Film Studies

THE SUNLIGHT ZONE THE TWILIGHT ZONE    THE MIDNIGHT ZONE THE ABYSS THE TRENCHES  

I am planning to produce a screenplay for a short experimental film. I am interested in creating a script for a film that focuses on establishing and developing a single female character through surreal and hyperreal imagery and sound. Initially, I am inspired and drawn in by the narrative and cinematic style used in Deren's 'Meshes in the Afternoon' and Lynch's 'The Grandmother', I find this style of experimental art film to have the most potential for the exploration and development of a character, her psyche, and her interactions with both herself internally and the world around her. I am planning to either expand upon or create something similar to a script that I wrote in the first year called 'Faceshopping', as I am interested in deconstructing a female identity through surrealism and hyperrealism in a futuristic and nightmarish world. As I am imagining my script, I would like it to read similarly to a nightmare and have the same strange and disori...

From the feedback on my presentation, I have learned that I utilised images and screenshots well to supplement and support points about Steven Spielberg's cinematic style. I linked my points to the Auteur Theory and presented the information in a way that was clear and well structured in order to make the presentation easy to understand to somebody who did not research Spielberg. On the other hand, my presentation could have been improved by including short clips from Spielberg's films instead of, or in addition to the screenshots I chose to use; this would have allowed me to go deeper in my analysis and find similarities in the construction of Spielberg's sequences and shots. I could have split the larger paragraphs of information into multiple, smaller slides which would have been more appropriate for the format of a spoken presentation, and may have made it easier to listen to and digest.

During this task, we chose to create a horror film about a college student who becomes so overwhelmed with work and life in general, he goes on a killing spree. We showed this by having the first minute of the short film full of repetitive shots, such as the card being scanned to get into the college, the work piling up as the film progresses to show how much work he has to do and a shot of a tree blowing in the wind with the grey sky in the background. We thought this would be evident to the audience that life has become repetitive and boring for the main character, and thus he wants a dramatic change.  We then showed the 'snap' of the main character by the use of a firework clip. This emphasises the idea that something inside his mind has 'snapped' and therefore both relates to the song perfectly and the title of the short film, 'Before You Snap'. The rest of the short film was dedicated to showing the killing spree that the main character went on. W...

(Note: the scene where the main character 'snaps' has been replaced from a plate smashing to a firework going off - along with non diegetic sound of the firework and screaming. The scene which featured the shot of the arm covered in blood has also been replaced with just blood on the wall, or paper since we couldn't put the blood on the wall itself, so we improvised.)

Create a list of cinematic ideas for a key sequence: this must include extreme close up, medium shot, two shot, zoom-in, high angles, low angles, low-key lighting, editing, sound, etc. Beginning:  The short film will start off with a repetitive montage of shots. These shots will be of: walking into college, scanning the card, walking to class, getting notes and books out, taking notes, packing away, walking out of college (?); regular things that happen on a day to day basis within the college. These will then be repeated through the use of editing to emphasise the repetition of a day-to-day life. The shots will slowly get faster and faster, until the character 'snaps'.  Middle:  The main character, Michael, will then go on a murderous killing spree, much in the style of Michael Myers in terms of the weapon, but Jason Voorhees in terms of the mask. There will a use of middle shots from behind, not showing the main character's fa...

(Before You Snap) Michael lives a seemingly normal life, he's a college student who has high hopes of becoming a successful businessman in the future. His parents are kind and generous, always wanting to help their son in whichever ways they can. However, when work starts to pile up and Michael falls behind on all his deadlines, something snaps inside of him. The overwhelming feeling has been kept inside for too long, and now it wants out. Using an old hockey mask he used to use when he was a child, he begins his murderous killing spree, killing anyone and everyone near him. His anger, his rage and his anxieties have all been waiting and building up to this very moment, the moment where he strikes. 

In ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, Guillermo Del Toro conveys political and social messages to the audience throughout the film by loading each scene with multiple dimensions of contextual and implicit information through the constant consideration of cinematography and mise-en-scene. Del Toro crafts almost every scene in the film to hold some greater meaning both to the narrative and to the context of General Franco’s fascist Spain in which the film is set. Being set during this time in 1944, five years after the Spanish Civil War, the film constantly makes references towards the social and political environment as well as what it was like to be somebody living in Spain at this time. Early in the film, Ofelia meets The Faun after being led to the labyrinth by one of the fairies, who tells her that she is the lost Princess Moanna of the underworld. At this point, The Faun tells Ofelia that she must complete three tasks before the moon is full, giving her ‘The Book of Crossroads’ which will show ...

Towards the beginning of the film, one of the most shocking and disgusting scenes takes place to establish the desperation and extreme lengths that the drug addicts will go to in order to feed their heroine addiction. In this scene, Renton is forced to retrieve a bag of heroine from a toilet with his bare hands. Just before this scene begins, a close-up perspective panning shot is used of Renton walking through a pub in order to get to the toilet whilst almost every other person in the pub stares at him judgementally. This shot was filmed from Renton's point of view, a fish eye lens was used to make the faces of every person he passed seem more distorted and large to suggest that Renton is unwell as his vision and perception on reality has been altered, perhaps due to drug use or poor health. This shot shows the audience how Renton may feel and be treated by society on a daily basis; he is shamed and alienated in a way that furthers his own label of being an outsider or outcast...

During the sequence from ‘Prisoners’, the film uses low-key lighting and camera angles to build tension within the scene and with the audience. The colour palette of each scene was chosen carefully in order to invoke certain connotations that convey meaning to the viewer and help them to gain a better understanding about what is happening within the film and the intended tone of every location and situation. At the beginning of the sequence, we are shown a shot of a car parked outside a brightly lit restaurant at night in heavy rain. Immediately, this establishes the tone and setting of the scene and begins to suggest that mystery and deception are at play through the use of pathetic fallacy. The use of combination lighting, the contrast between the bright interior of the restaurant and the darkness of the outside at night, suggest that good versus evil is a main theme of the film, also inferring that the empty restaurant provides a brief refuge from the evil outside. After t...

Guillermo del Toro uses a range of horror conventions in order to make the audience feel uncomfortable and frightened throughout the sequence. The first shot we see is a mid shot of the character as she is startled awake in the middle of the night, the director uses low-key lighting to show that it is night and add a sense of uneasiness as we are unable to see her surroundings clearly, therefore we are unsure of whether the character is in danger or not. As the character leaves her room to investigate the cause of her dog's barking, a mid tracking shot is used from behind the character to show the audience what she is seeing without having to use a perspective shot and interrupt the flow of the scene. By doing this, the viewer is unable to see a large portion of the area as our view is blocked by the girl, giving the impression that something could jump out from outside the view we have been given as well as building suspense and paranoia. Here, the audience is shown the shado...

Annihilation is a 2018 sci-fi horror film that was directed by Alex Garland, the director of Ex-Machina. As an adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s ‘Southern Reach’ trilogy, the film follows biologist Lena, who is played by Natalie Portman, as she signs up for a dangerous and secretive government expedition into a mysterious area called ‘The Shimmer’. One of the reasons why I have chosen this film to be my favourite of 2018 so far is due to its unique approach to the sci-fi genre. The film introduces a surreal and dreamlike world to the audience that is as beautiful as it is horrifying; strange and scientifically impossible mutations are shown on both the flora and fauna as the expedition team journey deeper into the forests inside The Shimmer: crocodiles with multiple rows of teeth like a shark, deer with flowers growing from their antlers, and most notably a horribly mutated bear that mimics the screams of people that it has killed to lure the team closer. All of which are created usi...