American Indie film:- Lost in Translation

Bob Harris is an American film actor, far past his prime. He visits Tokyo to appear in commercials, and he meets Charlotte, the young wife of a visiting photographer. Bored and weary, Bob and Charlotte make ideal if improbable traveling companions. Charlotte is looking for "her place in life," and Bob is tolerating a mediocre stateside marriage. Both separately and together, they live the experience of the American in Tokyo. Bob and Charlotte suffer both confusion and hilarity due to the cultural and language differences between themselves and the Japanese. As the relationship between Bob and Charlotte deepens, they come to the realization that their visits to Japan, and one another, must soon end. Or must they?

Writer/Director: Sofia Coppola 
Stars: Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Akiko Takeshita, Giovanni Ribisi.
Budget: $4,000,000
Gross Total: £9,865,162
Release date: 3rd October 2003

This film is independent because the writer/director was fairly unknown, due to the fact that prior to this film she had only directed 1 feature length presentation and 2 short films. also the budget of the film is fairly low at $4million. 

This film has won an Oscar for Best Writing, 3 Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture, Best Performance of an Actor- Bill Murray and Best Screenplay. It also won 3 BAFTAs for Best Performance of an Actor- Bill Murray, Best Performance of an Actress- Scarlett Johansson and Best Editing. That is only a few of the awards it has won, and it has had even more nominations for awards.

The Counselor

This film has a well known and respected cast, such as Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender and Cameron Diaz. It also has a well-known director, as Ridley Scott directs it, who directed Alien and Prometheus. The writer is also respected for films such as No Country for Old Men. This is an example of a big american film, and it is loaded with action. The Counselor is shown in multiplex cinemas all over the globe. This film is about drug smuggling and recently drug related films have become popular.

Aims and Context

• 'Shatter Resistant' 
• film production
• psychological thriller
• short film
• 16-21 year olds
• director, editor and camera operator (shared roles)
• mixture of extreme high-key and low-key lighting

Reflective Analysis

Our task was to make a film sequence consisting of 10 shots. Firstly, were separated into groups of 4/5 people, apart from my group, which was originally only 3 people, who were myself, Jenna and Megan. Because we only had 3 people, Jakob joined our group. We were randomly assigned a genre, and we got Film Noir. The initial stage in the task was to come up with a storyboard for our sequence, where Jakob and me came up with the majority of the sequence while Jenna and Megan drew it onto the storyboards (if done very crudely). The next task was filming the sequence. During this stage, Jenna and Megan did absolutely nothing. Instead of filming they decided to get a coffee, and refused to even control the camera, let alone get in front of it. Because of this, we had to get a random college student to play the part of the femme fatale, and I was the only member of the group that acted in the film, because Jakob was filming most of it. The next part of the task was to edit our sequence, which took place in the following lesson, to which neither Jenna nor Megan turned up to, leaving Jakob and me to do the entire thing. It was the first time either me or Jakob had used editing software, but I think it went well and our sequence was surprisingly good considering there were 2 crewmembers when the other groups had 4. J

The Shining:- Room 237 scene and Ending Photo scene

     The scene opens with a long shot of room 237. The mise-en-scene in this scene consists of beige walls, a green and blue swirl patterned carpet and lilac sofas. The lighting is high key, which seems abnormal for a film of the horror genre, and allows you to see everything that is happening. The camera pans 180 degrees, revealing an open door, leading into the bedroom. The camera is handheld, and moves through the door. The bedroom has the same colour scheme, but the bed has a black sheet with silver zigzags on it there is a door at the back of the room which is slightly ajar. This is the only scene in the film where the colour red is not used. This could be due to the fact that red is associated with meaning danger, whereas green and blue mean safety and trust, so it is as if what’s in the room is trying to lure people into the room, so they can injure them. The black sheets, however, imply death, evil and mystery. This relates to the dead people in the hotel, the evil presences and the mystery of what’s in the room with them. The fact that so far in the scene we haven’t seen who’s perspective we are seeing this from makes me intrigued, and makes me want to find out who it is, but also what’s in the room. The camera continues to move through the bedroom, and approaches the bathroom door. A hand emerges on the left of the screen, and pushes the door open.  We now have a full view of the bathroom, which is mostly green, continuing the false sense of security. There is a rule of thirds, with the bath at the back of the bathroom directly in the middle of the scene. The shower curtain is drawn exactly halfway. Although the green should suggest security, I don’t feel secure. The scene actually suggests that something bad is going to happen, rather than security. There is a cut to a mid shot of Jack, who looks shocked or awe struck. There is then an eye line match cut, which takes us back to the previous view of the bathroom. We can see a figure bathing in the bath. The figure pulls back the curtain, revealing it to be a naked, young looking woman. There is another cut to Jack who smiles eagerly. Another cut takes us back to the image of the bathroom, where the woman starts to stand up in the bath. The cut to Jack this time reveals he is still smiling smugly. The woman steps out of the bath, and the non-diagetic music suddenly increases as she does so, creating tension. There is another cut, which shows that Jack looks even smugger than before, and the cut back to the bathroom shows her walking towards the camera and she stops in the middle of the room. Currently, I feel confused as to whom this woman is, but also I get the gut feeling that this isn’t going to bode well. Jack starts walking towards the woman, who looks directly at him. They stand still, staring at each other for a few seconds, until they suddenly start touching each other and passionately kissing. There is a close up on both of their faces, but Jack’s face is more visible, and he looks like he’s enjoying it more than her.

    This scene opens with a long shot of ‘The Gold Room’ which is featured frequently throughout the film, and is the bar that Jack visits to get away with his family problems. The song ‘Midnight, The Stars and You’ is playing non-diagetically throughout the scene. The mise-en-scene in this scene is red pillars on both sides of the screen, almost bordering it, furniture covered in white tarp on each side, and gold curtains on the doors of the gold room. There is a sign saying ‘The Gold Room’ to the right of the door. The scene is almost symmetrical, which makes the scene look well made. The camera zooms slowly, revealing more about the mise-en-scene as it does so. As it zooms, the rule of thirds is used throughout the scene, first the curtain splits it into thirds, then the door. In the background, we can see 21 black and white pictures, these become more and more visible as the camera zooms in. Each picture has been hung perfectly, and all of the gaps between them are the same size, making the scene look neat. The camera keeps zooming, and only stops when there is an close up on the picture directly in the centre. The picture is of the guests of a ball in the gold room of the overlook hotel, but something seems off about this picture. There is then a cut, which takes us to an extreme close up of the picture, and we can now see the guests more clearly. Here, we notice that directly in the middle on the front row of people, is Jack Torrence. This confused me slightly, and made me wonder if Jack may have visited the overlook hotel before. Then, there is a cut to an even more extreme close up of Jack’s face in the picture. He is smiling and waving at the camera, with that creepy smile that the character is known for. His eyes seem to pierce into your soul, and he’s happy about that. The camera then tilts downwards, revealing the caption at the bottom of the picture. It reads: ‘Overlook Hotel, July 4^th Ball, 1921’. The camera stays on this briefly, then fades to black as the film ends. At this point, I think that this is impossible, because the film is set in the 1970s, so the character of Jack Torrence probably wouldn’t have even been born at that point in time, so surely he can’t be at a ball that happened over 50 years ago, not looking a day younger than in the rest of the film. Personally, I think this was a good way to end a film like this, with a plot twist that just destroys everything you thought you knew about the film, and it is a good way to mess with the viewer’s mind.

     The Lone Ranger:- Box Office Flop

   The Lone Ranger was expected to be one of the summer’s biggest hits, but it has been regarded as a failure after unfavourable reviews. Critics have predicted that Disney will lose up to $200million with this box office flop.

   One of the reasons this prediction has been made is that during production, there were questions as to whether they would make the money back, so filming was delayed and almost completely shelved, due to fears of running over budget. This shows that the film was never expected to make much money, even by the producers themselves, so they clearly didn’t had faith in the crew and cast involved in making the movie. This could have caused the actors and other crew to have been less enthusiastic in their roles thanks to a poor effort in writing and directing, so the film was bound to flop.

   Another reason this film is considered to have flopped is because it was so built up with a multitude of merchandise, film posters plastered on every bus stop on the globe and trailers being shown in every ad-break, showing 4/5 star ratings. Some critics have claimed to be generous with a 2 star rating after release. This build-up is especially evident in children’s toys, with even Lego releasing a ‘The Lone Ranger’ line of toys. Imagine how disappointed the children were when they saw the film.

   Also, Johnny Depp claims that the reviews of the film claiming for it to achieve highly were written 7-8 months before the film was released. This means that due to the critics aiming highly for the film, a lot of suspense was built for the film and viewers who then saw the film thought it was even worse thanks to good reviews before release.

Another reason is that western movies don’t tend to make much money anymore. Westerns were popular in the mid-late 1900s but these days they don’t appeal to viewers as much. This is evident with this film and others like it such as Cowboys vs. Aliens.

Finally, the colours used in this film were rather bland and boring, with lots of black and grey, which doesn’t tend to excite the cinema-goer. Viewers would get bored of the colour scheme quickly and would lose concentration because their eyes aren’t drawn to the movie. This would mean they would scathe the film to peers and less people would go to watch the film.

  

My Favourite Film this Summer:- Insidious

I’ve seen a few films this summer, but none of them quite appealed to me as much as Insidious did. I’m an avid fan of horror and thriller movies, so insidious was a sure fire hit. The film opens by showing a series of black and white photos of the house where most of this film is set, and different rooms in the house. Then, in these photos we see things moving, but nothing moving them, which already gives us the impression that the film will be about the paranormal. Our story begins with the humble Lambert family, who have just moved in to the afore mentioned house. The family consists of a mother (aka Renai), a father (aka Josh), the oldest child Dalton, his brother Foster and a baby girl.

When Dalton starts to explore the house, he finds his way into the attic and tries to climb a broken ladder and falls onto his head. He wakes up and sees something in the attic that causes him to scream. His parents run to the attic to save him and everything seems fine, until the next day when Dalton fails to wake up for school, as he slipped into a coma for unknown reasons, as there was no brain damage.

The film skips ahead 3 months, and Dalton is still in a coma. That’s when the encounters with the paranormal start to happen, such as someone being heard on the baby monitor, the house alarm going off and the front door suddenly opening and finding a bloody hand print on Dalton’s bed. Renai then starts having dreams about the demons, and when she awakes, someone is walking around outside her window. She looks and then it walks into her room, and tries to grab her. All of these demonic occurrences build up suspense so much that you just can’t wait to see what will happen next.

The family decide the best thing to do is move house. Renai is left in the new house with the comatose Dalton, when she steps outside ‘tiptoe through the tulips’ starts playing, and she sees a little boy dancing, and he runs away, at this point in the film I was questioning if she was on hallucinogenics.  Josh’s mother then comes to the house after a bad dream in which she sees and talks to a demon who says it wants Dalton. This continues to build suspense.

The family call some modern hi-tech ghost hunters, who search the house for paranormal presences. Upon seeing female twins in dresses in the hallway (a lot like the shining) they call for help. They call a woman who claims to be a medium. She starts to look around the house and communicates with the demons. She says ‘it’s not the house that’s haunted, it’s your son’. She informs us that Dalton can travel to the astral plane, and he can’t find his way back. This is what’s causing the demonic appearances because they want to enter his body. Josh doesn’t believe her, and kicks them out. He sees Dalton’s drawings of his astral projections and realises he was completely wrong. The ghost hunters are called back to save Dalton.  Josh finds out from his mother that he too could astral project and has to do it to save Dalton.

I enjoyed watching this film, because it is excellent at building suspense, and the film contains many twists and turns, especially at the end. Also, this film appealed to me because I don’t particularly like children, and there are several points in the film where children are up to mischief, such as the child demon or when Dalton falls off the ladder because he shouldn’t have been in the attic in the first place. This film is a must see for anyone who likes horrors.