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Non-Diegetic Techniques In Still Alice

Decent Essays

Still Alice is a film about Alice Howland who is a professor at Columbia University majoring in linguistics. The plot begins to climax when Alice firstly forgets a word during a lecture and during a jog she does everyday, she became lost. Alice visits her doctor and is diagnosed with early onset Familial Alzheimer’s Disease. The director ………. has used Sounds, Costumes and Cinematography in the film to develop the character of Alice Howland and encourage audiences to connect with her. Non-diegetic sound is important in films as a technique for audiences to understand the specific emotions of a scene. Sound also is used as a technique to evoke an emotional response from the audience.
 Non-diegetic sound is only used in the film to highlight …show more content…

An example of this type of sound in Still Alice is when Alice is running on campus. During this scene a quiet violin played as non-diegetic sound. When Alice became lost the sound changed from soft violins to an intense sound of violins playing and also had the diegetic sound of Alice’s breathing. This made the audience aware of the panic the character was experiencing and allowed them to feel more involved in the scene. Another example of sound in the film is the scene involving Alice at her beach house with her husband. In this scene she needed to go to the toilet before they went for a run together. The sound in this scene really helped to established what was going to happen. The scene began with a slow playing violin with long notes as Alice searched the beach house to find the toilet. As she became more panicked the violin …show more content…

As Alice’s Alzheimers progresses, her costumes change to reflect the progression of the disease. At the beginning of the film Alice’s character presents as a well-dressed middle-aged woman wearing clothes that suited her body type and her everyday life. An example of this is at the beginning of the film when Alice had to do presentation she was neat and well dressed in business attire for her age. Gradually throughout the film her clothing became more underdressed and her appearance became more dishevelled. When Alice and her husband John are at their family beach house Alice is portrayed wearing basic clothing such as a plain black tee and jeans. This is in stark contrast to the professional clothing that Alice is dressed in as a university lecturer at the beginning of the film. This highlights how important costume is as a technique to reflect the storyline and character development. By the end of the film Alice is physically unable to dress herself. Alice’s husband, John dresses Alice to visit their daughter in hospital who just had twin babies. Costume is particularly demonstrated and pronounced in this scene particularly when comparing to the beginning of the film where Alice is a highly independent and well dressed professional. Costumes play a major role in the development of Alice Howland throughout her journey of having early onset Alzheimer’s disease. At the start of the film

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