The Opening Sequence of Saving Private Ryan
In Analyzing Steven Spielberg’s movie ‘Saving Private Ryan,’
I realized that I can not base a movie only on realism. I
think a good movie has to have some kind of character or
formalism to carry the viewer through these realistic scenes.
In my critique I wish to point out some uses of realism
and camera effects in the movie saving Private Ryan. In my
eyes saving Private Ryan is a masterpiece. Although the
movie is nearly three hours in length, it is evenly
distributed and takes on a powerful subject. I think ‘Saving
Private’ Ryan was not another war movie; I really felt it
caught the soul of war. The film begins with a half-hour
sequence of the landings at Normandy on D-Day. Many films
have portrayed this D-Day scene, but have failed, to me, in
realism. In ‘Saving Private Ryan’, realism portrayed in near
perfection. The film contains such actors as Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore,
Edward Burns and Matt Daron. In the film Spielberg took a
documentary approach and in doing so got 5 academy awards
and the Best director award.
In the opening scene of the battle the camera shots are
dull and gritty which create the sense of realism as the
glossy finish has been taken away. This represents the old
newsreel cameras which followed the soldiers in to war.
As people are advancing up the beach two different camera
angles are used The first is the de- saturated and the other
is a hand-held camera whi...
... middle of paper ...
...ct way . All of
the other war films I have watched the allies seem to have
a super human figure as there main character whereas in
‘Saving Private Ryan’ the main character seems to be a normal
individual . Spielberg has taken in the facts and made a
interesting interpretation of how it may have seemed but not
making either side look to have any advantage or
disadvantage over the other.
This opening sequence prepared me for what was to follow as
you could actually sense how the soldiers might have felt
from the well illustrated feeling put up on the screen for
example the repeated scene of the hand shaking or the
vomiting in the boat but the whole thing put together this
more than prepared me for the film.
I felt an instant connection with it, as O’ Sullivan must have felt standing there upon the sea of bodies. The composition of this photo tells a story all on its own. From the way he captured the body laying twisted in the front, capturing the expressions on his face, to the way the soldiers on the horses blend into the background. The photo speaks death, not because we can see death but because of the composition, the way film captured “fog” or “dust clouds” to the color of the capture itself. There was a story to be told and O’ Sullivan told it with seeing what others couldn’t see, by shooting lower to the ground and giving the forefront the effect of being bigger than the background and capturing the lone soldier amongst the rest of the bodies that looked to be reaching towards O’
The Red Badge of Courage and The Blue Hotel: The Singular Love of Stephen Crane
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.
GIs. He uses a close up shot when, he zooms in into a man's eye and
In the movie, “Saving Private Ryan,” by Steven Spielburg, it begins with a veteran of WWII returning to Normandy to visit the burial ground for those Allied servicemen who were killed on D-Day. He is looking for a particular grave, and when he finds it, he takes a knee and starts sobbing. Captain John H. Miller has a flashback to June 6, 1944 in Omaha Beach, Normandy, France.
"There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful thananything that bleeds. Don 't wait until you break. - Laurell Hamilton" This is oftentimes the sentiment felt by soldiers who have served in active duty and have been witnesses to tragedies that leave them emotionally scarred. The Clint Eastwood directed film, American Sniper is amovie that features the real life tragedy of American soldier, Chris Kyle, who served in theUnited States military as a Navy Seal, which is an elite group (Kenny, 2014 and Treitschke,2015). His story is unique in that he himself suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder(PTSD), but as he worked to recover, he valiantly served again by helping fellow soldiers withPTSD ("Chris Kyle," 2013), and was senselessly gunned
In the film Saving Private Ryan, directed by Steven Spielberg, Captain John Miller takes his men behind enemy lines to find Private John Ryan. Private Ryan’s three brothers have been killed in the war and no one knows if Private Ryan is alive or not. Captain Miller takes on the challenge of bringing home Ryan to his Mom so she wouldn’t lose all of her sons in the dreaded war. The story follows the journey and hardships Captain Miller and his men face trying to locate and bring home Private Ryan. Spielberg portrays the theme of sacrifice in the scenes when the group almost splits apart, they find Private Ryan, and Captain Miller dies.
Basinger, Jeanine. The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.
Then the question is posed to Mr. Lockwood, "How did it all begin?" The answering of this question is what my paper will explain. I will attempt to break down the opening scene and show how it all started. By using tools of film such as sound, editing, mise en scene, and cinematography, this paper will show how the scene was made as well. Mise en scene played an important role in this movie as with any other movie.
Ever since movies began to be made after historical events they always include inaccuracies in the ways they depict them. Film’s ability to offer visual representation of historical events sure beat reading a book due to the fact they fill the viewer up with information and entertainment. History films are a stand-in for reality, leading the viewer to witness wars, and events as if he/she is present during that time. Directors tend to see the injunction to present the past accurately in terms of plot and set design and do whatever it is possible to get these details right. The focus of some directors is to catch the viewers’ attention so that people will actually go see the film. They are often forced to sacrifice real events and add a twist to it so that it becomes more entertaining to watch. In the movies; Flags of our Fathers, The Great Raid, The Thin Red Line, and Pearl Harbor directors did whatever they could to depict events accurately. Major events are described as they really happened, but there is always something added that did not exactly occur from what the textbook tel...
Both of the films are very detailed in depicting what actual warfare is like; however,
...movie that I fell in love with. But most of all I love how the story line is a great overlap into the cinematically engaging movie. There is a great use of camera, timing, shots and story line that are portrayed in this movie without being too overwhelming. This allows the audience to relax during the movie and just take in the scenes as a story from reality. To this day, and even still doing this paper I still come to find different aspects of the movie that I missed the previous times I have watched it.
Due to the film’s quality and interest it became an award winning film. The film had excellent sound effects such as the battle scenes. The image quality was also outstanding; it used many different angles to depict the actor to make you feel involved in the scenes. In the action scenes the most common viewpoint used was a close up shot which allows the audience to see and feel the intensity of the scene. The second viewpoint mostly used was a tracking shot due to the actors c...
The book Armed & Dangerous: Memoirs of a Chicago Policewoman is a biography of Gina Gallo career as a police officer. She served as a police officer for Chicago P.D. from 1982-1998. Gallo addresses the infamous “Blue Wall of Silence” by recalling events in which it was used. She offers a unique perspective of her duty as a police officer, she not only tells of incidences and crimes she dealt with but also what goes through an officers mind afterwards.
The movie I chose to analyze for historical accuracy was War Horse. This movie was set in the First World War, starting in Britain but the story also explored France and Germany during this time period as well. Three scenes will be analyzed: the trench warfare scene between the British and the Germans, the scene where the British soldiers were gassed, and the scene where the British were getting patched up and nursed. War Horse does well to stick to the historical accuracy of what happened during the First World War due to the fact that the three scenes that I have chosen to analyze are not embellished and are close to what really happened.