So I picked Al Pacino’s speech from Any Given Sunday

My first view without the sound, I noticed a lot of camera angles switching, mainly to emphasize the attitudes of all the players in order to display the emotion of the locker room.  One thing I did pick up on, not too sure on why this was the case, was that when Pacino was speaking, the camera wasn’t still but moving from right to left, with him starting in the middle and ending up on the left side of the screen.  When it was zoomed in on the other players though, they were all in the center and no movement took place.  It also seemed like the camera was rarely completely still, but rather moving as if it was someone’s point of view and kind of bobbing up and down at times like someone’s head.

Now for the audio, his speech is very slowly paced, with a pretty somber vibe at the beginning.  It’s also accompanied by a slow, soft, and deep piano in the background, also displaying the somber mood.  This pretty much stays the same way until about the halfway mark, where his tone starts to pick up much louder than the music, even as the music remains generally the same as the beginning, showing a pretty major contrast between his tone and the background music.  And at the end, after his speech stops, the music still continues.

After putting it all together, it went pretty much how I expected, as Pacino is pretty good at showing his emotions visually so I could easily tell the tone of his voice without the sound.  However, I was expecting the music to change when he got more hyped up, probably picturing something a little more fast paced.  The one thing I’m confused about in regards to Ebert’s guide, is he says left is negative, right is positive, but I felt that Pacino was being put in a positive/motivational/inspirational light, and he was generally on the left of the screen.