Movie Scene Evaluation Project Analysis 1) Apply all eight Elements of Interpersonal Communication to you scene.The clip illustrates a very good example of interpersonal communication.In this clip Alpachino (The Blind man) is the major source (encoder) in interpersonal communication.
Charlie (Suspect/Witness), Dean, Willis Jr. , disciplinary committee and the student body are the decoders of the messages. The crowd is astounded by the encoder and gave a positive timely feedback which gave confident to the speaker to give the speech boldly.
The bridge (channel) connecting the sender and the receiver is primarily verbal (vocal-auditory channel). Since the speaker in the scene is blind therefore there are not many visible facial gestures but the vocal tone (the highs and the lows) of the speaker compensates for his impairment. Sender’s blindness acts as the gatekeeper in this clip. The actor delivered the speech so well that his impairment (blindness) never obstructs to communicate with people around him effectively.
However, there is a little but effective use of hands to convey his message to the receivers. There is a little hint of psychological noise in the scene too, which is evident since the Dean does not want to hear the elevated and harsh tone of Frank. The context of the scene is in temporal and social-psychological dimension. The gravity of the situation forced the speaker in the clip to take an action in a harsh manner and the relation that had developed between Frank and Charles shows the social-psychological dimension.
The clip also consist the element of ethics in it since Frank defended the innocent (Charles). The speaker with his high level of interpersonal competence convinces everyone in the hall to let justice prevail. 2) How do we see one of the 7 principles of Communication used in this scene? The clip is pretty rich in covering the principles of communication. However, the most obvious of them all is the purposefulness of interpersonal communication.
Five such purposes can be identified in the scene; to learn- through interpersonal communication everyone in the scene learnt about justice; to relate- speakers closeness to Charlie(defendant) is evident through his words to defend him; to influence- the speaker through his word of justice persuaded and influenced everyone present in the event; to play- a formal outlay of the scene doesn’t introduces the element of playfulness; but the concept of help is pretty obvious in the form that the speaker is helping through his word to convince the jury and defend the Charles. ) Were your characters from individualistic or collectivist cultures? Explain how their characters affected the way they acted towards each other. The attitudes and behavior that are characteristics of a particular social group or organization defines culture. Frank the main speaker in the clip encultured rules, regulation, discipline and self obsession from army in his past which makes him lean towards individualistic culture but in his speech to support Charles he presents the tendency of collectivist culture.
Whereas, Charles accultured tameness and shyness since he belonged to a hardworking middle class family which is evident throughout the movie and in and the clip as well. The Dean here shows the tendencies of individualistic culture since he portrays power, authority and discipline. Therefore, Frank and Dean throughout the clip talk aggressively, whereas, Charles act in a timid manner. 4) What is a stereotype, and what stereotypes are present in your scene? Stereotype is a fixed impression of a group of people.
Stereotyping is not very evident in this particular clip but giving a verdict only on Charles whether intentionally or unintentionally by the Dean could be characterized as stereotyping. Another example of stereotyping is by Frank (Alpachino) where forms an impression about Charle’s peers involved in prank played against the Dean as rich parent’s spoiled brats. 5) Apply four parts of Johari Window to one of the character in your scene? Frank (Alpachino) is a confident, blunt and a straightforward retired army man is his openself.
His hidden self is his remaining dreams for an adventure during the movie which he later reveals to Charles on the trip to New York. Franks explicit expression could be defined as his blindself since he doesn’t realize how the other person could be affected by his words and actions that he says and delivers. In the movie several times it can be seen that Franck experiences mood swings which is his unknown self, neither he nor anyone else talk about it but the audience watching the movie can identify it. 6) What is self-serving bias and explain how one character used it in your scene.
When we take credit for the positive and deny responsibility for the negative is called self-serving bias. In this particular scene Mr. Willis Jr. knowing he is responsible for the prank played on the dean, denies, lying to save himself that he was present at the location but did not have his contact lens on, therefore, could not see and referred Dean, Charles being present at the location. 7) How could your characters have increased the accuracy of their impression formation? In my opinion the only person in the scene who would need accuracy in impression formation would be the Dean.
He needs to look into ‘ANALYZE IMPRESSION’ by avoiding early conclusions on the basis of his observations and “REDUCE UNCERTAINIY” by learning about a person through others; in this case about Charles. 8) Apply all 5 stages of the process of listening to the scene in you movie. Since this scene mirrors court room scene which is formal and disciplined thus there is almost no noise present in the clip and the receiving of the message is very clear which helps the student, disciplinary committee, Dean and the suspects understand interpersonal communication easily.
The remembering stage is only restricted to temporal dimension since it’s on short term basis but its impact would have remained in long term memory. Evaluation of the message is pretty easy too since its clear from the speech that Frank is trying to defend Charles. Student’s reaction in form of an applaud towards the speech is the responding. 9) Name a listening barrier that you have witnessed in the scene? Premature Judgment is a listening barrier in this scene. Dean is drawing conclusions on incomplete evidence. He doesn’t want to listen to Frank’s speech and constantly try to stop him.
It can be implied from Dean’s facial gestures (non-verbal communication) that he doesn’t want to listen to anything anymore and just want to give the verdict. 10) Based on what we have learned in our class, how could communication have been improved in this scene? Frank(Alpachino) is blind in this scene. I believe the communication could have been much more effective if Frank wasn’t suffering from this impairment. Furthermore, if Dean would have listened to and analyzed the situation indifferently and wouldn’t have formed a premature judgment, it would have taken lesser time to come to a conclusion, thus, improving the communication.
