ESSAY PLAN FOR ANALYSIS OF THE FILM GROUNDHOG DAY
by
tjddbs1105 (student)
The whole essay will be composed of three parts, an introduction, three bodies and a conclusion. For the introduction part, I will briefly introduce the basic plot of the movie Groundhog day and its director Harold Ramis. After that, I will explain the term mise en scene. Saying that this word first came from French word ‘staging’ in a theater, I will write this word is including everything which constitutes a film. I am going to write that according to Bordwell, D & Thompson, K, largely there are setting, costume(makeup), lighting and staging(movement and performance) in mise en scene. Then, I will raise a question whether every mise en scene is intentional.
In the body part, I will divide it into three paragraphs. In the first paragraph, I will focus on figure’s expression and movement (performance). Here, according to Richard Dyer, figure movement includes every kind of movement from the action of the whole body to the movement of eyebrows, wrinkles and lips. Also, figure not only means human beings but also other objects or animals. After defining the meaning of figure movement, I will analyze the movements in my self-chosen scene in the film.(which is from 17:40 to 23:40) I will analyze the scene like the following way. ‘When the scene starts from 17:40, the film shows the change of the clock from 5:59 to 6. This is not a part of acting but a figure movement which shows the change of the day. After the clock scene, we can observe the movement of the main character, Phil. He just wakes up from the bed and hears the radio sound. We can tell from his frowned face that he is thinking the radio channel stupid because he thinks the channel is repeating the same tape. But he felt something strange if the broadcast is continued and his face becomes suspicious. Then he looks out the window. Here we can see movements of people and cars outside going all ahead to the groundhog festival. This movement has a role of distinguishing the new day and repeated days because it is distinguishable with the last scene showing nobody outside the window.’ Like this way, I will concretely analyze the movements, positions, postures and facial expressions of actors and objects in chosen five-minute scene.
