“Creating a master plan for a consistent visual texture or style that is artistically suited to the film story to be told” (Petrie and Boggs 75). This is the main universal goal of all filmmakers. This blueprint for success is the way the films North by Northwest, The Third Man, and The Piano accomplished such astounding and visually beautiful performances. These three films successfully balance the use (or lack of use) of color, lighting, setting, costumes, and makeup to create a film that is harmonious from beginning to end. The film North by Northwest has a plot based around identity. These identities are mostly portrayed through visual aspects, mainly in the setting. For example, during the scene at Mount Rushmore, when Roger Thornhill …show more content…
(Cary Grant) finally confronts Vandamn (James Mason), the light colors of the grey monument make the loud colors of the crowded indoors all the more chaotic. The panicked atmosphere feed off the colors making it essential to the film. The lighting is another aspect that directly relates to the atmosphere. This film uses “high key lighting” which the book describes as using more light and less shadows (Petrie and Boggs 95). The more light allows for a more upbeat mood, but the limited shadows keep tension there too. Another main aspect of the plot is movement. The setting mimics this in quick and multiple changes throughout the nation. The filmmakers convincingly make the transitions smooth as possible. The only part that could have been more believable was the crop-duster scene. Red dirt isn’t found in Illinois, but overall the scene was phenomenal and couldn’t be filmed in a studio. The costuming was not as prominent as the on-location filming in the plot, but it does play an important role. Clean cut Roger Thornhill has cool accessories that match his witty demeanor. The sleek look of Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) matches her calm and collected personality, even though she continually questions her identity. The film The Third Man uses Film Noir which the book defines as “...type of film that is characterized by its dark, somber tone and cynical, pessimistic mood” (Petrie and Boggs G-3). While this movie does have comedic moments, the main tone of the film is dark and moody and this is directly related to the fact that the film is in black and white. It is especially essential during the scene when Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) is chasing Harry Lime (Orson Wells) in the underground pipe system. If that scene was shot in color, the pipes would be a lot less ominous and the whole event would seem more ordinary. The whole film required dark lighting with shadows and light only on certain subjects at a time. With a director like Carol Reed, nothing in this film is accidental, no light on a character, no shadow on a particular area. This way of thinking is shown in the scene when Mr. Martins sees Lime for the first time under the door frame. The single pool of light that illuminates his smirking face is an example of low key lighting. Low key lighting, according to the book, is an intensity of light in this case, highlighting important items and putting the rest in the shadow (Petrie and Boggs 95). The setting of this film is primarily in the ruins of Vienna after WWII. This, along with the separated quadrants between the British, the Americans, the French, and the Russians, causes a tense and somewhat stressful. This feeling is present throughout the story and is portrayed in the way the characters act. The filmmakers use “setting to create emotional atmosphere”, as the book terms it (Petrie and Boggs 86). The viewers are dependent on this technique to understand and link together the characters actions in regards to where the setting is. The setting, while important, is not the only aspect that helps viewers understand the film. The way all of the characters dress directly relates to their personalities. Lime is dressed very dapper and haughty, which is reflected in his cocky personality. Holly Martins on the other hand is dressed more conservative and in less formidable clothes. The film, The Piano, used color to emphasize on the setting of where the characters were located.
Once Ada (Holly Hunter) and Flora (Anna Paquin) arrived to New Zealand, they were greeted with the dark grey and blue of the ocean and the cold off white of the sands. The only thing that is a warm color is the oaky piano. This allows the viewer to get a glimpse of how Ada feels to be so far away from home and how her piano is the only warmth in her life. The filmmakers from this movie used what the book calls an effective “color palette”. These limited number of specific colors (in this case, the brown piano) emphasized throughout the film to communicate the feelings of a character. (Petrie and Boggs 76) Without this effect, the feelings of Ada wouldn’t be portrayed as clearly and the drastic difference from what her life was like back in Scotland wouldn’t be so drastic. The use of light in this film wasn’t as prominent as it was in the former two. The opening scene, the audience is looking through Ada’s eyes as she is looking through her fingers. The quick changes of light to dark look like the white and black keys of a piano, signifying the major part it plays in the film itself and in Ada’s life in general. She then opens up her hands and reveals a green garden and her daughter on a pony being led by a servant. This setting represents her life as a wealthy woman in Scotland and the colors are drastically different from the muddy and rainy New Zealand. This on-location work effectively emphasizes the dreary atmosphere that is mimicked in the mood of the main characters. Going back to that wet scene where Ada and Flora arrive, they are wearing large puffy dresses that are a reflection of their life before. They seem silly and look very uncomfortable. The clothes the girls wear and the way they dress is a representation of how they are clinging to what they have known in their old life as they are (literally) thrown into a foreign, new
life. Through light, color, setting, costumes, and makeup, the filmmakers of North by Northwest, The Third Man, and The Piano successfully portray a balanced and beautiful finished product. These films, along with many more, are ones to be held on a pedestal of visual superiority. They can and will be cherished for many years to come by generations of moviegoers.
From the start of the film it is apparent what time frame it is taking place in and the differences in the social stratification through the lack of colors. One of the most obvious portrayals of the bleakness and desperation of the era is the overall faded and washed-out look of the whole film, due to manipulation of the film saturation; the heaviness of it almost cries out to the audience. Though the film was shot during the summer, cinematographer Roger Deakins and Cinesite colorist Julias Friede were able to use digital technology to change the appearance of the colors. “Together, they worked on manipulating the [digital] saturation of the images, and in particular selecting the greens of the trees and grass and turning them into dry browns and yellows” (Escaping, 2). These dry brown and yellows enhance the audience’s impression of the desperation of the characters and the time period.
After evaluating the 2081 movie, it is apparent the film elements and techniques are important when defining the mood. The four main techniques used throughout the film were lighting, music, sound, and dialogue.
The innocence of the main character Bernie Teide in Bernie and the mysteriousness of main man Rodriguez in Searching for Sugar Man are all portrayed by the use of aesthetics. Without realist aesthetics, these films would not appeal to viewers emotionally or visually. Such aesthetics help viewers perceive objects or characters and help them additional make judgments upon the information received. Directors like Richard Linklater (Bernie) and Malik Bendjelloul (Searching for Sugar Man) use aesthetics in hopes to affect the mood, emotion, feeling, and perception among their audiences. Without aesthetics, the directors would not reach their intended audience or may not even reach an audience at all. All of these elements must be taken into account when a producer hopes to create a successful film.
When the film begins on the farm in Kansas, the scene is shot in black and white, creating a sepia tone of colour to represent the country dust in the air adding to the effect of the ordinary unsaturated colour of the Kansas landscape. In contrast to the Kansas setting, lighting is profoundly used by the director to enhance the overall emotions of the film. Fleming uses a combination of the set, lighting techniques, and colour to create a magical place with very bright colours and deep focus lens to bring the land of Oz to life. In the scene where Dorothy enters Oz, the lighting is positioned between Dorothy and the foreground plants. The director uses the three point lighting technique so both Dorothy and the colour plants are highlighted but no shadows visible. This shot was done with a background of the black and white house behind Dorothy. The Land of Oz is filled with beautiful colours to create the illusion of a happy world that enhances the feel of fantasy. The allusion of contrasts between the real world and the land of Oz support the central theme there’s no place like home. In this way, the director enhances the picture of the film by the use of colour to reflect a mood experienced by the character in the different places. This colour transition used by the director, incorporates two completely different Mise en scene
In cinema, lighting, blocking and panning drastically influence what an audience will notice and take away from a scene. Orson Welles’s 1941 Citizen Kane has numerous examples of effectively using these aspects within mise-en-scène, cinematography and editing to portray the importance of specific events and items in the film. The scene where Kane writes and then publishes his “Declaration of Principles” (37:42-39:42) in the New York Daily Inquirer after buying them focuses on important elements of the film, aiding the audience by combining lighting, blocking and panning to define significant roles and objects that further the movie as a whole.
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...
In any film, lighting and colour are very important, as film is mainly a visual form of media. In film A (By Dustin Hoffmann), the colours are very naturalistic. They make use of pastel colours and scenic shots. It has a sort of fantasy world quality.
Identity is primarily described primarily as what makes a person who they are. While it is seen as an individual asset, one’s identity can be shaped and persuaded not only by life experiences, but by society as well. Bryan Stevenson speaks on several controversial issues and proclaims certain societal problems and the typical behaviors noticed in response to them. How one approaches the issues that are spoken about may expose their true identity. Stevenson argues that how one reacts to racial inequality within the criminal justice system may regulate their identity. In addition to that, how dealing with the nation’s history may force a growth on one’s identity, eventually bringing peace and acceptance to the nation. Lastly, how one views the
Beginning roughly with the release of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Stopped Worrying and Loved the Bomb in 1964, and continuing for about the next decade, the “Sixties” era of filmmaking made many lasting impressions on the motion picture industry. Although editing and pacing styles varied greatly from Martin Scorcesse’s hyperactive pace, to Kubrick’s slow methodical pace, there were many uniform contributions made by some of the era’s seminal directors. In particular, the “Sixties” saw the return of the auteur, as people like Francis Ford Coppola and Stanley Kubrick wrote and directed their own screenplays, while Woody Allen wrote, directed and starred in his own films. Kubrick, Coppola and Allen each experimented with characterization, narrative and editing techniques. By examining the major works of these important directors, their contributions become more apparent.
...successful collaboration of sound, colour, camera positioning and lighting are instrumental in portraying these themes. The techniques used heighten the suspense, drama and mood of each scene and enhance the film in order to convey to the spectator the intended messages.
The cinematography enforced the mood, drama, and plot. The use of color in the film was telltale of the mood. The colors were drab, lifeless, mellow colors. These colors were telltale signs of the setting and mood of the play. The setting was in a sorrowful, dirty, suffering country; the mood was sorrowful and suffering as well.
Identity is a state of mind in which someone recognizes/identifies their character traits that leads to finding out who they are and what they do and not that of someone else. In other words it's basically who you are and what you define yourself as being. The theme of identity is often expressed in books/novels or basically any other piece of literature so that the reader can intrigue themselves and relate to the characters and their emotions. It's useful in helping readers understand that a person's state of mind is full of arduous thoughts about who they are and what they want to be. People can try to modify their identity as much as they want but that can never change. The theme of identity is a very strenuous topic to understand but yet very interesting if understood. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez and Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki are two remarkable books that depict the identity theme. They both have to deal with people that have an identity that they've tried to alter in order to become more at ease in the society they belong to. The families in these books are from a certain country from which they're forced to immigrate into the United States due to certain circumstances. This causes young people in the family trauma and they must try to sometimes change in order to maintain a comfortable life. Both authors: Alvarez and Houston have written their novels Is such an exemplifying matter that identity can be clearly depicted within characters as a way in adjusting to their new lives.
Sound is what brings movies to life, but, not many viewers really notice. A film can be shot with mediocre quality, but, can be intriguing if it has the most effective foley, sound effects, underscore, etc. Sound in movies band together and unfold the meaning of the scenes. When actors are speaking, the dialogue can bring emotion to the audience, or, it can be used as the ambient sound. Music is one of the main things to have when filmmaking. The use of Claudia Gorbman’s Seven Principles of Composition, Mixing and Editing in Classical Film gives audiences a perspective of sound, and, how it can have an impact on them.
What is color? If someone were to ask you that, what would your answer be? How do you describe yellow without saying its name? You might say it reminds you of sunshine or of school buses or of warmth, but those are all examples. It’s funny how something so integral to our daily lives could be so hard to explain. Could you imagine a world entirely enveloped in grey-scale? A permanent film noir. Color is like sound, all around us, conveying emotion, shaping our world. Without it, our world would be bland; without distinction. Likewise, film is a world of its own, transporting you into its universe, putting you in the characters’ perspectives. Ever since the beginnings of film, filmmakers have looked for ways to put color in film, expanding the
Forth are Lighting and color. In case of Lighting, this film uses High key light that makes this film look like natural light and feel warm. In the case of color, some scene of this film use warm color to express love and warmth to audience such as in the wedding scene or some scene use dark color to express about sad feeling such as funeral scene and in scene that Rosie knows her dad was died. I think in some scene if you watch it in HD, it’s very beautiful such as in scene that Rosie drinks a cup of coffee and thinks about the past in sunset time because Lighting and color of sunset time is very