Hey everyone,
The challenge for this week is to try and find moments of visual storytelling from the film Devil’s Playground. Keeping in mind the theme of Amish vs. English, I found that most of the visual storytelling came from the physical expressions of the people involved in the story. And this makes sense, as the story pertains to the people and their transition from the Amish style of living to modern English living. This proves to be an effective form of storytelling as the audience can follow the teenagers’ thoughts and feelings about this immensely important decision that affects the rest of their lives.
The first screenshot I found was the same one we used for the module thumbnail in this course and is also the poster for this movie on IMDB. I’d argue and assume this was the reasoning for it being the thumbnail, that this shot perfectly depicts the theme Amish vs. English. An Amish-dressed individual smoking a cigarette, two worlds colliding at one distinct moment. It also uses the person to tell the story and how they interact with their environment.
Velda Bontrager talks about and shows her Amish wedding dress. As we’ve discussed in class, the storytelling isn’t the dress itself or when Velda puts on the dress. The storytelling comes from Velda’s facial expressions, the way she looks at the dress as if in admiration of its beauty, but she later admits that she would never get married or go back to being Amish because of what the dress represents. The audience gathers the story from her expressions in this shot.
Next, we have a scene that isn’t facial expression but also one that I’m unsure if it’s real or not as I’ve seen documentary style films before that include incriminating evidence of narcotic use and distribution. This is a heavy contradiction to the earlier scenes of typical Amish living, with shots of farmsteads and families driving their horse carts. The storytelling here does show itself through the environment and the inclusion of Faron’s hands in the scene adds to the impact of what’s happening in the story. We’ve seen Faron tempted by the English way of living for a while and can see a trend of more and more dangerous substance abuse from drinking to smoking. Seeing his hands packaging “crank” tells the audience that his story has taken a dark dip on his journey in English living. Not quite as effective as seeing facial expressions, since we can’t see Faron’s face as he’s doing this, but we know as the audience he’s participating regardless.
Here we return to human expression as visual storytelling. After Faron gets off the phone leaving his dad a message in Dutch over the car accident he got in, the camera stays on Faron. We see his immediate reaction to the message. Looking down, fidgeting with his clothes, sitting still, all signs that Faron is experiencing emotion. The audience isn’t told exactly what Faron’s thinking, but can infer that he’s thinking about his life, his family, his accident, and ultimately leading the audience back to the theme of Amish vs. English.
Thanks for reading!