Research and Planning 8: Facial Expression and Body Language

Facial expression 

During our sequence both characters experience different types of emotions from being in pain due to violence to being anxious about being shot. We hope that the audience can experience what our characters our to some level. Using techniques like extreme close ups and POV shots will help our audience's understanding in their level of emotion. Although these characters are both antagonist this does not mean that our audience can not feel the same level of emotion or feel empathic in the understanding of their thoughts.

During the process of our planning for the sequence we carefully decided on different camera angles which would be best suited to capture to realism of our character's emotions. The eyes are one of the best ways to read someones emotions and we have included several shot reserve shot close ups so that the audience can understand in contrast how each characters feels. The common emotion which will be conveyed through the facial expressions of our character's will be anxiety and anger. These two emotions are common between these types of antagonists as they are commonly feeling anxious about the crimes they have committed and the anger they share about being unsuccessful.

Here is the film snatch where the main antagonist is seen to be looking angry. This is shown through the frown of the mouth and the wide eyes.

Here is another shot of this character looking even more angry. This is shown through the raise of the eyebrows and the open mouth with the teeth showing. 

We hope to create similar shots thorough the close ups of emotions through our main character JD as he is seen to be an angry character. We will use the gritted teeth and the raised eyebrows in our sequence to portray this level of anger.

Body language

Our Sequence features two angry men who are both angry for different reasons. The body language helps the audience to understand what our characters are feeling to a certain extent. We all share similar emotions and it is commonly known that an open posture is considered to be more confident than a closed posture. For example if someone is seen to be spreading their arms and legs wide apart then this is commonly associated with more confident behaviour whereas a closed posture (arms folded with head looking down and perhaps avoiding eye contact) suggests a lack of confidence and even feeling exposed or threatened. 

This is a video from YouTube which helped us understand what certain types of posture and body language helped to convey. 

Our main character - JD - will be seen to have an open posture with his arms and legs spread wide apart whereas our other character - Spark - will be seen to have a more closed, unconfined posture. This will help our audience understand who is the alpha male in this sequence. The violent behaviour of our characters will help support the idea that they are gangsters as this is typical of these types of characters. Another point to consider is the hands being used to express emotion, for example: Spark in our sequence will be seen in a POV angle to be looking at his hands which will be shaking, and in comparison with JD his hands will be clenched tight to support his angry mannerism. 

This picture helps to illustrate our idea of being angry as this man is seen to have his fists clenched as well as having his eyes wide open with his eye brows raised.

The picture of this man helps us to explain about being anxious as he is touching his face (something which is typically seen in closed body language - this is self comforting) which shows his anxiety through the use of closed body language.

It should be noted that all of our actors will be fully briefed on what position their body should be in and what their facial expression should be for each shot in order to fulfill the realism of the sequence. We want the audience to feel immersed by the sequence and not disconnected by the unrealistic performance of our actors. The sequence must be believable, otherwise it looks unprofessional (and the audience will be able to see this).