the extra mile productions
scene analysis
Scene: Pre-Credits Car Sequence from Lady Bird (2017)
The opening car scene in Lady Bird (2017), serves to introduce the audience to its protagonist, Christine "Lady Bird" Macpherson, her mother, Marion, and their mother-daughter dynamic. The scene achieves this through clever writing, layered acting and strategic filmmaking decisions.
The biggest achievement of the writing in this scene, besides the witty banter between the two characters, is that the screenplay is able to sneak exposition into the conversation while still sounding natural. In this short scene we learn that Lady Bird: lives in Sacramento but wants to go to the East Coast, is a senior at a Catholic high school (based on the fact that they are taking a college trip), has a brother who works at the grocery store, and belongs to a presumably lower-middle class family (based on the fact that her parents will "barely be able to afford in-state tuition.) The audience also learns a lot about Lady Bird's personality, mostly that she is clever (comment about 2002 being a palindrome), selfish (doesn't know about the layoffs at her Father's company), inconsiderate ("he barely saw that," talking about her brother witnessing a knifing at public school), overdramatic ("I want to live through something"), and doesn't take responsibility for her actions ("because you wouldn't let me practice). All these facts about Lady Bird will be crucial to the story later on and therefore the screenplay needs to be efficient and somewhat quick in how they are presented to the audience. This screenplay succeeds in this aspect because it not only introduces key information about the story but allows us to get to know our characters and gives us context for their relationships (especially the mother-daughter relationship at the center of the movie). It also manages to be very funny (it ends with Lady Bird opening the door and jumping out of the moving car), immediately engaging the audience and carrying momentum over into the scenes after the opening credits.
There are essentially three camera angles in this entire scene: a straight on shot of the two in the car (as shown in the picture above) and profile shots of each of the characters.
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These shots make it so that the audience is effectively in between the characters. As a result, we only see the left side of Lady Bird's face and the right side of Marion's face (unless they turn to each, like they are doing in the pictures above. These effect of these profile shots is that the audience feels like they are in the car with Lady Bird and her mom and literally in the middle of their conversation. They are seeing the argument from each character's perspective. Because of this, the scene never loses the claustrophobic feeling of being trapped in the car with someone for hours on end. This way, the focus is on the writing and the acting and the scene stays in the car. However, sometimes the camera stays on both of them. While these shots are woven into the discussion, they mainly occur at two places: in the beginning before they start arguing, to set up the conversation, and in the middle once they start talking over each other. This is important because we are now seeing both sides to the argument at once as opposed to one at a time and it builds the tension of the argument before the climax of Lady Bird jumping out of the car. This scene shows that in certain films and in particular scenes, the camera angles are used to complement the script and the content of the scene. This scene also shows that little details add up and can make or break the success of a scene.