Category Archives: Motion picture

Black Mirror

I am just going to say right off the bat that I was so excited to watch this episode. I have never seen this series before, but I have heard so many reviews on it. Now I know why! It was amazing from the camera angles, the movement of the characters, background noise, eyeline match, lighting to give us the mood of different scenes.

All of these items are what made this such an interesting show to watch. The better the assembly of a show is what pulls the viewer into the show and the feelings of the characters. It was so hard to think about how scenes were made because I was so into the plot of the show.

Nevertheless, the birds at the start of the show bring our attention to where the shows setting would be; the setting would be the country or maybe the suburbs. The chirping also lets the audience know that it is the morning time. Another thing that this filmmaker did was to make the fly buzz more pronounced to draw us into looking at the fly. The color of the police lights “shinning” into the room gave the audience a feeling of sorrow even before we saw her face. It was the mix of the plot with color to give us a foreshadowing to the police being at the door. The longer seconds after the death that is shown a up close visual of the women looking sad. The lighting of the show also changed from a bright tone to a blue darker tone after the husband died.

This is best shown and noticeable when she goes up the attic and it is looking through pictures. The scene is dark and gloomy. Fast forward a little bit to the camera tracking the women rushing to the bathroom to throw up. Which was a genius of showing the audience the urgency of the situation. Nature also plays an important role in this show because it gives movement to the still character. We see this multiple times throughout the show during the country/mountain scenes with the hair movement and the clothes shaking all around. Other than nature movement there is also the camera than gave us movement through different angles like when the women is unboxing the character. The audience showed her back while the main focus was the unboxing. It was like we were in the room with her. There were multiple different kinds of camera movements, I am sure I probably did not catch them all!

Tony Zhou’s great series

Most editors cut based off instinct in the film. The eyes help the most when you are trying to create a film. Emotion is shown by faces and face movements that help the film but there is no “right” way of when to cut to another scene. When something is about to happen in the film, the seconds get shorter and shorter between each scene. After, the seconds will slowly go back up and hold longer at the end. Films are important to have a rhythm to it to make the audience believe the emotions in the films. Most people will say that editing is invisible because cutting with the rhythm will create a seamless film. Editing will easier that more you cut and find the rhythm.
Ensemble staging- creating emphasis without using a cut. Whoever is more important should be put closer to the light and or lens. The center of the frame is where people naturally look when something is about to happen. Make sure that when a group is in a shot that it is okay to have a person, sideways, back turned and or looking straight. Another word would be engagement with other characters and not just looking into a camera. Making sure that the actors look into the other actors. Moving the camera is a great way to isolate them to give the actor more attention.
There is a movement of nature that draws the audience to the background. Another movement would be groups of actors. Adding more people to a shot makes the scene feel big. He also uses movement of an individual to give the character feelings. The movement of the camera is also very important to show the clear beginning, middle, and end. Last is movement of the cut. Kurosawa uses movement to help with the cut of the film to change to a different view and or moment.
Multiple film makers use something called shot reverse shot. Shot reverse shot is when you go in between two shots to create a feeling for the audience. It keeps them on their toes to see what is about to happen. A long lens feels like the audience is spying when a wider lens it makes it feel like you are right there with someone.
A type of chair that you pick for a film is a piece of production design. The chairs helps the audience see an extension like a clean environment, ran down environment, a rich person, or even a poor one. A chair can also show more about the character as well and or maybe an extension of a situation.
He does not do handheld and instead he puts the camera on a tripod. Fincher barely uses close up because you have to careful what you show the audience. Since he has gotten older he has pretty much mastered the empty spaces.
In this video I learned to never use “and then”. Instead use “but” and “therefore”. Use two stories in one like “meanwhile back at…”. Let one story build up and then when it reaches the peak, switch to the other story and let that one builds up. It is not about what you get but it is about what comes out in the other end. Then you want to close the film with your name and the title of the film.
I loved the break down of this video. He talks about the camera movement, the chair, the looking into the eyes and the sightline. Hannibel Lecter wins the scene and then gives up for whatever reason.
The Marvel universe uses music that is not well noticeable by the audience because it is in the background of different kinds of scenes. The music is kind of like an addition to the picture frame of the film. Now a days filmmakers feel like music should not overpower the visual. Temp music is used in older films and brought back in newer films, just a tad bit different sound. Marvel is missing risk when it comes to music.
Master filmmaker Hitchcock talks about two kinds of montage which is like cutting. However cutting implies that we are destroying something. Hitchcock thinks that instead of calling it cutting we should call it assembly to create a whole. The way he speaks about his film was incredible. I have never really heard of this person before, but you can tell he knew what he wanted to accomplish and he achieved his ideas very well. The size of an image by using a close up with a loud sound effect creates the idea he wanted to show the audience.

Flim Analysis Reading

I did my research through wikipedia and I learned what film analysis is. Flim analysis is the process by which a film is “graded” on in terms of sound, editing, cinematography, and mise-en-scene. Mise-en-scene is the stage design and where the actors are in the scenes. Cinematography is the motion of art in pictures. Flim analysis is very much like film theory. There are also different types of analysis that has to deal with film like iconic, semiotic, psychoanalytical approach, and shot by shot.  

Each one of these has categories that they focus on. Iconic deals with the image, pictures, and sound. One thing that iconic really looks for is the light, composition, and the mood of the film. Which the film critics do not use iconic as a stand-alone approach but a part of the analysis. They also use other analysis like semiotic.

Semiotic which is the study of meaning making, signs, and symbols. Semiotic is very similar to the field of linguistics however, semiotic has three different branches to it which would be: semantics, syntactics, and pragmatics.

Semantics- relations between signs and things to which they refer.

Syntactics- relations with signs in formal structures

Pragmatics- relations between signs and sign- using agents.

Of course, you can always use the shot by shot analysis which they start this process by talking about the techniques that was used in the shot like the different kind of camera angles. There is close- up, long shots, pan shots, etc. They also look at the background frame, foreground as well as eyeline match.

Next,

I read Storytelling which is also a part of film analysis. Here is what I learned:

In this article they start off by talking about how film analysis is easier than we think, especially looking at the bad editing. Bad editing will stick out more because use as humans are so used to good editing that we barely pay attention to it. However, the bad editing will catch everyone’s eye.

There are steps needed even before the movie starts that you can do to help analysis. The first step would be to look at the questions that you have been asked to answer so it will be easier while you watch the film. The next step would be to know many times to watch a film, which should be at least two times. First time watching it you should just watch it through without taking notes to enjoy the film and then the second time you should be analyzing the film.

There should always be a research plan like knowing the background of the film. Then of course you need to look at film terms that are important to analyzing a film.

  • Track-The camera moves with character on screen following their movement.
  • Eyeline match-This is an editing technique that shows a character looking and then shows the object of their gaze in the next shot. Camera is following line of sight.
  • Tilt-This is when the camera moves up-ward.
  • Zoom-A lens adjustment means an object is brought closer, making the items bigger and takes more of the screen.

In this article, they also talk about the different types of film analysis, which we already discussed in the previous article. However, in this article they also talk about narrative analysis which is an examination of the story elements which includes the character, plot, and structure. The author of this article also brings up cultural/historical analysis to examine a relationship to the film through its cultural, historical, or theoretical contexts. Like asking a question along with, what period was this supposed to represent?

Below is a list of different elements to be searching for when analyzing films.

  • Flim facts
    • Title of film
    • Year film it was produced
    • Nationality
    • Name of actors and directors
  • Genre
    • Romantic, historical, detective, thriller, adventure, horror, or science fiction
    • Sub-grouping: action,, comedy, tragedy, war, and western
  • Setting
    • Present, past, or future
    • Time of day, weather, environment, geography
  • Plot and structure
    • Important sequences
    • Plot structure
    • Flashbacks
    • Several plots running parallel
    • Suspense bult up
    • Foreshadow
  • Conflict
    • Internal where the character suffers inwardly
    • External caused by surrounding or environment to find himself/herself in
  • Characterization
    • Through dialogue
    • How the speak
    • Physical appearance
    • Interaction
    • Static characters who do not change
    • Development by the end
    • Qualities
    • Stereotypes
  • Narrator and point of view
    • Narrator in story
    • Eyes the story is being told
    • Told in first person
    • Off screen narrator
  • Imagery
    • Symbols
    • Images used in film like color and object
  • Theme
    • Universal ideas that shine through in the film
  • Cinematic effects
    • Use of camera
    • Lighting
    • Editing