Research/Case studies 2

This short film is comedy based on a cab driver that has rubbish time driving around others on Monday until the woman he fancies gets a lift to the supermarket. He goes out of his way to make his cab nice and pick her up flowers. He then realises that she has got a boyfriend and then he goes back to talking about how rubbish Monday's are.
This video introduces Ben through a close up of his face, he
looks middle aged as he has facial hair and he is bald. A wide shot of him
standing in front of a cab cabin and a silver cab is then used and this sets
the scene. Also we are able to identify him as Ben as the editor has put his
name above him. There is a voice over during this part and it speak about
Monday’s being a waste of time, we are able to assume it is Monday as we can
see it is day time but it looks gloomy and this is what we would link together.
We get what looks to be a flash back it is a mid shot of many characters
causing chaos in a cab. Ben is telling the people to stop and at the bottom of
the shot it has been labelled as Monday. It pauses for a second and the moves
to another shot. This is a close up of Bens cab. He is driving, the camera shot
then moves to a close up of him inside the car with a passenger that is dressed
differently to Ben. Through the use of the same shot we can see the two
arguing, the passenger accuses Ben of stereotyping him. However, we see this a
comedy because of the voice over and not a serious allegation. Neither of the
characters are taking each other serious and therefore neither is the audience.
The shot then pauses and goes to a long shot of Ben at the petrol station, this
shows us that Ben is somewhat a normal character as he is performing tasks of
what a cab driver would do, we could therefore assume that it is the passengers
that are causing Ben aggravation. It then goes to another close up shot of Ben
in the car with another passenger. We are able to tell through the
mise-en-scene that there is a student in the back. We are able to make the
assumption through the stereotypes of a male student and from all the previous
passengers that this one is rowdy, noisy and a problem for Ben, although there
is only a short clip of him being in the car and we cannot actually hear him
talking as there is a subtle track playing in the background. The voice of
track explains that there is ‘Jackie’ and she is different. We can assume that
she is different as she is introduced on the road rather than in the cab, she
has been introduced differently than the other characters. We are given a close
up of Bens face and we can see that he is happy, this has been the only shot captured
of him where he is smiling. This is another reason to why Jackie is different.
In the long sot of Jackie it is quiet light and therefore this suggests that
she could light up his world in a sense. There is a still close up of Jackie in
Ben’s cab smiling and Ben talks about her going shopping on Mondays and that’s
what makes his day good. We then realise that Jackie is not a girlfriend of
Ben’s but is a customer. There is then a close up of the side of Bens face and
he is not looking happy, we see Jackie walking off towards the supermarket and
this shows that he becomes unhappy when he’s not with Jackie. From the things that
Ben says in his voice over such as ‘Women need time to decide if they like
you’, we assume that Ben has been taking Jackie shopping every Monday for a
while and she has not shown signs that she is interested. This can make the
audience feel sorry for him in a way but also find him a bit weird as he is
crushing over a woman like a school boy and she has no idea. Their conversations
are about supermarkets, this shows us that they’re friends in some way as they
are having a conversation in general, I don’t think there are many people that
have conversations with their cab drivers but they’re not that good of friends
as they’re only talking about supermarkets and nothing else. Ben picks up
another passenger and he is drunk and vomits in his car, this is shown through
a mid shot. This shows the audience the contrast between Jackie and all the
other passengers. Jackie is no trouble for Ben whereas all the others have been
a headache for him. We get a close up of Ben’s face and we are able to see he
is in disgust at the passenger being sick, there is a change in his voice and
we can hear he is upset as the pitch increases. We see a close up of flowers
that Ben has gotten for Jackie and we think of this as something romantic
however we hear in the voice over that the best thing that could come from
Jackie is a ‘shag’ which refers to sex. This makes Ben seem less cheesy and
more of a stereotypical male.  But he does then go back to saying cheesy things and stuttering while he speaks about
Jackie. After a close up of the flowers we see Jackie get into the car with
another person who she then says is her boyfriend. This can make the audience
feel sorry for him after he’s gotten her flowers and cleaned up his car for her.
It was clear from the beginning that he really liked her and nothing good has
come from it. This goes back to Ben saying that no good comes from Mondays. Ben
says in his voice over that he doesn’t like Mondays again and it is a close up
of the back of his cab driving away to end the scene. This brings the scene to
an end and even a symbol of ‘him and Jackie’.
With this clip there are shots without being cut, looking at shots that haven't been cut can make it look like it is going on for ages. This represents the long journeys in the car with the annoying passengers.