A Look at the Titles of Memento...

Memento had one of the most interesting title sequences I've seen in a thriller film - mainly because it is not conventional, it's delicate and slow as the same image appears throughout; that of a polaroid picture. The music - although classical - is not conventional either, its yearning and painful in a way, like heartbreak is being portrayed. I found it really interesting that although no action actually happens during the title sequence, I was still interested, I still wanted to watch - because of the atmosphere caused by the music, which was dramatic and powerful and overall, intriguing.

The Importance of Sound - The Shining

Yesterday, I sat down and watched Stanley Kubrick's The Shining - a film full of weird psychological happenings and make-you-jump moments. I absolutely loved it. It terrified the hell out of me at some points, but over all, it was a really great, refreshingly interesting film and cinematographically, I thought it was amazing. The vast setting of the actual story -the large empty hotel in the snowy mountains -completely supports the dark thrilling film and the performances are really convincing.

One thing that was very apparent to me whilst watching this film, was the use of sound. In last thursday's lesson, we studied the use of sound in film and I haven't been able to get the ideas of the different categories out of my head - and when watching The Shining, I found how important it was as a dramatic technique, especially to this particular film. The string sections made me jump alot, and I often thought, when watching, "If this music wasn't playing, I wouldn't be looking at the screen through my fingers. In this one film, I realized how prominent sound is in films in attempt to evoke emotion and feeling in the audience.

In the start of this particular scene, the importance of music really hit me and I realised if this scoring was not there, I would not have been wondering what the hell was going to happen ("Is he going to kill someone?! Are those freaky little girls in blue dresses going to appear?!") - music can utterly change the entire tone and atmosphere of any scene.

Although The Shining is considered to be a horror film by many, I can definately define the thriller aspects in it. It is pschyological and its meant to make you question the characters and also the state of our humanity when put into isolation - basically, it's a film to make you think without being conventional in any way.

What I learned from Dexter task...

From recreating the opening scene of drama tv show Dexter with my group, I learned quite alot:
  - Organisation is everything: I've learned not to leave anything to chance or till later on in the process because if one thing goes wrong, it tends to start a domino effect, and we can't be dealing with that.
 - The finer details are important: Getting everything just right and correct is really important as it gives the audience everything they need and want, to be able to enjoy and be incorporated into the film piece.
 - Good communication: It really just keeps everything well organised and speeds up the problems when things down don't out how you expect them to. 
 - I also learnt about the way I use the camera and I really got to grips with it well during this recreation.

American Psycho - A Look at the Titles

Throughout the American Psycho titles, there is implicit meaning and imagery, such as, as what seems to be blood falls in drops, really it is a red sauce being put onto the dish that carries itself through the title sequence.

As the knife comes down - bringing ideas of murder and anger to the audience - the character uses it to cut food.  All the shots so far are close-ups to intrigue the audience and make them closer to the action.

In this shot, the blood-fooling sauce is apparent and the woman eating wears black gloves - something used often whilst murdering/ committing crimes.

This title sequence really reminds me of the Dexter routine which I already studied, as they both consist of close ups that attempt in a way to fool the audience into thinking a certain way - getting them in the mindset of the American Psycho.

BFI...A-MAZ-ING

So yesterday, our media class took a little trip up to London to the British Film Institute, where we were given a presentation on films and the like not only by the chief examiner petesmediablog.blogspot.com but also by visual effects supervisor Simon Carr and also actor-turned-director Dexter Fletcher.

During the first talk of the day, Pete gave us a presentation on famous film openings and we studied how they set-up the rest of the filma nd what effect they had on the audience. He told us that film openings establish the genre of the film, the narrative, the principal characters and also the complete atmosphere. Pete showed us The Art of the Title website which we'd already looked at in classed and used to conjure up our own timelines of famous films (I used Mission Impossible II for my timeline example).

Pete really stressed the importance of sound - and foley - and how many students don't give it much attention or put much care into making/choosing a track. He showed us through another student's film how sound can be layered and what effect it can cause to generate interest into the piece.

Visual effects supervisor Simon Carr also talked to us and showed what his job entailed, so we could have a look at the finer details of film making- the special effects, cgi etc. I found his talk very interesting, especially as he did a case study of one of my favourite films ever feautring Ben Barnes- Easy Virtue!! And it was also a great chance to get an insight into the post production side of film-making too.

^Last December, meeting Ben Barnes at the Comedy Theatre (after an evening production of Birdsong)

                                    

Actor/director Dexter Fletcher gave us some very good advice about how to open a piece of film - one of the most important things to do first is to establish the characters and define them quickly, but not nessercarily through a script but through actions, and imagery. He also said a good idea is to get other peoples' feedback on what you've created during the actual making process, because for instance, if someone doesn't understand why a character does something, you need to change it so it makes sense for the audience but at the same time doesn't give too much information away or patronize them. Dexter Fletcher also said that when dealing with typical characters, to make the character interesting, turn them on their head. If you expect a character to react a certain way to a situation, make them deal with it in a different way to show variety and surprise in the story. 

Dexter Fletcher told us it was all about storytelling via letting the pictures tell the story and that's eaxctly what my group plans to do for our final thriller film piece. He also gave us some good advice including keep the location close and all sets near a base so it wouldn't take long if you had to quickly change plans and go to a different location.

Overall, it was a really great fun and informative trip, and I'll definately take everything I've learnt into consideration during this course.