In the next scene they show Gordie sleeping but it looks like he is having a bad dream because he is making noises in his sleep which shows he is troubled by something. Then they show what he is dreaming of and the scene has soft-focus blurred image and it is a purple/greyish colour which shows that the scene is a cold and upsetting scene. In the scene the coffin of his brother’s is the only light thing and everything else in the dream is dark this is trying to show that Gordie’s brother is the only light and good in Gordie’s life, the light gets smaller as his brother’s coffin gets smaller which is trying to show that the good is going out of Gordie’s life. It also shows that Gordy is intimidated by his dad and he thinks that his dad thinks it should have been him that died instead of his brother evidence to this is when in Gordie’s dream his dad says to him “It should have been you.”
When they show Gordie’s dad the camera angles are low which shows that he is mean and intimidating like a bully and when they show Gordie the camera angle is high which makes him look weak and vulnerable.
Flashback and voice over are the next narrative techniques used in this film an example of this is when Gordie goes into his brother’s room and he remembers his brother giving him a Yankees cap and also giving him a hug this is shown as a flashback, the flashback is sepia – toned which shows the memory is warm and loving and the way they show it, it looks like Gordie’s brother was the only one that loved him or showed that he loved him in that house.
The next narrative technique is dramatisation, in this scene Gordie tells his friends a story about an overweight boy and how he got his revenge on the people that used to laugh at his weight. There is slight comedy in this, so that the audience don’t feel unhappy or depressed, so it has comedy relief in it. The revenge in the movie makes the audience quite happy because we have a sense of moral justice which makes us want Davey to have his revenge on the people that laughed at him but we don’t want him to do anything that does permanent damage – because that would make us feel bad for the other people – but what Davey does makes us feel good that he had his revenge and he didn’t do any permanent damage. By telling this story it makes us realise that Gordie is an intelligent, good at telling stories and imaginative boy.
The narrative technique after this is juxtaposition which is a comparison of one person to another or one group to another. In this film the juxtaposition is between the younger group and the older group, at first they show the younger group smoking, gambling with sweets and swearing which doesn’t give the audience a good impression of them but when we see the older group swearing, vandalising, carrying weapons and saying unpleasant things about women, then we realise that they are much worse than the younger group and actually the younger group isn’t bad but quite innocent instead and they don’t do what they do because they are mean but they do it because they want to act cool and bad but the older guys are just like that, they are used to saying bad things and they don’t think before they say it because they don’t care. The older group has a leader who is the meanest of them all but the younger group don’t really have a leader because they are friends who just hangout together and when they o something bad they know they’re doing it for example when they had the gun and they thought that it had no bullets in it but it actually did and when they shot it, they realised it had bullets in it and realised it was wrong, and ran away.
The next narrative technique is music in the film the theme song is “Stand By Me”. In this song the lyrics “No, I won’t be afraid just as long as you stand, stand by me” seem to be the most important lyrics of the song – what the song is trying to say is that sticking together is important because you are only strong as a group because your friends can stick up for you and be there for you when you’re upset or when you want to talk to someone but if you are alone then you have no one to stick up for you and you are weak and you wouldn’t have emotional support. The next song is “Lollipop” and the lyrics that keep coming up ids “lollipop”, I think this song is trying to show that the boy are quite naïve and sweet and even though in the beginning they showed them as quite bad because they were smoking now the audience should like the boys because they are actually quite sweet and innocent. The next song is “great balls of fire” and the lyrics are “you shake my nerve and rattle my brain”, “come on baby you drive me crazy” this song is louder that the other songs and it talks about women but not in a pleasant way. This song is sung by Jerry Lee Lewis who isn’t a very nice man and if the song isn’t sung by a nice man then the song he sings isn’t very nice and whoever the sing is being played for are obviously not very nice and in this case the song is being sung for the older gang who obviously aren’t very nice.
