terrified of Clarence for reasons we can only infer as being an new found revelation of what he is capable of but also just a surprised kind of fear to his aggression. The second way she reacts is the more unexpected of the two as this is her reaction of overwhelming love for her man at what he has done for her. Of the two I feel more drawn to the second one as being the more believable of the two, which at face value is a strange perception because this is not the natural reaction of most people to finding out that their husband is a murderer. However, I believe this one more because it is the one that overwhelms her and is delivered in such a way that we can feel the emotion and we know that it fits in with the previous scenes that we've seen Alabama in, this is an example of actor and character being in complete unison and not a case of the actor pretending to be the character, when Clarence breaks the news, Alabama and Patricia are one and the same and they both feel that overwhelming love for the man in front of them. Couple that with the sheer rage expressed by Clarence in this scene and you have a great piece where two contrasting emotions come together and intertwine into a great scene that is hard to pull off because they can't feed off of each other's emotions, only react to them. Practically, this scene isn't the most difficult in the world to achieve in the slightest, its a relatively basic setting, the costume is simple and theres not any crazy camera movement, just a little to track head movements, nothing that will slow production in order to practise. All things considered this is a very strong contender for the scene which I will eventually shoot as it ticks a lot of boxes, it features strong performances, it is very emotional and as such will require good and constant acting, it is also suitably basic that it will be relatively easy to replicate. The only issue I can think of at this point is that it is very American, I struggle to see a British version of this scene that works in all honesty, not necessarily a reason for me to completely disregard this scene but it is certainly the thing that is stopping me definitively choosing  this scene.

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