Film Studies Blog

The Ideas No. 1 - A love film My first idea was to make a film encapsulating my ideas of what love is. I first did this by thinking about my ideas of romantic love in my relationship but then I branched out to family love and finally love of friends. and the conflict inside each of them. I wanted to present this as more of a slideshow of emotions rather than a cohesive narrative but problems occurred when I started to write a draft as I needed some sort of narrative to allow a sense of movement in the film, and in my opinion love is a fluid that flows through people and having a film that felt still wasn't appealing to me. The techniques I thought of using to create this fluidity involved mainly editing and cinematography. I wanted to use loads of close-ups and pan and tracking shots to make movement a key aspect of the short film, but I found conflict in this as it prevented me from using more relaxed ways of shooting to show eloquent moments between the relationships of the ...

The Films The four short films that I found interesting are listed below: (in the order that I watched them.) 1) Curfew (2012) directed by Shawn Christensen 2)  La Jetée (1962) directed by Chris Marker 3)  Swimmer (2012) directed by Lynne Ramsay 4) Meshes of  the Afternoon (1943) directed by Maya Daren and Alexander Hammid Curfew Curfew is a very stylistic film, employing the use of both the camera and lighting to show off its distinct style. Throughout the film the camera changes from slow, steady cam shots to more handheld sporadic shots, changing the style depending on the environment, from the inside of the bowling alley to Richie's old apartment for example. This use of contrapuntal filming changes the tone in the film frequently, making it a more light hearted film into a film similar to DRIVE or Taxi Driver. This idea is reinforced by the slow zoom, pan and tracking shots in the short. These add a dramatic feeling to the film, making ...

How does the aesthetic quality of Trainspotting depict ideological issues of youth and addiction? Part one: Renton Chooses heroin (01:45-5:50) The sequence begins with a close up pan of Renton lying on the ground, high. Non-diegetic narration explains to the audience that he "chose not to choose life". "who needs reasons when you have heroin" he says, as the camera pans backwards away from him, Iggy Pops Lust For Life plays, also non-diegetic, in the background of the narration. Choose Life was a protest movement in the 1980s, made famous by WHAM! and is a message of many different things. The way Renton interprets this is that you can choose the mundanity of life, or live for something else, and this is reflected through the heroin. The message was also fought against by different generations. Renton's generation of youth chooses to rebel against "life" and social norms, and the most obvious way to do this is to take drugs, as they change how l...

'The Director is Always The Most Important Influence on a Film.' Compare how far your two chosen films support the statement. A director tends to be the most important role working on a film, as they are the ones who control actors/actresses, the sound technicians, cinematographers etc. And so they are the obvious choice on who has "made" the film in terms of creative control and endeavour, so we can call said director an Auteur. Auteur derives from the French word "author" and was coined by Andrew Sarris in 1962, but had been discussed decades before with the French magazine "Cahiers Du Cinema" by Andre Bazin and Francois Truffaut, who were directors of the French New Wave. The theory states that the director is the "author" of the film as they are the ones who have the most control, much like an author who is in control of the pen, this concept of the "camera-stylo" was introduced by Alexandre Astruc in 1948.  Returning to ...

Discuss How Important Cinematography is in Establishing Strong Responses From Spectators To A Key Character In La La Land.  The sequence begins with a still image of a palm tree, and the season being "winter", this juxtaposing image is revealed to be nothing more than a backdrop, which begins to ripple due to the wind, it is five years later and we pan downwards towards a car door opening, in the background we can see a classical blue car, contrasted with this new modern vehicle that has now opened its door to reveal two black heels, we see the winter leaves flowing on the floor and the sun brightly shining, adding to this juxtaposition of weather, Even though the season is winter, the sun and its colours, and the palm tree, illuminate the scene with life, and the illuminator is this woman. The palm tree also has connotations of Los Angeles, Hollywood, which is the home of American film as we know it, and so we, as the spectator, knowing this information, assume that the wo...

How Far Does "Winters Bone" Rely Upon An Understanding Of Its Social Context Winters Bone is a film rooted with verisimilitude, this is immediately shown with a mid-long shot of a couple of children, it is obvious that these children are not actors but instead real school students. The auteur, Bronik, uses this to create her natural, organic cinematic world and this documentation style creates this realistic atmosphere that ultimately forces the spectator to immerse themselves in the world. This is reinforced by the mid-shots of the parents-to-be being taught how to be parents, we notice here that the boyfriend and girlfriend are not both holding the baby, but the woman is, this introduces the patriarchal society that is established in the Ozark's and a present theme throughout. Finally, we get a mid-shot and point of view shot of the soldiers marching. with Ree peaking at them through the doors window. This frame within a frame symbolises Ree's desp...