The Addams Family, 1991.

Ashley Matthews

2/25/12

  The Addams Family (1991)

Director Barry Sonnenfeld

            There are several film techniques used in the grotesque and comical movie, The Addams Family.  When Lurch is shot in scenes with the children, the camera is at a high angle when looking down at the children and a low angle when looking up at Lurch.  This makes a difference in the way the audience perceives the conversation because we are seeing from their points of view the exact height difference rather than experiencing, say, a medium shot and missing out on that.  We see high/ low angle shots used again when Uncle Lester is looking down on the children sword fighting in the foyer.  This back and forth motion is much more effective in portraying the viewpoints of Lester and Wednesday and Pugsley in relation to one another. 

            The Line Rule is used in the scene where the Addams family is sitting around the table trying to summon Fester to their home.  Since it is a scene where we spend so much time going back and forth from one family member to the next talking, it is important for the scene to be visually appealing. 

            The camera moves off of the tripod when Gomez and Fester are sliding down the slide to heighten the shaky feeling they are experiencing.  This is effective when the director wants the audience to feel the commotion going on in the character’s situations.

            We are taken from a medium full shot to a medium close up when Morticia gets a job reading to elementary school students.  Of course, her story is a gruesome twist of Hansel and Gretel.  When she tells the story, the scene is filmed of the children as a whole in a medium full shot.  But after Morticia is done telling the story, there are close-ups of the children’s individual faces and their reactions to her “horror story” to emphasize how distraught her story made them.

            Either a blue gel or some other sort of color filter is used in the scenes with the backyard graveyard to get us to feel it is an eerie nighttime.  This change in color temperature sets this scene apart from the other scenes in the film and is important because many pivitol scenes take place in the graveyard, such as when Morticia uncovers Lester’s secret and Halloween night bonding when Lester is accepted back into the family.