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Importance of cinematography
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The great screenwriter and director Robert Bresson is quoted as saying “Make visible what, without you, might never have been seen.” This statement is incredibly true of Danielle Harper’s screenplay ‘A Slice of Sleep’. Harper has created a world full of colour that reads to be a world of bleak darkness as it can be joyfully bright and uplifting. The word ‘journey’ is much overused, but perfectly describes the contents of Harper’s script. The following discourse will be looking at how Harper has followed screenwriting conventions, such as the ‘where’, ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ and using popular screenwriting theorist texts such as Robert McKee’s ‘Story’ (1999) and Syd Field’s ‘The Definitive Guide to Screenwriting’ (2003)as guides to analysing Harper’s script. The script is split into three parts; each part is identifiable by a number of factors, the use of the starry night’s sky, the change in room colour collections, the sleeping patterns of the characters and the change of tone in the voice-over. Harper’s screen play is a theoretically unconventional collective of scenes, which primarily focus’ on the sleeping behaviour of its habitants’. Characterisation is dictated throughout by the colour schemes of the various abodes. ‘A slice of Sleep’ offers a sociological view of a cross section of society, which is enabled by the use of abstract characterisation.
The first two sections of the screenplay take place within single rooms, mainly bedrooms. These rooms have all carefully been colour coordinated to differentiate between the different scenes; this also allows the tone of the scene to be set. Harper states in her covering letter how she wanted to create “pronounced distinction instantly between the different segments of the scrip...
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...that is strengthened by the use of a narrator, whose changes in tone match the production design revealing an intimate and thought provoking tale.
Reference List
Books-
McKee, R, 1999. Story. 1st ed. London: Methuen Publishing.
Field, S, 2003. The Definitive Guide to Screenwriting. 1st ed. London: Random House Publishing.
Journals-
Rodman, Howard. “What a Screenplay Isn’t.” Cinema Journal, [Online]. 45.2. Winter 2006.86-89.Available at http://www.jstor.org [Accessed 02 April 2012.
Websites-
Screenplayology.2012.screenplayology.[ONLINE]Available at: http://www.screenplayology.com/.[Accessed 31 March 12]
Screen Writers Utopia. 2012. 127 Hours Three Act Structure. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.screenwritersutopia.com/2012/03/18/127-hours-3-act-structure/. [Accessed 01 April 12]
Films-
Pulp Fiction.1994 [DVD] Quentin Tarantino. USA: Miramax
Braudy, Leo and Marshall Cohen, eds. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, Fifth Edition. New York: Oxford UP, 1999.
The film Wendy and Lucy, directed by Kelly Reichardt, presents a sparse narrative. The film has been criticised for its lack of background story, and as a short film, much of the story is left to the viewer to infer from what is presented in the plot. However, Wendy and Lucy is able to depict the intimate relationship between Wendy and her dog as well as reflecting more broadly on the everyday, and commenting on the current economic state of the film’s setting in America. This essay will examine how film form contributes to the viewer’s awareness of the story in Wendy and Lucy and allows a deeper understanding of the themes presented. The aspects of mise-en-scene, shot and editing and sound in the film will be explored.
Four key film extracts will be discussed. The introduction of Mina, starting of with a medium long shot of her in the Westenra house, which allows the audience to pay more attention to what is happening in the background, the mise-en-scene being a large decorated room of the Victorian era, including plants, chairs. The setting of the whole room is surrounded by glass, which has the ability to allow natural light.
Beginning the mid 1920s, Hollywood’s ostensibly all-powerful film studios controlled the American film industry, creating a period of film history now recognized as “Classical Hollywood”. Distinguished by a practical, workmanlike, “invisible” method of filmmaking- whose purpose was to demand as little attention to the camera as possible, Classical Hollywood cinema supported undeviating storylines (with the occasional flashback being an exception), an observance of a the three act structure, frontality, and visibly identified goals for the “hero” to work toward and well-defined conflict/story resolution, most commonly illustrated with the employment of the “happy ending”. Studios understood precisely what an audience desired, and accommodated their wants and needs, resulting in films that were generally all the same, starring similar (sometimes the same) actors, crafted in a similar manner. It became the principal style throughout the western world against which all other styles were judged. While there have been some deviations and experiments with the format in the past 50 plus ye...
Distinctively visual language and cinematic techniques highlight to the responder the particular literal and metaphorical experiences characters are faced with, within a text. Peter Goldsworthy’s novel Maestro, Don McLean’s song ‘Vincent’ and the intriguing film Australia by Baz Luhrrman, explore the ways in which the human experiences of an individual’s connection to landscape is fundamental in shaping one’s sense of identity, personal growth and development. Composers further explore the realisation that our lives can be enriched by an understanding and appreciation of art as well as a deeper understanding of the importance of love and lust. The depiction of characters is conveyed through distinctively visual images to highlight the subsequent development of courage and resilience leads responders to a deeper understanding of how human experiences can create a sense of individuality.
... time line of events. Which also goes hand in hand with Jacks insomnia, which shatters the barriers between reality versus fantasy, and memory versus dream for the spectator. Lastly the vast and bizarre camera angles from which the film was shot in help maintain the uncertain feeling for the spectator.
John Gibbs and Douglas Pye (2005) Style and meaning : studies in the detailed analysis of film. Engalnd: Manchester University Press, pp 42-52.
Film and literature are two media forms that are so closely related, that we often forget there is a distinction between them. We often just view the movie as an extension of the book because most movies are based on novels or short stories. Because we are accustomed to this sequence of production, first the novel, then the motion picture, we often find ourselves making value judgments about a movie, based upon our feelings on the novel. It is this overlapping of the creative processes that prevents us from seeing movies as distinct and separate art forms from the novels they are based on.
Neill, Alex. “Empathy and (Film) Fiction.” Philosophy of film and motion pictures : an anthology. Ed. Noel Carrol and Jinhee Choi. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. 247-259. Print.
This essay shows the subtle differences that can occur between directors, even when they are basing the movie off of almost the exact same script. Almost no two movies are exactly alike, no matter how hard the directors and actors might try. Minor personality differences and scene changes greatly affect the atmosphere and meaning of the same movie. One example of this is the movie Romeo and Juliet. This movie tells the gripping story of two young lovers who are forbade to see each other because of a viscous feud between the two families. I'll be looking at the older 50's version of Romeo and Juliet and comparing it to the newer version of Romeo and Juliet.
In 1982, the journalist Chuck Ross, in an experiment for Film Comment, mailed the script of Casablanca to 217 agencies under a different title and under a different authorship name. Although many rejected it for external reasons, eighty-one agencies read it and of those, fifty-three did not recognize it as the classic. But here’s the cherry on top: forty-one agencies criticized the iconic, Oscar-winning script with harsh words. One wrote, “Story line is thin. Too much
Lacey, N. (2005). Film Language. Introduction to film (pp. 16-22). Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
The film’s story does not simply shines forth, but is also the foundation of the plot. The film’s plot makes the traditional guidelines applicable...
Barsam, R. M., Monahan, D., & Gocsik, K. M. (2012). Looking at movies: an introduction to film (4th ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Co..
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...