A director is the authors of his films. They tell us the story they want in the way they want us to see it. They direct the actors, the camera and what they want to see. They can be bland and do it like everyone, but some become inspired. They give us new ways to se the film in ways that normally we could not see. You can see this most of the time through camera work and editing. Today we are going to look at one of those films that broke the norm when it came out and was directed by Jean-Luc Godard, this is Band of Outsiders.

This movie was part of a movement, the French new wave movement, that was all about changing how films were made. Most movies of the time where bland and cookie cutter in their ways of editing and cinematography. They did there editing and acting differently and broke the fourth wall on multiple occasions. Most of the time you could see it in the camera work. Instead of cutting back and forth on the same scene from one actor to another they just panned or used wide shots to capture a conversation. They also got rid of most of the establishing shots that followed the actors to their destination. This made the pace feel faster and it was.

This film used all of these tactics to progress the story along. There were some problems though. To me I had no idea what was going on till half way through the movie because they only briefly talked about their plans and then changed to something else and it felt to casual a lot of the time. There were a lot of pointless plot points and love scenes that made no sense in the overall story. This was probably do to the director wanting it to be different from the norm. he did accomplish it but if felt a bit sloppy.

Overall the film was interesting on a directorial position but the plot wasn’t clear. I would suggest this to someone who was bored of the normal movie set up.

There are some movies that use a certain element of a movie, music, to tell the story. These are called musicals. Most musicals use singing to convey feelings or events that are happening. It can be either indirect singing towards the audience or it can be the characters singing directly at you. Today we look at a very…. interesting movie that is somewhat like a musical. It is a Japanese production that was not released in America so if you haven’t heard about it then you’re not alone. Today we look at Memories of Matsuko.

This is a very tragic movie that tells us a story of Matsuko and here turbulent life of love, loss, and sadness. When is say this is a sad film I mean it. Every time it looks up for her something bad happens to her and she’s back to sadness. It conveys this through what else, music. It’s used a lot in this film to either breeze through a portion of her life and telling us the whole thing through montage, or to tell us how she’s feeling, or to tell you if something good or bad is happening. There is one song that plays through the whole movie to tell you if its happy or not and only for her. It does get annoying that they repeat it over and over and over.

Another thing about this film is its Japanese so there are some parts you may not get. There are jokes made in this film that you can tell where supposed to be funny but ran flat. There are also things that America doesn’t have that japan does and we don’t know what it is so we don’t get it. But some of that also helps the story because there are some themes that seem over the top and help to emphasize the event happening before you.

Overall the movie was an interesting watch. The story was nice but felt maybe to tragic. It was long but I don’t think too long. The visuals where appealing at most points. The music was also a good choice at a lot of points and was a good decision to push the story. I’m not saying that I would recommend it to anyone, but I actually enjoyed it. It also pushed a good lesson onto us. That a person is not valued by what they receive but by what we give.

Production design it important in all major film. It is the look of the environment, the costumes, props, and makeup that gives visual appeal to a movie. It can set the tone of the movie to be light hearted or dark and brooding. It can set the time period of the film and even set the stage for the actors to perform on it. Today we will talk about a film that uses all parts of production design and uses it to its full potential. We are about to take a look at the caped crusader himself, and his 1989 were he faces off against his rival The Joker. Let’s take a look at Batman.

First let’s look at the sets. This is the environment that the movie takes place in, Gotham City. The tone is dark with a lot of blacks, grays, and browns to show this is a dark city littered with trash. The architecture that was used for the buildings were made to look like it was a comic book. They did a very good job with it because all of it looked believable like it was a real city.

Next let’s look at makeup, specifically at The Jokers makeup. Most of the movie the actor has a prosthetic smile on his face to make him look like he’s always laughing. This is good because the character he is playing is known to laugh at everything and in most iterations always has ether a real smile or a scared one. It’s done in a way that it looks unnatural and it is but it’s done in a way that is still believable. His face is also painted white just like in the comics along with his hair being green.

Next is the props and costumes of the movie. Every prop in the movie that each of our main characters is specifically design for him. Batman always has bat shaped gadgets that are brilliantly made to not look stupid and the bat mobile is stunning. The joker always has something crazy that fits the character of a joker, such as revolver pistol with an overly long barrel. There costumes also fit. Batman’s blends in with the darkness to induce as much fear into villains as possible. The jokers always pops out because its purple and other colors that stand out in this black and grey environment.

Overall the whole movie is done in a way that is realistic but still feels like a comic and it fulfills this job wonderfully. The sets match the bleakness of Gotham, the makeup makes them menacing, the props give them character and the costumes make them stand out. They did a great job that they ruin about the later movies, yes I’m talking about the bat nipples. Overall I would suggest this to anyone who enjoys a good set and design and can appreciate the work that was put into it.

A performance of an actor can make or break a movie. It can pull the audience into the movie or it can ruin the immersion. An actor must do his best for what the movie requires to make it good and that is a very tough job to accomplish. To spend hours on hours perfecting their characters and line so the character can be as believable and immersive as possible and sometimes it can break them beyond repair. Today we will take a look at a film or rather a character from the film There Will Be Blood staring Daniel Day-Lewis a silver miner-turned-oilman named Daniel Plainview on a ruthless quest for wealth.

First, let’s talk about method acting. It is the action of an actor putting himself in to a role not just in their words but in their actions and way of thinking in a way that they become that character for real. In this film Daniel did a great job in putting himself in Plainview’s shoes to the point that he has been living his life like that his entire life. I’ve seen other films starring him and he puts the same effort into them as he does in this film although you see it more in this film.

Let’s now talk about how they show his personality in the film.  The way Daniel acts in it is sort of hard to watch because Plainview is such a devilish character but that’s a good thing. The character is sort of evil underneath and you see that perfectly through it without them saying he is. Plainview is also himself acting like the good guy to all the other characters but there is always an ulterior motive. So you could say Daniel is acting two characters at once.

Now let’s talk about emotion. There are a lot of emotions portrayed by each character in this movie and you can see it clearly most of the time. I say most of the time because sometimes they are putting on a different face. Let me give an example. About a third of the way in the movie they strike oil but Plainview son is caught in the initial blast of air. Because of this he is injured and because deaf and Plainview comes to rescue him, after getting him to safety the tries to calm him down so he can go do something about the geyser of oil so after sometime and things have calmed down Plainview sort of breaks down laughing but crying. Laughing and cheering because they struck oil but crying because his son may be crippled and he convey this very well. There is also time when you can see the emotion of a character like at the end of the film he is on a rant and yelling at the priest, he is angry at him and happy to have something over him. But you can also see some spit forming and that shows this is not just acting but he is actually feeling the emotions.

Overall the performance Daniel gave was great and believable and it drags you into admiring the effort he put into becoming Daniel Plainview. The emotion and the actions that were given give this movie such characters, and without the characters there is no movie. So if you haven’t seen it then please do if not for the entertainment but just to admire the actors in it.

Cinematography is a crucial part of film-making. It is what we see on the screen and without it film is nothing. When film just started all it was the moving picture and how they shot it. Each film has a special way to show you what is going on and how it is happening and can convey different feeling and emotions and different tones the event are unfolding in. in can show you the thoughts of characters or put you straight into the action of the film. Today we will talk about a film very heavy with cinematography and uses all it elements to its advantage. Let’s take a look at the film, Road to Perdition.

This film uses many ways to show you how the characters are feeling or how they should be seen by others. They use focusing shot to tell you what a character thinks of another. It the beginning of the film the main character, Michael Jr., thinks of his father as someone he isn’t very close to so we only see the father, Michael, from a distance. As they get closer throughout the film, there are more and more close up shots of Michael.

They also use lighting in this effect through the whole movie. In the beginning they use the lighting to show the father as a dark and secluded character and use the lighting to hide his actions and things he’s about to do. As the story progresses he slowly starts to leave the dark shading to show he is opening up to us and his son. But close to the very end he goes back to the dark to finish off his business before leaving the dark entirely because he has left that world behind. They also use the lighting to hide elements from the viewer to have us guessing what is going on. An example of this is that they hide the tommy gun through the film, mostly at the beginning, to wonder are they just going to have a talk or will there be bloodshed.

They also use camera angle to hide things from us till the seconds we are supposed to see it. They do this multiple times through the movie and in different ways every time. An example is when Michael kills Cornely in the bathtub but we don’t see it till the mirror reflects it to us while the door is closing. Another is actually at the very end when it gives us a shot of Michael looking out at his son and we only see Michael Jr. through a reflection in the window but what we don’t see till it’s too late is that the assassin in sitting in the back of the room behind Michael in our view.

There are so many different styles and technic’s in this film that are worth seeing because explaining them doesn’t do them justice. There are many that I didn’t mention and many great scenes to be witnessed. Overall this movie is a great watch that I would recommend to those that like great camera work.

Editing is a big part of a movie and its production. It can help in taking parts out of a movie that someone doesn’t want or if it doesn’t work in the film. It can help to piece together a movie in its entirety. It can also help to tell the story in a different way that what was filmed. A big way to change a fill is to film it and edit it out of order so it makes the viewer piece it together for themselves. A movie that does that well is a movie called memento. This movie uses so many editing technics to give you an interesting story that keep you interested in what happens next.

First we will talk about how the movie in a whole is edited and that it is chronologically edited. This whole movie is edited to make it seem out of order but in fact it’s the right way. The main character in this movie whose name is Leonard has a mental condition that makes it so he has no short term memory. This means he can’t make any new memories. This fact is why this movie is edited the way it is. The whole movie is filmed so that some scene is in chronologic order while some are put together backwards, making it seem like the whole thing is jumbled up. It makes it so you have to piece together the story like the main character has to piece together what has happened and what’s going on. It also uses picture from past evens to help tell the story but also confuse you till you find out what happens at the end. It also helps to keep you invested to find another piece of the puzzle and to keep watching.

They also use Leonard’s condition to add to the story because some characters use his condition to their advantage and the movie used this to its advantage as well. The character could be having an argument with Leonard and just walks out and waits for him to forget then walks in and acts like something else happens to take advantage of him. Many characters use this fact but in different ways. It could be for murders or drug deals or even just for getting extra money but renting him extra room. The point is that everyone uses him, even the filmmakers.

Next let’s talk about the different cuts they use in the film. There are many cuts it this film and so many to talk about. Let’s start with some jump cuts. Jump cuts are when you take a scene and cut it from different points in time to make the scene go faster. We see this when our main character is stripping the person he just beat up. It cuts the parts up so we aren’t seeing the full process of him stripping his clothes off but just the scenes we need to see. This is done so it can move the scene along and not waste time on pointless things. They also use montages this is used to speed the movie along to cut travel times or Leonard piecing the puzzle together. Next let’s go with smash cuts. Smash cuts are when there is a dramatic change in the pace of the seen. We see this when it cuts from a calm scene to a chase involving guns. This could be done to change the mood because it could be getting dull. There’s also cross cutting that keeps the timeline centered like when Teddie, who is Leonard’s supposed friend, is pulling up while Leonard is getting a tattoo. Also flash cuts that can give you subtle clues cut cutting in and out of a scene using another scene like one of the big plot twists hat you can actually miss the first or second time you watch it.

My whole point with this is that editing is a big part of movies and it can make a movie great. It’s used in every movie to tell the story a different way than how it would be if not edited. In this case it flipped the movie around to help keep your eyes and mind on the movie and to find out what happens next or what has already happened and without it the movie would not be as interesting and I hope to see other movies that use editing to improve the story of movies in the future.

 

Visual effects are a big part of movies in a whole. If you walk into a random theater, chances are you will see some sort of visual effect. Visual effects are an important part of movies now because they add something extra to the movie. It gives you a sense of wonder to see something that you don’t normally see in everyday life. whether it be a physical object given live through practical effects or animated and added in with special effects. It could be explosions, to a monster to even the darkness of space and could even be creatures that went extinct millions of years ago and brings them right to the modern age. In this case I’m talking about Jurassic Park. This movie revolutionize film making with its combination of advanced practical effects and new technologies in special effects and CGI. Today we will take a look at one of the greatest film ever made. Welcome to Jurassic Park.

This movie came from one of the greatest minds in film making, a man by the name of Steven Spielberg, who also made Jaws and E.T., and through him he brought dinosaurs back from extinction through some the greatest visual effect of its time. To create most of its movie monsters, they use a new way to animate. Using a combination of Claymation and sensors they made the movement of the creatures feel fluent and natural and after that added in the beautiful textures that at the time made them look lifelike and even still today the animation holds up. in other cases they used amazing animatronics such as the Triceratops scene and some scenes with the T.Rex to give a sense of realism to the creatures and to give the actors something real to interact with. They also blended the two effects in other ways to make it look like the CGI dinosaurs where interacting with the real world. One example was the T.Rex chase scene, where they broke a giant tree in half to make it look like the T.Rex broke through it, or even the skeleton scene towards the end of the movie they make it look like the Velociraptor broke the skeleton to make the actors go spinning.

There were some limitations to the effects they could do and at those points they had to blend both effects together at times because there were times that they couldn’t use puppetry because it would be seen in the shot and times they couldn’t use CGI in order to make the dinosaurs look real. They did hide the limitations of CGI at some points using other effects like rain with the T.Rex scene and speed shot with the Gallimimus scene. With the practical effects they had trouble because of the size of most of the creatures. The T.Rex was only half a body because a full-sized one would weight thousands of pound and they couldn’t make it anyway and in the rain scene they constantly had to stop filming to dry of the massive monster. Practical effect though really brought the creatures to life and made it look like real monsters were causing mayhem and the special effect gave them beautiful movement that they couldn’t get with an animatronic.

Overall the film is a great part of film history and shows the massive potential visual effect have and how far we have come in film making. Every effect is still being used and the effect are still exciting and amazing people young and old and some that have seen the movie hundreds of times and I can attest to that. They used so many effect and made new ones to make this one of the greatest movies of all time and is still bringing wonder to millions. If you have seen it then you know how great the movie is and if you haven’t, what are you waiting for.

Documentaries are a film that is trying to convey a point or idea and revolves around facts and truths. You can do it many ways and from many points of view. It can be about the making of something, trying to convey opinions of something, or an event or series of events. This post will be about two documentary films: F is for Faker and the Truth about Blackfish and will try to answer some questions that the films ask.

First lets talk about F is for Faker. The whole is talking about faker’s and the narrator at the beginning of the film promises the viewer that the first hour of the film is only truth and he does keep that promise. You can tell that the director Orson Welles like magic, one because he demonstrates some at the beginning of the film and this whole thing is about misdirection, which is what magic is all about. There are three main fakers throughout the film Elmyr de Hory who is a Hungarian art forger and the film is mostly about him and his life. He could paint in the style of many famous painters like Matisse, Modigliani, and Renoir. another is Clifford Irving, who was mentored by Elmyr and forged document that were said to be Howard Huse, and Orson Welles, who was the director and narrator of the film. There others in the film like if Howard Huse was even real or Oja Kodar who helped Orson fabricate a whole story at the later half of the film.

The whole film is done in a very strange way. It feels like you’re in a movie style poetry club the whole time with the whole style, tone, look, and sound of one. There where a lot of quick cuts back and forth and sometimes using the same footage or what looked like the same on multiple occasions. Overall it was an interesting watch but wouldn’t recommend it unless you are specifically looking for a documentary or this specific subject, mostly because of the style of how it was done

The second film we are talking about is the Truth about Blackfish. This is more of a straightforward documentary is a bit easier to watch. The film is mostly explicitly bias in that it is about one viewpoint and that is that Seaworld and other aquatic animal parks should not keep smart animals like killer whales and dolphins and have shows with them. this film is also like propaganda in that is want you the viewer to help make them stop this and it does a very good job and making both of these biases. There primary source was actual footage of the event happening which showed killer whales attacking trainers and this showed that the are dangerous in captivity but are not in the wild. the rest of the sources where actual former trainers at Seaworld that worked with the whales, news reports of the events, and autopsy reports of the people who were killed. Seaworld tried so hard to cover up the event even though everyone eventually found out the truth. They lied about statistic like the life span of killer whales and the percent of curved fins. They lied about actually event and saying that they where accidents when they where purposely done by the whales. They even tried to blame the trainers for the acts of the whales.

Over all this film completed its goal in that it was trying to shine a light on the issue and that being that there shouldn’t be killer whales in captivity and that they should be wild animals. this film was easier to watch, probably because it was more of a traditional documentary. It did show some scenes that some people will find inappropriate but it wasn’t too severe. I would maybe recommend this one to someone who likes documentaries.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton