Cinematography Assignment

For this assignment, I chose to focus solely on experimenting with different sources of light and refraction/focus on those sources.

Although I would like to improve some things such as the stabilisation and quality of my shots, overall I thought they turned out okay.

Also, even though the rules were no editing and no dialogue, all I did was add some music and I did not edit any clips.

Watch my mini showreel below :-)

No Country For Old Men: Main Character Profiles

Sheriff Ed Bell
Sheriff Bell is an honest man of faith who values ethics, morality, and of course honesty. He values his presence in his community and feels proud of his position in society, meaning he also values the protection of his community.
Despite being a wise man with a good understanding of the world around him, being an 'old fashioned' man results in his failure to adapt and even accept the changing world around him - particularly the changing patterns and nature of crime.
Due to his seemingly caring nature, Sheriff Bell tries his hardest to protect Llewellyn Moss and Carla Jean Moss and put Anton Chigurh behind bars, but unfortunately fails to do so; this eventually makes him recognise his lack of power and control in the changing world he fails to understand.

 

Llewellyn Moss



Llewellyn Moss is a strong willed and self sufficient ex-Vietnam veteran with a very strong stubborn nature. Seemingly, due to his experiences in Vietnam, Llewellyn holds a different moral framework to most of the people around him, which contributes to his stubbornness; eventually, these morals and stubbornness lead to both his and Carla Jean's death since he refused Anton Chigurh's offer to spare Carla Jean in exchange for the money.

Despite rivaling Anton Chigurh, Llewellyn seems to reflect some of Chigurh's nature and habits; this could be to represent how it isn't important who is good and who is evil in this situation as they are basically as bad as each other. 

 

 

 

 

 

Anton Chigurh

Anton Chigurh is a remorseless, relentless hit man with a strong appreciation for principles. Despite being a ruthless man, Chigurh still holds certain principles and seems to be one of the only characters with no care for the money; for example, Chigurh explicitly tells Llewellyn that he has to keep his promise to kill him despite not caring about the money.

Chigurh also seems to consider himself an arbiter of fate who holds his victims to letting 'fate' choose between life and death through a simple call of heads or tails. Chigurh likes to preach his own philosophy before he holds his victims to this coin toss routine, proving his strong belief in choice, chance and fate. Also, although Chigurh seems to be above the law, he is still subject to choice, chance and fate - as proven by his car crash at the end.

Despite seeming psychotic and practically crazy, Chigurh remains a simple man who relies on simple weapons like a bolt gun.

Along with being ruthless, remorseless and psychotic, Chigurh is also mysterious, as he disappears from the narrative the same way he arrived - out of thin air. 

Chi-Raq & She's Gotta Have It VS Do The Right Thing

Do The Right Thing is a 1989 comedy-drama film which tells the story of a Brooklyn neighbourhood's simmering racial tension. Do The Right Thing is a perfect depiction of how strongly Spike Lee feels about race relations. Two other films that effectively depict Lee's feelings and opinions about this topic are Chi-Raq and She's Gotta Have It.

Chi-Raq is a 2015 satirical musical-drama film that tells the story of conflict between two gangs - the Spartans and the Trojans - in Chicago. The film is a take on the Greek comedy  play by Aristophanes, Lysistrata, which tells the story of Greek women who withhold sex from their partners as punishment for fighting in the Peloponnesian war. Chi-Raq stars Nick Cannon, Teyonah Parris, Angela Bassett and John Cusack, as well as Wesley Snipes, who also starred in one of Lee's other films Jungle Fever, and Samuel L. Jackson, who also appeared in both Jungle Fever and Do The Right Thing. It is also interesting to note that Jackson played a narration role in Chi-Raq extremely similar to his narration role in Do The Right Thing.
The beginning of Chi-Raq is very similar to the beginning of Do The Right Thing - both feature a very long intro including songs relevant to the themes in the film. In Chi-Raq, the intro features the song 'Pray 4 My City' by cast member Nick Cannon, which talks about the death and violence that happens daily within Chicago. In Do The Right Thing, the intro features the song 'Fight The Power' by Public Enemy, a recurring song in the film, which talks about exactly what the title suggests: fighting the power.
Another main similarity between Chi-Raq and Do The Right Thing is the themes found throughout the films. For example, even thought Do The Right Thing focuses mostly on conflict between races and police brutality and Chi-Raq focuses mostly on gang violence, some feminist issues and some mentions of police brutality, specifically the Black Lives Matter movement, the main underlying themes of race relations link the two films together and highlight the most important issues. 
One difference linked to the themes in the films is how the themes are portrayed. For instance, in Do The Right Thing the themes of violence are portrayed literally; what I mean by 'literally' is the issues that Lee was trying to highlight are played out by the cast on camera instead of say, just talking about the issues. In Chi-Raq, the issues that Lee wanted to shed light on are not only 'literally' portrayed, but they are spoken about through statistics provided (like statistics of death rates in Iraq to compare to Chicago) and through monologues.
Another difference between the two films is that Chi-Raq is obviously a lot more modern than Do The Right Thing. As a result of this, technology and social media and it's influences on people's lives is a low-key theme throughout the film. For example, one gang member shoots a member of their rival gang over a certain text message; this event acts as a catalyst for a lot of the action to happen, including the main event that kick starts Lysistrata's urge to make a change to life in Chicago.
Cinematography in both films also count as a difference; in Chi-Raq, colour in the film is used as a form of story telling, as orange signifies the Trojan gang and purple signifies the Spartan gang. Colour and cinematography in 'Do The Right Thing' is still an important element of the film as cinematographer Ernest Dickerson stuck to a range of warmer colours to connote a heat wave, but it doesn't play as big a part in the narrative as colour does in Chi-Raq.
Interestingly, Chi-Raq's budget was a lot larger ($15 million) than Do The Right Thing's budget ($6 million), but Chi-Raq only earned around $2.7 million in the box office whereas Do The Right Thing managed to pull in profits of over 6 times their original budget in the box office. This could be due to the auterism in Do The Right Thing, which Spike Lee was most definitely the auteur for because it projects most of Lee's recognisable style. whereas Chi-Raq shows barely any of Lee's recognisable style of film.

She's Gotta Have It is a 1986 American comedy-drama written, edited and directed by Spike Lee that tells the story of Nola Darling, a sexually liberated young woman living in Brooklyn and juggling three different suitors. She's Gotta Have It is the film that launched Lee's career; as his first feature length film it received rave reviews from critics who called it

one of the best films of the year.

She's Gotta Have It and Do The Right Thing both share the same cinematographer, Ernest Dickerson. Although She's Gotta Have It is mostly shot in black-and-white (perhaps to represent how simplistically Nola views her 'relationships' with Greer, Jamie and Mars), apart from one scene shot in colour which makes obvious reference to The Wizard Of Oz, and Do The Right Thing is all shot in colour, Dickerson successfully projects Lee's auteristic style in both films despite having the restriction of black-and-white in one of the films.

Another similarity between She's Gotta Have It and Do The Right Thing is that they were both filmed entirely in single locations in Brooklyn, New York: She's Gotta Have It was shot in the Fort Greene neighbourhood of Brooklyn and Do The Right Thing was shot in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighbourhood of Brooklyn. It is also intriguing to note that She's Gotta Have It was shot over twelve days in the summer of 1985 whereas Do The Right Thing was shot over eight weeks.

Themes in both films are pretty different. Do The Right Thing has dominant themes of racial tension and police brutality whereas She's Gotta Have It primarily feature strong themes of sexual liberation of women; the main point of the film that demonstrates Lee's opinion on sexual liberation is Nola's monologue at the end of the film, in which she states that monogamy is a form of slavery and that her sexual lifestyle is 'freedom in its purest form'. However, despite the different themes, She's Gotta Have It still has themes of race relations as Nola acts as a voice for the struggles that American women of colour faced in society at the time.

Controversies of the two films are also different. Audiences criticised Do The Right Thing by stating that it could incite black audiences to riot (Spike Lee responded to this by criticising white audiences for implying that black people can't control themselves not to riot). In She's Gotta Have It, the main controversy was the rape scene; Lee stated that he thoroughly regretted deciding to write this scene into the film: "If I was able to have any do-overs, that would be it. It was just totally... stupid. I was immature. It made light of rape, and that's the one thing I would take back". 

Overall, Do The Right Thing, Chi-Raq and She's Gotta Have It all have at least some sense of Spike Lee's auteristic style within them and are in my opinion, some of his best films to watch when/if you are new to his films.

Here are the trailers for each movie:

Do The Right Thing

Chi-Raq

She's Gotta Have It

Who was creatively responsible for Casablanca?

Casablanca' was directed by Michael Curtiz, produced by Hal B. Wallis and was based on Murray Bennett and Joan Alison's play Everybody Comes To Rick's. Casablanca stars Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, as well as featuring Claude Rains, Peter Lorre, and Paul Henraid.

In one way, the film's story editor, Irene Diamond, could be considered largely responsible for the creation of Casablanca. Diamond discovered the unproduced play Everybody Comes To Rick's whilst on a trip to New York in 1941. She convinced producer Hal B. Wallis to buy the play's rights in 1942 for $20k, which was the most anybody in Hollywood had ever paid for an unproduced play. Due to this, Diamond could be regarded as the main creative responsibility for Casablanca, as without her discovery of the play, Casablanca may not have ever been made or even thought of.

In another way, producer Hal B. Wallis could be considered predominantly responsible for Casablanca. Multiple film critics, including notable critic Roger Ebert, have named Wallis the 'key creative force' of Casablanca because of his massive attention to detail of production - down to insisting on using a real parrot for the Blue Parrot bar.

Finally, the last person that I believe can be regarded as widely creatively responsible for Casablanca is director Michael Curtiz. Curtiz knew close to nothing about the plot as he saw it through images, and this is what he wanted his audience to see. Critic Roger Ebert commented that in Casablanca "very few shots... are memorable as shots" as Curtiz wanted images to express the story rather than to stand alone.

Overall, despite there being multiple people creatively responsible for Casablanca, including cinematographer Arthur Edeson who contributed largely to the underlying film noir style of the film and composer Max Steiner who managed to interlace the most important song of the film ('As Time Goes By') into almost every scene, I believe that Casablanca's auteur is Michael Curtiz. Curtiz was notable in Hollywood for introducing a new and unique visual style; this is obvious in Casablanca which helped it stand out amongst most of the films in its era and become a Hollywood classic.

Film Noir, Classical Hollywood & the Studio System

What is Film Noir?

Film noir (French for 'black film' or 'dark film') is a cinematic term used to describe stylised black and white Hollywood movies within the Crime genre, particularly ones that emphasise sexual motivations and cynical attitudes. A lot of the typical stories in Film noir derive from the 'hardboiled' or 'pulp fiction' school of crime fiction that emerged in the US during the Great Depression.

The term film noir was first applied to Hollywood by french critic Nino Frank in 1946 despite this term being largely unrecognised by most American film professionals during the time. Before the term was widely recognised and adopted in the 1970s, many of the classic films that fit the film noir style were referred to as melodramas. Whether film noir can be seen as a distinct genre is still an ongoing debate.

Generally, films of the film noir style include a lot of stylised visuals, including carefully cast shadows, distinct silhouettes and sometimes hard, bright lighting to contrast the low lighting that dominates most of film noir. Film noir is often associated with a low key visual style that has roots within German expressionism cinematography. 

What is Classical Hollywood?

Classical Hollywood is term used by film critics that designates both a narrative and visual style of filmmaking which was developed in and characterised in American cinema between 1917 and the early 1960s.

Classical Hollywood is split up into two eras: Silent and Sound.

Notable films within the silent era include 'The Mothering Heart', 'A Woman of Paris' and '7th Heaven'. Notable films within the sound era include 'Citizen Kane', 'Casablanca' and 'Psycho'.

The visual-narrative style of classical Hollywood was heavily influenced by the Renaissance and its resurgence of mankind as the focal point. This style is split up into three general levels; devices, systems and the relation of systems.

The devices most inherent to classical Hollywood are those of continuity or 'invisible' editing. The systems within classical Hollywood are narrative logic, cinematic time and cinematic space. The relation of systems in classical Hollywood is that the aspects of time and space are subordinated to the narrative element of the film.

What is the Studio System?

The studio system, which was used during a period known as the 'Golden Age of Hollywood', was a method of film production and distribution dominated by a small cluster of 'major' studios within Hollywood at the time. These were split into two categorical groups; 'The Big Five', which included MGM, Paramount, Warner Brothers, RKO and Fox, and 'The Little Three', which included Universal, Colombia and United Artists.

An important part of the studio system was a practice known as ‘block booking’.  A studio would sell multiple films to theaters as a unit. This would typically include only one attractive, A-budget movie that the theaters really wanted and the rest would be a mix of A-budget pictures of dubious quality and lower budgeted B-movies. Because of block booking studios could make a lot of movies, most of them with a low budget and of low quality, and still be sure that they would be seen in theaters.

Another vital part of the studio system was the fact that ‘The Big Five’ had controlling stakes in their own theater chains, which were exempt from block booking. In some cases, one studio would even control all the theaters in a city. This ensured that their films would be distributed, no matter the quality. ‘The Little Three’ would never own more than small theater circuits. By 1945, the studios owned either partially or outright 17% of the theaters in America, accounting for 45% of the film-rental revenue.

BFI Film Festival Trip

On the 5th October 2017, my film class and I (and the media class) went on an educational visit to the BFI Film Festival in London to see the film Breathe, which tells the true story of Robin Cavendish and his battle with polio.

After the film finished, there was a Q&A session with producer Jonathan Cavendish, who is Robin's actual son.

Overall, I thought the film was great, but I would have enjoyed it more if I personally favoured emotional dramas. 

Here is the link to the official trailer for Breathe, which will be officially released on the 17th October 2017: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JycCFypvgmI

Casablanca: End Scene

Casablanca was released in 1942; it was directed by Michael Curtiz and produced by Hal B. Wallis under Warner Brother’s Studios. Casablanca was, and still is, considered one of the best movies ever made.                                                                                                  The last scene in Casablanca where Rick and Ilsa were saying their final goodbyes remains to be considered one of the most memorable scenes in cinema.
 

The cinematography towards become more noticeable and prominent due to the gap among special parts of the shots. The Chiaroscuro (light and dark) effect also helped in raising levels of worry and suspicion; this was done by contrasting the clear bright lights on the airplane runway to the darker shades of the fog and night sky. This light and dark effect also relates to film noir, a prominent genre in classical Hollywood. The fog in this final scene is in my opinion the most prominent part of the ending’s cinematography as it had cast an almost grey filter over the whole final scene, which further exaggerated the feelings of suspicion and mystery. This results in leaving the audience clueless about how the fight is going to finish/how the war is going to end. Throughout the final sequence the lighting technique was sharp and differs from the mostly softer lighting found throughout the parts of the film leading up to the finale. The cinematography of the finale also features many different camera movement techniques. After Captain Renault and Laszlo exit the scene, the camera begins to follow Rick and Ilsa, where it was not focusing on either of their own view points. After the most memorable speech/conversation in the film, Rick sends Ilsa to get on the plane with Victor. After a cut away to Captain Renault, the camera movements start to builds up again to further highlight the speech that Rick had just given.

Michael Curtiz used sound in this scene very effectively; while filming the movie, he found that the sound stage was way too small to be suitable for a real airplane. So he decided to shoot the final sequence on a soundstage at Warner Brothers where there was no real airplane and used models of the planes instead. Whilst the scene is mostly dominated by music, some key points of sound in the scene stand out amongst the general sound used in the majority of the scene; for instance, when the shot of Rick and Ilsa cuts away to the Nazi general driving to the airfield, the music immediately rises in volume and gets more dramatic to connote perhaps anger or even danger. Another instance of music demonstrating a switch of emotion in the scene is when Captain Renault drops the Viche water into the bin and kicks it away. Also, when Rick is finished with his speech and is talking to both Laszlo and Ilsa, the scene stays mostly quiet apart from their voices, when suddenly the sound of the airplane’s engine and propellers cuts in; this almost acts as a catalyst to move the scene along as it prompts Laszlo to ask Ilsa if she’s ready. The other most prominent sound in the scene is Rick’s gunshot, which breaks the tense argument in the scene and marks a permanent turnaround in Rick’s life.

The editing in the final scene differs from the majority of the film’s continual or ‘invisible’ editing as there involves a lot more cuts in the finale; when the scene’s tension rises, the cuts get quicker and shorter. Also, when the scene wants to switch emotion or switch the audience’s attention, it uses a sudden cut – like the one where it switches from Rick and Ilsa to the Nazi general – to do this effectively.
 

The performance in this scene is definitely dominated by Humphrey Bogart; Bogart’s depiction of Rick’s development from a cold hearted, emotionless man into a ‘sentimentalist’ is both effective and smoothly done, making his performance impressive and convincing. Ingrid Bergman’s performance also makes up a large portion of this scene, as she has to demonstrate Ilsa’s split feelings between Rick and Laszlow; although this is demonstrated throughout the film, it is most prominent in this scene as she is forced to make her final decision (whether the decision was voluntary or not).

The mise-en-scene in the final sequence is subtle when compared to the majority of the film as there are far less characters, building and props in the shots. This means that when something important is in the scene, it is immediately recognised and acknowledged by the audience. An example of this would be the Viche water that Captain Renault throws away to connote a political change of heart.