"So noir...so noir..."

Honestly, if it wasn’t for this class, I don’t think I would like or appreciate this movie as much as a do. I have a feeling that I would have watched the movie, judged it on the fact that it was made in the early 1990s, hated the ending, and called it a terrible movie. However, knowing what kind of movie it is (film noir) and discussing some of the themes and messages the director was trying to convey helped open my eyes to some of the other aspects of movie making and looking a little bit past the plot, effects, and ending for a good movie.

In summary, The Player is about a movie executive – very close to losing his job - that starts receiving threatening and blackmailing postcards and messages. In his anger and anxiousness to end this harassment, he accidentally murders a writer whom he thought the messages were coming from only to find that he killed the wrong man. He starts becoming a darker, soul-less person as the movie progresses and he tries to cover up his murder. Finally, he ends up keeping his job, marrying the widow of the person he killed, and getting away with the murder that everyone knows he committed.

We talked about a lot of the different cinematic aspects of this movie which makes it good. First of all, this was a film noir movie. It’s a dark depiction of the movie industry. It shows the evil, conniving, and, often, selfish motives of the writers, directors, and executives that make movies we all enjoy. The movie plot was very dark and the ending elicits an uneasy feeling. Some of the icons that let me know this was a suspenseful film noir were the dark, shady bar that leads to the murder scene and the alley way where the murder was committed. I did not automatically think film noir, but it started to click as the movie continued. Also, The Player is a good satire of the movie industry; it shows the lack of creativity and substance in Hollywood and the selfishness of many of the people involved in making movies. I thought it was funny that almost every movie pitch was either a sequel to another movie or a blend of two completely different movies. I also liked how every writer wanted to use either Bruce Willis or Julia Roberts as their leads because they knew the audience loved those actors. Moreover, I thought the cinematography was pretty creative. There were two things that struck me as creative in this movie. First, the use of the famous movie posters to allude to the plot of the movie and give the viewer an idea of how to feel about the movie was interesting. It was blatant and bold and the first time I’ve noticed anything like that in a movie (now I’m curious to see how often directors do this). Second, there are a few scenes where the sound and focus shift from something in the foreground to something in the background, vice versa. I liked that a lot. It was very striking, especially in the opening scene (which was an amazing single shot).

Overall, I liked this movie. Like the ones before, it was very eye-opening for me.

More Action!!!

We started off class by watching a couple short, low-budget films, so we could get an idea of the type of final products we could potentially produce with our resources. I really enjoyed the minesweeper video because I know a lot of people that were (probably still are) addicted to minesweeper, and I thought it was clever for them to portray minesweeper as a war movie. I think those short films were very inspiring in helping us develop our idea and understand that we could still make a very good movie even with our limited experience and resources.

Our movie is starting to take a lot of form. Now that we have the storyboard complete, we have an idea of the important scenes and desired camera scenes for each scene. We have a better understanding of the flow events, what scenes we need to emphasize, and what scenes we brainstormed but would not work out for the movie. Right now, we’re getting our actors together, finalizing our script, and getting a better idea of how the actual shooting process will go once we have the cameras on location. First, find our actors. We have two more characters that need to be confirmed, our main character and our main antagonist. For our protagonist, I think our group all envisions a regular student who has to endure exaggerated and extraordinary circumstances. I think it’s very important that they seem like a normal student so that our audience can easily identify with him (her maybe??? Lol). I don’t want to say much about the casting of our antagonist because I think that will be a nice surprise, but I hope we can get him confirmed. Our script is relatively short because this movie focuses more on the actions rather than the conversations, so I think that will be finished this week.

In my opinion, our movie is coming together very well, and I am very excited to start shooting. I kind of see this movie being something similar to Red Eye (yeah, the movie with Rachel McAdams!!!) in that this movie is more about the running, the stress of being rushed, unexpected occurrences, suspense etc. instead of having explosions, big fight scenes, ninjas etc.

Blow-Out!

Blow-Out was a completely different movie from the previous two that we’ve watched in class. This movie was made in the 1980s rather than the 1950s, so the production value was much closer to movies we are used to. Blow-Out is about a sound man, Jack Terry, happening upon an attempt to frame a congressman who is running for president. The framing goes wrong and the congressman is killed, and Jack Terry is the only one of the few witnesses that is willing to tell the truth despite a conspiracy to keep the murder from becoming public knowledge.

I was not very impressed by the actors (though they were not terrible actors) as much as I was by the cinematography of the movie. As Donna said the director, Brian De Palma, was very “ballsy” in this movie. He knew what shots he wanted, what emotion each shot would convey, and how to captivate the viewer very well. And that’s what he did. One of the shots I enjoyed from the movie was in the scene where Jack loses the video of the incident and realizes that someone has erased all his tapes. The camera turns completely around the room a couple of times with Jack in the shot looking in different shelves and all over the room looking for a tape that hasn’t been erased. That scene captures the exact feeling of frustration, agitation, and excitement you get when you lose something. I saw that scene and right away thought about times where I’ve lost things and the feeling and emotion was very similar to what was on screen. I also liked the shot right after. If I’m not mistaken (because it has been almost a week), it’s a birds-eye-view of the room as Jack Terry walks out and you see the tapes and stuff scattered across the room just to show how frantic Jack was. There were a few chase scenes but I’m pretty sure they were car scenes so I don’t think it will help in our movie. However, this movie is inspiring in that it encourages me to analyze my scenes and try different ways to invoke the emotions of the characters and tones in the scenes.

I enjoyed the visual aspects of the movie as well as the overall theme. I think this movie said a lot about American’s and our attitude and culture. It depicted American’s as a whole as being very oblivious to some of the things that occur in government and politics. And I can completely identify with that. It’s crazy to think, but there are things going on every day within our government, military, even schools that we don’t and might never know about. I thought the fact that there was that bell ceremony occurring during the conspiracy sort of emphasized that obliviousness and that feeling of false safety. Moreover, the fact that Jack ends up using the scream of Sally dying in his horror film exemplifies the cold-heartedness and lack of sympathy in American movie makers. I remember asking myself why was that scream so important and having that question linger throughout the movie, so I thought it was clever that De Palma (or most likely the writer) had the scream at the end. I thought that was a powerful way of stress one of the overall themes of the movie. The two themes of obliviousness and a self-centered mentality are related because it says that Americans are very self-oriented and are more concerned about self improvement. Thought this movie doesn’t place Americans in a good light, it does convey those themes very strongly. It’s a good movie in my book…

Action Movie!

This week in class we learned about the structure of movies and how screenwriting fits into that structure. We talked about the structure, cycle, and act structure of movies. The structure of a movie is basically the selection of events from the character used to arouse a specific feeling. It is important that the events selected do a good job of arousing a feeling; Eric definitely stressed that. The movie cycle includes: goal, action, conflict, and reaction. Though regular length movies have three or four acts, we will have a one act movie that encompasses the aspects of all the acts, so we’ll have to include the exposition, build up, and climax in five minutes. We also learned the format of screenwriting, the job description of screen writers, and the relationship between the screenwriter and the director.

The highlight of the class, though, was finally getting the specifics of our five minute video! I was very excited to see what type of movie we were going to do. Some of the requirements of move include 1) a clown or mime 2) the lines: ““Why is this happening to me today of all days?” and "It would be better for us not to talk about that” and 3) a guitar, a cheese grater, and skull. Very peculiar stipulations for a movie, but I’m sure we can figure out creative ways to incorporate them.

My group (the best group BY FAAAAAR) was assigned an action movie. I think everyone in the group was very excited about the assignment. We started brainstorming instantly about possible ideas, characters, plots, and even cool screen shots we could include in our movie. As far as ideas, I think we all want it to be a suspenseful movie as well as action packed. We thought a lot about who our main character could be. We thought about a child action start, but it would be difficult to have a child come in whenever we needed and act without some kind of pay or reward. I think we’re pretty set on having a B.A. female action character. I like that idea and I think that we could have a lot of fun with that. As far as plot, we have not come up with anything concrete. We thought about having something very simple but stressful that a lot of people could identify with (like losing a key or paper) occur to the main character and showing all that action that ensues as she attempts to retrieve. A chase scene was agreed upon by all the members. I think a chase scene could add to the build of suspense and the overall entertainment of the film. Some shots we thought would be cool would be a staircase scene or a shot that focuses on the feet of the character and the pursuer. We have plenty of ideas floating around, but I think it’s important that we get them down soon. Develop our plot and work from there…

One of my main concerns is special effects. We tend to expect action films to have top of the line special and visual effects. We, as poor, uneducated (in the realm of special effects) college students, do not have the means to pull of blockbuster or even bad movie special effects. So I think one of our challenges will be to have special effects that are low budget but are still visually effective. I’m excited to see how our project turns out.

Also, Eric said something about having an award show. That would be a lot of fun…

Singin' in the Rain

So…Huntze I will say on my blog that you were right, Singin’ in the Rain is a really good movie. I thoroughly enjoyed watching this movie. Basically, Singin’ in the Rain is about a larger than life silent film actor, Don, making a transition from simply being a face in a silent movie to being an actor in a talkie/musical. It is filled with vivid, colorful musical scenes, fun and intricate choreography, and plenty of singing. The movie also depicts some of the problems that this transition created (i.e. the placement of the microphone, Lina’s annoying voice).

I thought the audio editing and the sounds of the movie were unique and different compared to Sunset Boulevard. A lot of the sound was used to emphasize the movement and action of the scene rather than emphasizing the mood. I forgot the exact term for it, something like Mickey Mouse, but the sounds very exaggerated and cartoon-like. One example of this was the make them laugh scene. Different, unnatural sounds were added to the scene to emphasize him falling, hitting the ground, or back flipping off walls. I don’t think this type of sound editing is bad, I just think it gives a different feel to the movie. I think it sort of takes away from the realism of the movie but adds to the overall excitement and entertainment. Also, this movie introduced us to the use of ADR, or additional dialogue recording, which is when lines or songs are re-recorded and added to the movie at a later time for clarity or better sound quality. This technique is also used to improve the sound of different actions like the feet tapping the ground during the tap dance numbers were re-recorded and added to the movie.

I was impressed by the skill level of the actors, also. The actors were multi-talented, so it’s kind of wrong to just call them actors. There were multiple song and dance scenes in the movie and the main actors were all able to sing, dance, and play their character. However, everything was very theatrical and over the top. Some of the musical scenes seemed to develop out of nowhere and have nothing to do with the movie. For example, a light-hearted song and dance scene starts when Don is getting lessons from a voice coach. Sometimes it just seemed like they just threw in musical numbers, but I thought they were all very enjoyable.

The theme of the movie basically suggests that the movies and the magic of movies are better than real life. The best example of this is when Don tells Kathy about his true feelings for her; he can’t say exactly how he feels unless he’s on set and lighting, mood, and scene are perfect. To me, this scene exemplifies the theme the best because this is supposed to be a very important and intimate part of a relationship starting and the fact that Don couldn’t express his true feelings without being on a set stresses movie rather than real life.

Making a movie...

One of the basic techniques we learned about is the rule of thirds which basically means to divide the shot of the camera into three equal parts vertically and horizontally. To utilize this technique, it’s important not to have the subject in the same third over and over and not to film the subject in the center third. Changing the positioning of the subject adds a dynamics to the shot and helps with the aesthetics of the movie. Viewers’ eyes are drawn to the top line of the horizontal thirds and the outer sections of the vertical thirds, so keeping the subject in those areas help emphasize anything important about the subject. Also, it can help convey different emotions depending on the mood of the scene. I think the rule of thirds will be a pretty easy technique to use in the five minute project because it doesn’t require anything but the camera and the creativity of the people making the movie.

Manipulating the lighting is another very important technique that can help enhance a movie. Lighting, similar to the thirds rule, is a technique used to emphasize the subject. V for Vendetta uses lighting very well. There’s a shot where the main, female character, Eve Hammond, is in the front of the shot and the lighting is placed so that her face and shoulders are more illuminated than the background and other character in the shot. Adjusting and manipulating the lighting of the subject and background would be an accomplishable task for student movie-makers; lighting is pretty cheap and easily accessible.

As far as composition, I think using the 180 and 30 degree rules will help in the editing process of the movie. These two rules will be easy to employ. Basically, these rules help with continuity. With the 180 rule, there is a line of action and the camera is not supposed to cross this line of action because it confuses the viewer. The 30 degree rules states that a new shot should be taken from greater than 30 degrees from the previous shot because shots taken from less than 30 degrees are deemed unnecessary. An example of the 180 degree rule is commonly seen during the conversation scenes of movie such as the conversation between Vince and Mia in Pulp Fiction. In this movie, close-ups and cross cutting were used along with the 180 degree rule during their conversation in the restaurant booth.

I think the techniques we’ve learned in class so far are easy enough to employ in our movies. Simple manipulations can go a long way in creating a mood or conveying a theme in a movie. I think it’s more about understanding the techniques and finding different ways to use them effectively and not randomly and without purpose.

I like my films like I like my coffee...black!

Film Noir - a French term that translates into black film - is a style of American cinematography popularized in the 1940’s and 50’s. These movies were deemed “black films” due to the dark visuals, the common theme of violence, sex, and mystery, and the fact that the movies do not have happy endings. Film noirs have main characters, but never heroes; the main characters have major personality flaws that prevent them from achieving happiness or success. Visually, these films are just as dark and dreary as their characters and plots; they are shot in black and white and dim lighting. This type of coloring adds to the overall dreary, gloomy, or mysterious mood that is invoked by the plot and characters in film noir.

In class, we watched Sunset Boulevard as an example of film noir. I am definitely one of those people who was bias towards black and white movies; I assumed that old films were boring and not worth my time. I was wrong! Sunset Boulevard completely changed my idea about old films. From the creative and captivating opening scene to the ridiculous relationship between Joe and Norma Desmond, I was impressed by the entire movie. It was interesting to see the characters, especially Norma Desmond, so engulfed in their dreams and ambitions, but never being able to attain their dreams made for a good movie. I especially liked the fact that the movie starts by showing the death of the main character. I found myself half expecting some kind of happy or satisfying ending. I kept thinking something pivotal would happen so that everything would work out because you get attached to Joe and become sympathetic towards him. But in the back of your mind you know that nothing is going to work the way the characters would want or expect them to.

I really enjoyed this dark film. It’s very different from the movies that I am used to seeing, but I plan on watching more of them in the future. ..