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"