Pleasantville

Gary Ross is the producer and director of Pleasantville. He describes himself as a modern day life story writer. That is why Pleasantville is based on Modern life as Gary grew up in a modern life style. His father Arthur Ross was blacklisted during the Red scare that tainted Hollywood in the modern life and he was far from being a communist back in the Modern life days. Gary got the ideas to produce the film Pleasantville from the way his father Arthur Ross looked at the world. The contexts that were in Pleasantville was when everything started to change and wasn’t the normal modern day life and everyone that wasn’t changing from the modern day life weren’t allowed to do certain thing as that’s what the President of Pleasantville was saying to them. He was saying to the modern day life people that haven’t or hadn’t changed that they were to stay away from the people that were changing as they might change as well if they did go near the people that had already changed. Another context that was in the film was throughout the film which was basically based on Modern Day life and what it was like to live in them days. Some ideas in the film were to do with People changing their attitudes, for example when the character Jennifer doesn’t like living in the Modern Life she does change her attitude to certain things. Another idea that was in the film was values, for example when the character Bill Johnson did the things that were Bud’s (another character) job but Bud wasn’t there. A theme that was in the film was about how the world revolves around change. In the beginning everyone used to follow their modern life routine and then eventually everyone’s routine starts to change. Another theme that was in the film was how America influenced everyone that they are Pleasant. Some techniques that were throughout the film were Setting, Colourisation, and Camera Angles, symbolism, emotive language and dialogue. Some examples of what the techniques represented during the film are; Colourisation which was used to show that Pleasantville was changing away from their modern life; Camera Angles which were used to show the different emotion on each one of the characters, Symbolism which was used in the film to show that certain things can represent something in the film itself even if it isn’t related to the film for example when the character Jennifer decides to change her attitude towards reading she read a D.H Lawrence novel, Dialogue which is used in Pleasantville by the character (George Parker) returns home from work and finds no family or no dinner. It would not be something you would expect to happen in the film, Setting was used for all of the film to represent what and where the characters were saying and doing and also representing the change in some scenes, Emotive Language which was used during the film to represent each characters different emotion.