Film Theory Documentary: Outcasts

Contemporary Media Analysis

Media is representative of the many aspects of our society today. Media is often used as a vehicle to deliver messages of reality that are often subjective or critical of our society. Revealing critical aspects of our society through media is almost like "cushioning the blow" of the realization of the aspect itself. Media is used to comment on the status and ideology of today. A topic extensively explored was the status of homosexuality in our society. Modern media is slowly progressing to allow these types to become accepted (or at the least, known) in society. Media lets the public know that the issue is there, and with these 'fictional realities' they suggest how they believe the public should react to the issues.

One trend that was repeated through countless presentations was how stereotypes are being broken as our society becomes more modernized. In media we see various amounts of "blurred lines" when it comes to anything representative in our society. We have the blurring of Good vs. Evil, creating the Anti-Hero for example. We even have the stereotypes of man vs woman, and that we can see some very authoritative women and some less "manly" men. These shifts in the social paradigm can represent the growth of our society, as they begin to slowly become more and more progressive in their acceptance of radical ideas.

For the best and worst, I like to see this as positive and negative social commentary. Every media project has a message, and it will either highlight or obscure certain aspects of our society. For the negative side of things, I used reality tv series' such as Bridezillas to show how there is a capitalist social ladder still present in our society. Us "middle class" working people find enjoyment in watching the supposed "upper class" go through catastrophic events in what they want to be their "perfect wedding/party/life/etc." By watching these series', however, we're also almost admitting that the lives of others are genuinely more interesting than our own. This negatively reflects the inconspicuous effects that a capitalist economy has on our society. However positive comments can come through the media as well, such as the significance of family values. In shows such as All American Girl and Modern Family, we see the creators and directors glorifying the importance of family values.

My Top 5 Films

(in order of longest title to shortest)

Saving Private Ryan
Saving Private Ryan is an amazing film by Steven Spielberg and what captures me the most in this movie is its amazing cinematography. From the start, Spielberg pulls you into the midst of a raging battlefield, on the beach of Normandy, France. Although i'm not a big fan of gore, the gory scenes are bearable for me because I became so attached to each of the characters that their death scenes seemed more so emotional rather than violent.















Spirited Away
Miyazaki is the god of directing animated films. Spirited Away has a story line with an interesting characteristics. It's practically a coming of age film with fantastical creatures and spirits, guiding a young girl on learning to become responsible and make mature decisions. What was more surprising was the social commentary around this film. After some research I discovered this film was actually based off of the controversy among children in prostitution in Japan.













Ip Man
Ip Man is an amazing Chinese kung-fu film centered around one of the world's renowned kung-fu teachers. I'm a sucker for underdog-esque kind of films. In this film, Ip Man was a wealthy kung-fu teacher who was moved to poverty after the Japanese invaded their hometown. He was summoned to fight against a Japanese commander who was a big fan of fighting styles. After Ip Man's friend was beaten to death by this commander, Ip Man is enfuriated and rises up to defeat the commander, in honor of his friends and hometown. The fighting choreography and cinematography grasped the sheer beauty of Ip Man's style of Wing Chun, and kept you rooting for him through the whole film.











Chaos
I saw this film with my dad on an airplane a few weeks ago, so I may be a bit biased when I placed this here, but it has every aspect of my "What makes a Great Film" post. The story revolves around a rookie detective partnering up with an ex-cop to track down an accomplished bank robber. The film's full of twists and so much action that every scene feels like the climactic point in the film. The sound design was great, every chase scene full of upbeat, intense music. The sound effects made every scene memorable. The tragic bullet that pierced Wesley Snipes echoed through the scene longer than it normally would. This prolonged sound marked the end of a villain's path of destruction. And the lighting, damn it was amazing. There was an entire scene shot in night, in a cabin in the middle of the woods. We had Statham and Snipes walking in and out of shadows, maintaining an eerie mood throughout the scene, keeping me on my toes. Overall, the movie was great and i'm still getting over such a twist ending.

Old Boy
Old Boy is full of twists and shifts that made me sit and wonder about the film for a good 10 minutes after the end. After building a sympathetic connection with a man who sat in a room alone for most of his life, and suddenly released into the world, I found myself turning on him in the end as we see him paying for his actions that he didn't even knew he committed. The antagonist and protagonist is potentially switched by the end of the movie and I didn't know what to think of after. The narrative was so well thought out, I was struck in awe by the end of it. I could watch that movie 3 times over and would notice a new detail or aspect every time.

What makes a great film?

Lord Flores' List of Great Movie Qualities

1. Narrative

Well I know i'm a sucker for those kind of movies with the plot line that just makes you go "woaaaaah" the minute something so intricate clicks in your brain. I mean the 5-act structure makes for a good movie, but a great one can manipulate that structure in a way, revealing things at the right moment to make your brain explode in the best way possible. Even a simple twist at the very end that makes you rethink the entire movie is what gets me going. I know I've seen this like 5 times already and we went over this in class, but The Piano Tuner is a perfect example of a well-thought narrative, as the beginning creates a multitude of questions that get answered in the end.

2. Sound Design

Now sound design can refer to both sound effects and soundtrack, and if a film nails both of them, then it's definitely a great film in my book. With creating a soundtrack, the sound designer has to establish a certain mood for the scene being shown. And with sound effects, they would have to be convincing or realistic, and have an impact each time it's heard, like an echoing gunshot, or a knockout blow. I find myself to be bit of an audiophile, and if i'm in the theater and my heart's pounding due to some good sound design, I'd be a big fan. Great example: Django Unchained. I was at the edge of my seat, waiting for each gunshot, all while some classic renegade western music is playing in the background, it really immersed me into the film and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

3. Lighting

I wouldn't say that lighting necessarily makes or breaks a film, but when it's incorporated correctly and well-executed, it adds just enough to make me really notice the beauty of a shot. However incorrect lighting such as overexposure and unintentional silhouetting pretty much kills it for me. The educated film student in me is forced to comment on each shot that is just butchered by horrible lighting. Not to self-advertise here, but my last short film "Truth Be Told" had one of its primary focuses on lighting and shadows to establish a mysterious, serious tone. True, it does have its "unglorious" moments when it comes to lighting, but then again we had practically one light to work with, so I would say we did pretty well given our restrictions.

End of Year Reflection

For the independent film research, I felt very strong when connecting the research with my film knowledge. I could analyze the shots and angles in cinematography, pacing and effects in editing, and relate it back to an underlying message, given the research had been conducted well. However, that's where I had some struggles. I couldn't develop the large thematic connections well enough, and it was difficult to research blindly with no focus or goal. When I do end up understanding these thematic connections, I have trouble really analyzing heavy text. Especially the long articles with convoluted vocabulary and messages.

I thought I did well on the Oral Presentation. My strengths were being able to create a fluid outline that I could follow easily, so I could flow through the oral. I guess why I was able to do well on this assignment rather than the independent research script was the comparison aspect of the script. With the oral presentation, I just had to delve into analysis written on Psycho. There was more difficulty in analyzing two lesser known films, and trying to be able to connect them. Knowing that next year it will be performed one-on-one with Mr. Bigue, I guess I'll need to practice more to get it down in the first try.

Production. The most tedious, yet most entertaining. There's a sense of pride that I achieve with each new segment, film, or documentary being completed. I was really able to explore into directing and editing this year. Next year I plan to get into more creative cinematography in my projects. What I would really love is to get to work with a DSLR. There are so many trade-offs with switching to any DSLR. There comes up audio syncing issues, and many manual settings that have to be dealt with. However these trade-offs are so worth the filmic quality that comes out of using these. Being a novice with a DSLR, if I do get use one of these next year, I think a good crash course on DSLR do's and don'ts would be great enough to get me started on using them. I'm really looking to invest in one within the next few years anyway.

Independent Research Script Reflection

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uLvJoo8uPG0cvyKz1OLsiV5YGtvLFJIGrjNcc_WpPN8/edit

Sadly, my research script wasn't finished. For history, theory and genre topic, I felt that this script had the potential to dig very deep into the genre of crime films in general, but my difficulty to acquire research had left me with such a mental block that I didn't know what basis to come off of when analyzing. I didn't research well into theory or history of this genre in particular, and I felt very lost when I was confronted with the script itself. If I haven't learned by now, research is definitely the key to accomplishing these scripts.

With the target audience, I imagined the documentary as one of those interesting Netflix documentaries you find late at night that seem so interesting, yet never heard of. Then again, when's the last time any young-adult heard about a documentary being advertised? I know I've only heard about a select few important, interesting, and fairly controversial documentaries but that's about it. I don't think my general argument would have been very appealing to the viewer, so I hoped to convey it in interesting ways, seen through my opener, for example.

Speaking of structure, I used the opener as a sort of hook while establishing the genre of the films i'm focusing on. I made up a mini chase scene while incorporating shots of the other movies into it with similar shots. My downfall did end up being the research, therefore my sources weren't the greatest. They did offer some superficial information, but I couldn't read far enough into the good sources to find the best information for use in my script.

I spent time trying to make the video aspect of the film be just as important as the audio aspect. Knowing that the audio would be simply describing most of the analysis, I tried my best to use the video to support this analysis. On the script, I simply reinforce the analysis with the clips from the movies being analyzed. Aside from the opener, I couldn't think of creative visual shots including the narrator. I planned to juxtapose certain shots to point out their similarities. Also putting up the movie posters visually wouldn't be too bad. I would say with what I have, the video and audio are clearly linked, but obviously incomplete.

I wasn't able to build my analysis enough to relate it back to my research question, being "How do the techniques of crime films reveal the humane qualities within an individual?". This was mainly due to the lack of building analysis, which ultimately stems back to my poor job as a researcher. I made few insightful comparisons. I knew in cinematography I wanted to talk about the use of long shots, belittling the character in a way, posing them as insignificant.

Brazilian Cinema and City of God

A main ideological topic conveyed in the film is obviously the controversy surrounding violence. When and in what conditions is it acceptable? The film conveys that in the Brazilian slums, violence is the only means of achieving anything. For example, I remember the conversation among the Runts, talking about how they will never move up in rank if they joined the drug trade. Instead they decided that they would want to kill some people to move up in this hoodlum hierarchy.

A blatant historical and political influence is the gang violence in Brazil, as depicted in the film. Surely they may not be a story surrounding a young aspiring photographer who utilized photography as a way out of the slum, but definitely this violence exists and should not be ignored. It's proven especially with the identical television interview with the real life "Knockout Ned", copied shot for shot, line for line, the only difference being the actor portraying Ned.

The Brianair review stated that although being based on a current issue, the film makers "do not provide any political reference points or background-- the 'sixties', the 'seventies' are just chapter headings that don't explain what was going on in Brazilian society that created these slums"