Describe a place or time where a main character felt very comfortable or uncomfortable in the text. Explain how visual and/or oral language features helped you to understand the character’s reaction(s).
The film Catch Me If you Can directed by Steven Spielberg conveys the idea of how family affects and influences you growing up. Most of the world perceive family as being the rock that you can fall back on, that are there for you no matter what, but the reality of Franks family is quite different. At the start of the film, a place where Frank ( the protagonist) felt very comfortable was at his home with both his parents on Christmas day. Throughout the whole movie, Frank’s idea of a perfect family seems very unrealistic, and this scene shows the happy false reality that that comes from. It shows us an insight into the false atmosphere of Christmas, that Frank sees to be his usual family atmosphere. Today I will be outlining three key film techniques that show us Frank is comfortable in this place: The first of these is the lighting, the second of these is the soundtrack, and thirdly the dialogue.
Steven Spielberg uses lighting to help us to see that Frank is very happy and comfortable at home, at the start of the film. He is surrounded by his family and they are all part of a cheery, almost false reality. The soft glow that the lighting used gives the characters is used to make them look happy and comfortable, but at the same time falsely cheery. This relates to Franks fixation in his mind that his family is always the same as the cheery ‘perfect family’ they become at Christmas. In real life, Christmas is seen as a big event where everyone comes together and they are all happy, and everyone is suddenly best friends, but I see that as false because Christmas is the one day of the year that this is a reality. For the rest of the year, there are problems between people in a family because that is why we have a family to support, challenge and help grow together as good people. What Frank doesn’t know is that there is no such thing as a perfect family. The overall moods given by the lighting in this scene can be described as soft, romantic and unrealistic. Spielberg used lighting with a slightly yellowish tint in this scene. The colour yellow can be associated with all of the moods shown above. Yellow has a general feeling of warmth that surrounds us, and when a light is really yellow it can look static and we perceive everything to look better than it actually does. A place most people find comfort in is often filled with warmth and love because they can be themselves and feel completely secure.
Christmas music has associations to happiness and joy all over the world. In Catch Me If You Can, Christmas music is a common soundtrack that accompanies Frank every Christmas. Need to rewatch this scene because I cant remember if it is christmas music or just calm, happy, successful music.
Spielberg uses lots of film techniques to convey the idea that family greatly affects and influences you growing up. Frank felt comfortable at home at christmas time when his family was still together. We know christmas is a time that family comes together, and it is the one time of year where we have to be ‘friendly’ towards everyone in our family. Frank