Response to Continuity and Dialogue

 In the clips, I found two major topics to be interesting. Firstly, the impact of an environment on carrying a story and creating characterization. In The Royal Tenenbaums clip, the narrator explains the impact of the positioning of the camera in regards to the objects making up the environment. During the analyzed scene, the unspoken shifts between Eli and Margot’s relationship and feelings towards each other are shown through the position of a pole in the background. As a result, the pole acts as another character expressing an unspoken dialogue. The significance of an environment, I noticed appears also in the clip from 8 ½. In this clip, there were moments of silence or very little sound, during which the camera panned across the scene. The lack of sound causes the viewer to focus on the images and visual context to try to understand the plot. The same could be said about the clip’s use of asynchronous sound, which keeps you connected to the plot but adds to the environmental context. Above all, because of the lack of dialogue, the shots back and forth between the different environments, created by the static people in their cars and the one moving character, acts as a dialogue, creating a plot without anything spoken. The second is how a person’s body language in response to an environment plays a significant role in setting a tone. In the clip from Mulholland Drive, David Lynch does something fascinating and effective to create an unnerving tone to the interaction of the characters and to the scene as a whole. In the clip, the viewer’s emotions are played with as the camera shifts back and forth from the two characters, who are reacting completely differently to the conversation. As the camera flips back and forth from the two juxtaposing emotions of the characters, the viewer is never able to feel certain about how they should be feeling or if they should be preparing emotionally, as a result, the overarching feeling created by the rhythm in the dialogue is anxiety.