Breaking the Fourth Wall

Breaking the fourth wall is when an actor addresses the audience or speaks at the camera as if they are speaking through the camera to the viewer. it more commonly used in theatre and is quite rare in film, when it is used its mainly in comedy. It can be used to connect with and communicate directly with the viewer or to help tell a story through someone's words like a documentary, for example in the Wolf of Wall Street, Leonardo Dicaprio often speaks to the audience to talk about his life and the events occurring.


Examples of Breaking the Fourth Wall:

Ferris Bueller's Day off: 
Matthew Broderick's character Ferris Bueller talks to the audience throughout the film like they're one of his friends. From the start its made obvious that the rule of audience movie divide is ignored in this film, this strengthens the effect of Ferris being a rebellious teenager trying to bunk of school for a day and break the rules without his parents knowing.

                                                                                                                               
The Wolf of Wall Street:
Leonardo Dicaprio breaks the fourth wall multiple times in The Wolf of Wall Street. He does this to help tell the tale of crooked, party and drug obsessed business man Jordan Belfort. This is used to give the effect of the film being like a documentary with Dicaprio stopping at multiple times to give the audience his feelings on an event that has just occurred in the film.

Breaking the fourth wall isn't a technique I would be considering in my opening scene because I've planned mine to be a thriller style film and even though you can use the fourth wall break in this genre its better suited to comedy films. Also with what I have planned for my opening there isn't anything that I need to straight up communicate to the audience. Also breaking the fourth wall can sometimes be used to help the audience understand what's happening, it can be used to tell the story like in the Wolf of Wall Street however in my opening I am going to leave some mystery as to what has happened to try and pull the audience in and make them want to watch the film further to find out what is going on. All these reasons are why I wont be breaking the fourth wall in my opening scene coursework, I do still think its a very effective technique within film just maybe not suited for my purposes.