This is me - By Joe Blissett

The sequence begins with the close up shot of an oxygen canister with a dull, grey background faded out behind it. At this moment the audience can have many ideas of where this is set, however it is not immediately clear until the next shot. The next shot then shows what appears to be someone breathing slowly under a white blanket with machines and medical equipment in the background, suggesting that this is perhaps set inside a hospital. It is unclear at this point what genre this is supposed to be as not enough has been revealed to the audience as of yet.

 At around 25 seconds, dialogue is heard introducing the character in the shot as being ‘me, Bertie Timpson’, and this is alongside the sweeping pan of inside the hospital room, displaying yet again a dull, grey scenario to which we assume to be his view or experience of this whole event, again at this point, the audience do not know why or how he got into the hospital. His wife is then shortly introduced but is seen to be careless about her husband and is more interested in booking a holiday, something which is seen to be very ironic by the end of the sequence. Bertie then goes onto explain why he is in hospital, quoting that he can’t walk, or talk, and that he has some sort of a paralysis. From the mild swearing and light humour, we can infer that the genre is likely to be a comedy or perhaps a mixture of a comedy with another genre, however the audience is unsure as of yet.

A graphic match shot is then seen when showing Bertie Timpson sunbathing in what appears to be his back garden alongside the non-diegetic soundtrack of Hawaiian music, again adding to the slightly comedic value of the film. He then goes onto explain where he lives and inconvenient it is that his house just so happens to be right below the Heathrow flight path. Immediately after this, he quotes ‘Talking of inconveniences, this is Max’. However there seems to be a lot of emphasise on the boy named Max, and this is shown from when the quote ‘…this is Max’ is seen being delivered by Bertie himself and not as a dialogue overlay like before. This makes it come across to the audience that Bertie has something a little more personal to do with Max, something which the audience discovers later on in the film. Bertie goes onto the say how Max is seen holding a little plastic airplane to which he also says why it’s manufacturers strictly advise it is given to children over the ages of 5. Now at first this doesn’t appear to show any comedic value, however when looking back over the same clip again, the audience notice at how little Max is casually wearing a t-shirt with the text ‘I am 4’ written across it, which now makes the audience understand that there may potentially be some sort of problem surrounding the fact that Max has done something that he shouldn’t of done, posing questions about how it may impact the rest of the story.

The scene then takes a turn and we hear Bertie again commentating on what is going on; at this point it appears to be where the story begins. He goes onto explain how long Max’s digestion will take and then because of this when Max will undoubtedly need to use the airplane loo, to which the audience now understand the phrase as being ‘blue ice’. At this very moment, a close up is seen being used on Bertie’s whiskey glass whilst he is sunbathing in the garden, again revealing the mild humour from it. He then goes onto say how this ‘blue ice’ usually disperses when hitting the atmosphere, before repeating the quote ‘usually’, followed by ‘how reassuring’. The scene then cuts to the birds eye view of the little plastic plane whizzing through the sky, using non-diegetic sounds to make it seem like some world war two invasion (again adding to the humour) before a close up, high angle of Bertie looking up towards the sky is used, suggesting that the little plane had hit him. A mid shot is then immediately used to display Bertie’s wife quoting at how he should’ve started the barbeque up, which adds to the humour, as it displays the kind of relationship the two had with each other, with the wife being very lazy and depending on Bertie, although Bertie did not seem to bother or listen much to his wife and so ended up ignoring her. This comes at the most climatic point of the scene as the audience do not know at this stage if the little plastic plane even hit Bertie or not, adding to the little suspense.

The sequence then returns to Bertie lying in hospital again using dialogue as an overlay to commentate on what had gone on, describing it as ‘shit happens’ which becomes very ironic as it literally did, before he quoted at how the airline didn’t know what had hit them (as in cost of insurance), however as Bertie then goes onto say ‘neither did I’, the audience find the humorous side to it, and again it is very ironic as he literally got hit by the little plastic plane.