Film Analysis: The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance

The innovative camera techniques used do not utilize the realist style that was previously associated with films dealing with social deprivation; however, it does use identifiable genre characteristics, but in a way that is more specific for that location (Anon, 2016). The camera angles used within City of God create certain atmospheres and alter the meaning of a scene. The film editing creates a world and a feeling that absorbs the audience and transports them to a place they have never been to. The opening scene begins with a nice atmosphere of people playing music and dancing. Then it is seen from the chicken’s perspective. It watches as the knives sharpen and other chickens are being killed. It runs away and can be seen as symbolizing Rocket’s attempt to flee from the gang life. The mixture of the camera angles builds up suspense. The variation of high and low angles accentuate the disordered way the city is built up from different layers of houses, small shacks and streets. This scene submerges the audience in the feeling of excitement, suspense, and fear as the chicken attempts to make its

A League of Their Own (Marshall, 1992) explicitly characterizes an American era when a woman’s place was in the home. Even our modern perspective implicitly follows suit. Although women have gained rights and freedoms since the 1930’s, sexism remains prevalent in America. This film offers an illustration when men went to war and big business men utilized women as temporary replacements in factories, sports, and so on. Here, course concepts, such as gender socialization, gender expressions, role stereotypes, emotion expressions, and language, correspond to the film’s characters and themes.

Within the movie Psycho, birds are a prominent motif. The themes of isolation and duality, were emphasized by the use of bird-related language, such as Marion’s surname being ‘Crane’ and her being from Phoenix. While dining with Norman in the parlor of the Bates motel, Marion is told by Bates that she “eats like a bird”, this transitions to Norman stating that he knows a lot about taxidermy and the stuffing of birds, however not so much about how they are when they are alive. Hitchcock suggests the fact that Norman doesn’t know how to function normally within society, however indicating he does know how to coexist with his “mother”. The taxidermy of the birds foreshadows that his “mother” is in fact ‘stuffed’ (preserved) and Norman is the one keeping her ‘alive’. Hitchcock effectively utilised taxidermy and birds, to highlight Norman's mental health. These create suspense, to help engage the audience.

The text, or more so the movie about the text, The Help by Kathryn Stockett, does a good job of portraying race, class and gender. During the setting of the book, many people looked at white Americans to be superior to the Black, African American race. With this being said, the successful white families hired in the African American women to cook, clean, and in most cases, take care of the children. They were known as the help. Throughout both the book and the movie, the African American women experienced many forms of gender, race and class inequality.

Hungry for Change is a documentary that suggests the idea that the ultimate answer to weight loss is detoxification. This film interviews Jon Gabriel, who lost more than 200 pounds of weight by detoxification. He realized that burning calories was not the right way to the weight loss he was looking for. He explains that the human body holds on to fat in order to defend itself against toxins. After he started detoxifying, the weight he had been aiming to lose starting coming off once he started detoxifying, the weight started coming off all by itself.

In the film A Class Divided, an Iowa school teacher who, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968, gave her third-grade students a first-hand experience the meaning of discrimination. Ms. Jane Elliott divided her class by eye color -- those with blue eyes and those with brown. On the first day, the blue-eyed children were told they were smarter, nicer, neater, and better than those with brown eyes. Throughout the day, Elliott praised them and allowed them privileges such as a taking a longer recess and being first in the lunch line. The brown-eyed children had to wear collars around their necks and their behavior and performance were criticized by Elliott.

The movie that I chose to critique is Rear Window, a realist film by Alfred Hitchcock produced in 1954. Starring James Stewart, Grace Kelly and, Wendell Corey. The genre is thriller and the sub genre is suspense infused with mystery. Rear Window is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most inspired audience participation films. When a person watches it, he feels, tantalized, shocked, and exhilarated. Further in this essay, I will summarize the plots, discuss the styles used, and deconstruct parts of the film.

Dialogue is the "meat" in a screenplay. The role od dialogue is to push the story forward and shows us who the characters are. Seeing is believing in film. It os called visual storytelling for a reason. I didn't realize how much could be wrong with one's dialogue. For the short, Intercambios the dialogue was on the nose. One technique that comes to mind is K.IS.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid." This film kept me engaged and emotionally invested. The subtext was wonderful and I knew what the characters meant by something that was not said. The script on paper was very clear. There were no extra lines or "talking wallpaper." The dialogue describes Cristina as an honest and hardworking daughter, helping to support her struggling family in another country. She saved eight thousand dollars to help them and went to the bank to wire the money to surprise them. The subtext shows who she is and so does the script. She calls her mother being so happy and humble. It indicates that she is hardworking. From the prepaid cell phone to the mattress that lay on the floor, I knew she was honest. However when she meets the

In this documentary, director Kirby Dick sheds a bright light onto one of society’s most hushed-up subjects--rape. Specifically, rape on some of the most prestigious college campuses in the United States. Institutions such as University of Tulsa, Florida State University, Arizona State University, and Oklahoma State University are only a few of those under fire for their methods of handling sexual assault reports. Likewise, the film does not spare Ivy League universities such as Harvard and Yale, exposing their investigation track records right on screen. The documentary The Hunting Ground is very effective in bringing attention to the reality of sexual assault on even the most popular college campuses through personal interviews, statistics, and testimony from former college officials.

The Stories We Tell is a documentary film directed by Sarah Polley. The film follows the story of her family up to the discovery of Sarah’s true parentage from an affair that her mother had in Montreal. The film uses contrastive organizing to present various viewpoints on the life of Sarah’s mother, Diane, through interviews. One interesting aspect of this film is that it tells the story outside of the directors perspective but it is ultimately centered on the directors life. Sarah is interviewing the friends and family members of her mother but she never actually answers any questions herself or describes her accounts of her childhood or the discovery of her biological father. She remains investigative and unsentimental. The Stories We Tell

The next morning, Riggan wakes up sleeping on a trash bag and starts walking through New York. The voice in his head takes the form of his old Birdman character, who say that he does not need this play and he then imagines the city turning into a blockbuster film with exploding buildings. A man find him on a ledge and asks him what he's doing. He proceeds to jump off of the ledge and fly through the city like a superhero and arrives to the theater. We get the idea that it was all in his head because a cab driver follows him in saying that he forgot to pay.

The camera at first pans along the ground, giving us a full shot of the pigeons eating seed. It then tilts up into a low angle shot of the old man. The camera gently slows to a close-up of the man's facial expression. Darabont then shows us a full

This forces the story to be as fresh and exciting as the films characters themselves. This creates several moments in Birdman where the story just falls flat and the audience is forced to sit through some boring plot point that they can accurately guess the result of. A perfect example would be when Keaton’s character enters his dream like hallucination and miraculously flies through New York City, symbolizing his soul becoming free and giving him all of the answers to his life’s problems. This out-of-body experience problem solving has been seen numerous times before; The Big Lebowski, It’s a Wonderful Life, and A Christmas Carol. Whiplash’s story on the other hand, does not have any cliché moments. This is due to the types of characters created by Chazelle never being seen by an audience before. These characters don’t only allow for a fresh story, but are able to make scenes express pure emotion and come alive. This happens most noticeably in the story during the performances and practices shown throughout the film. During the opening scene, where Andrew is introduced, he is alone and fills the room with music, giving extremely clever exposition allowing the audience to immediately be filled with intrigue. As the film continues we return back to this room, except this time Andrew is aggressive and furious having the intensity of the music express

Throughout this class, various discussions and blogs have been used to analyze the different elements of films such as theme, cinematic techniques and genre. It is time to bring all of these separate elements together in the analysis of one specific film, according to class text, “analyzing levels of meaning below the surface story can greatly enhance enjoyment as well as understanding of a film” (Goodykoontz & Jacobs, 2014. p. 10.03). There are several different approaches to film analysis including formalist, auteurist, and generic or any combination thereof. Utilizing a genre theory lens, the 1956 film The Searchers will be analyzed addressing contextual information, story/plot, aesthetic choices, social/personal impact and how these areas come together to develop the film.

Many live attempting to decipher the riddle of life. What is life? What is the purpose? What makes? Even though we only seek happiness why can’t we ever seem to achieve it? When we do reach happiness why can’t we seem to grasp it and hold it for more than the few short hours that pass like seconds? The question we must answer first is “What makes happiness, true?”