Oscar Forester
Cinematography

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation one of my favorite movies, and the scene from the dinner is something that I and my dad quote all the time. The scene, along with the rest of the movie is meant to be humorous, and it adds to the awkward and someone miserable tension that the family shares when they are around each other. At the beginning of the scene, we see Clark Griswold begin to cut the turkey that Catherine had worked hard on. Continuing with the poor experience of the vacation, the turkey dries up and looks inedible. The action is overdramatized when the turkey actually shrivels up and steams a little. To make matters worse, the family insists on eating the turkey and we see the distraught, uncomfortable facial expression as the family is eating the food. There is also a lot of distractions as they pan around the table during the meal.  The children are throwing things at each other, and the rest of the adults are trying to swallow the dry chunks of overcooked turkey. A very little detail that can easily be looked over is when Clark chokes down his food, and wipes his mouth with his tie instead of the napkin, showing how mentally unsound he is. He’s very on edge and angry throughout the entire movie. My favorite part of the scene is when the table shakes from the dog underneath it. And the exchange of words between Clark and Eddie is something my father and I quote all the time. The camera angles in the scene are fairly simple. In the beginning, after they discover that the turkey is undercooked, they show the family after they started eating. The kids are fighting at the end of the table, with the rest of the adults eating, but the part that stands out to me is the expressions Clark shows while he eats the turkey, and the jello made by Aunt Bethany with cat treats in the top. And then afterward, the angles just cut between conversations between different members of the family. There also doesn’t seem to be anything particularly special about the lighting, considering they need it to look like the average dining room. They do have the other rooms illuminated in the background of some of the different frames. And there is a little bit of emphasis coming from the center of the room, as that’s where the chandelier hangs, and that goes along with trying to make it look like a normal dining room. Most of the dialogue in the scene has to with either calming someone down or finding more ways to piss off another family member or leave them in distress. Like when the dog throws up on the carpet, and Eddie disregards it, while Clark is left on edge. There are a series of close-ups that help to portray all of the emotions felt by the family. But they also include wider angles when they need to show multiple people at once, as well as during an event.