MirrorMask An Unrealistic Fantasy World
Known for its innovative imagery, the 2005 fantasy film MirrorMask rejected realistic special effects. In one of the film’s most engaging sequences, the main character Helena is transformed into an evil princess by a group of mechanical dolls singing, “Close to You” by the Carpenters. An underground ‘cinema of attractions’, the sequence sought to engage the audience in the artistic wonder of inventive special effects. By experimenting with special effects, the scene rejected both perceptually realism and photorealism. By rejecting the normalized standard of realism in special effects, MirrorMask’s “Close to You” sequence opens the doors for a new version of special effects—one not trapped by perceptual realism and photorealism, but instead free to transform and reach towards the sublime.
Instead of embracing the photorealism found in special effects since the influence Star Wars and Star Trek, which Julie Turnock discuses in her article, “The ILM Version”, films should explore the possibilities of special effects beyond realism (Turnock, Julie). The MirrorMask’s “Close to You” sequence begins to explore the freedom of special effects through various experimentation. In her article, Turnock describes how films have conditioned
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While the spectacle engaged the audience, it didn’t burst off the screen. It remained a part of the film’s reality. In a way, the “Close to You” scene is very much a like a musical number. The mechanical dolls perform a type of song and dance routine designed to excite the audience. Furthermore, as a tamed attraction, the sequence remains within the film narrative. While the sequence celebrates special effects as an art form, it also subtly participates in the plot. The mechanical dolls dance routine hypnotizes Helena into thinking she’s the evil princess, so in the next scene she docilely accepts her
Film exists in layers of physical existence and reality. You have the layer the audience views of the film’s world - setting, characters, and plot - and then you have the layer the film production workers view of the film’s world - actors, the set, and the story. Like photography, film is able to establish a physical existence. However, unlike photography, film uses two very unique and different techniques in order to establish its physical existence. According to Siegfried Kracauer, film establishes its physical existence through representation of reality as it evolves through time and with the help of techniques and devices exclusive to cinema cameras (Kracauer 187). All the world is a stage for film, however Kracauer lists specific techniques of film he refers to as cinematic due to how these techniques are read on the cinematic medium. Although Kracauer wrote his theory on Establishment of Physical Existence in 1960, the 2015 movie Tangerine contains a fair amount of content that can be serviced as examples in order to support Kracauer’s theory. Using the 2010’s movie Tangerine directed by Sean S. Baker, modern cinema examples from various scenes of the film can be provided for examples on Siegfried Kracauer’s theory of Establishment of Physical Existence through cinema’s recording functions of nascent motion, cinema’s revealing function of transients, and cinema’s revealing function of blind spots of the
Wind instruments accompany drums to create an uncanny aura. The absence of sound effects until the girls reach the forest focuses the attention of the audience on the characters. Sound effects are introduced immediately after they set foot in the forest. This technique creates a contrast in the girls' mood - previously being sinister and silent,
The creation and consumption of films are a common favorite pastime for many people and have been for hundreds of years, but while some films can seem deceptively simple, many elements go into creating a scene, much less an entire movie. Directors use these elements which include, but are not limited to style, mood, composition and special effects to create a product that we often don’t acknowledge without looking deeper into the film. These components together are called Mise en Scène (Ebert). Of course, film can be enjoyed leisurely but there are so many more aspects of film to be explored and analyzed such as the composition of camera movement, lighting, color, sounds and music. In this case, I chose to analyze the “Redrum” scene from the renowned film, The Shining directed by Stanley Kubrick. In this scene, Danny Torrence, a five year old boy wanders around his mother’s room with a knife in hand, muttering the word “Redrum” over and over again before scrawling it across the door. I feel that a lot of this scene’s mood and style relies heavily on the camera work of the scene, the lighting and colors, and the music incorporated into the segment.
Almost every piece of cinema seeks to give the viewer an understanding by intricately assembling shots in a coherent, and a sometimes muddled, manner; the techniques used in editing places various shots in purposeful sequences, to emphasize certain relationships between shots. The shots can be arranged smoothly and logically, or shift abruptly from shot to shot; different methods of the aforementioned arrangement of shots are utilized in either discontinuous or continuous editing. Sherlock Jr. and The War on Drug’s music video “Holding On”, are two motion pictures that offer spatial relations, by applying techniques of both continuous and discontinuous editing.
This Gary Ross film is particularly captivating because of its revolutionary use of selective coloring. Furthermore, it broke an all-time record with more than 1700 special effect shots. Not only did this film create history with its special effects, but also utilized them in order to address very important themes of
After watching and analyzing the action adventure film, Indiana Jones - “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” (2008) and the Sci-Fi thriller, The Matrix (1999) many cinematic elements attracted my attention. With three very distinct and ingenious directors, (Spielberg and the Wachowskis siblings) these two films exemplified extraordinary uses of lighting, framing, editing and sound techniques unique to its own genre.
“The key is that the scene slowed things down,” said Barker. “The interaction between the characters probably could have been 10 seconds long, but instead the director exploded the moment so that the viewers could feel the senses and emotions for
Film and realism are connected to one another; it gives the audience an opportunity to interpret the film in their own perspective, in relation to the real world. As someone with a firm opposition to editing and montage, Bazin stated that the mise en scène truly represents “true continuity” in film, reproducing the real world more realistically. (Cardullo, 7) There are two editing systems: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Neorealist Cinema. From their similarities and differences, it can be said that Neorealist Cinema portrays the real world more realistically and effectively than CHC… In order to produce Bazin’s “true continuity” and reproduce situations more realistically, the filmmaker must choose an effective editing system, refrain from interrupting the flow of images, and use minimal editing, proven through the two films Bicycle Thieves (Neorealist Cinema) and Stagecoach (CHC).
The music interacts with dialogue in the film; the techno beat is, at times, accompanied by vocals, which correspond with not only what is happening in the scene, but also the internal diegetic dialogue—another important motif.
In addition individuals with autism show deficits in understanding the emotional states of others which is seen in how they imitate and perceive facial expressions. Dapretto et al, (2006) studied MNS by investigating neural-activity during the imitation and observation of emotional facial expressions in high-functioning autistic children and found activity in the anterior component of the MNS was greater in controls then children with ASD. They found that typically developing children rely on right hemisphere mirror neuron mechanisms which is linked to the limbic system where meaning of the observed emotion is understood. Dapretto and colleagues suggested that since individuals with ASD displayed a dysfunction in their MNS they have to use alternate
Previously, editing used to be a challenge for most filmmakers. Often, they relied on manual methods when filming to add effects to the films. Incorporating visual effects to the film was a demanding task that
The music interacts with dialogue in the film; the techno beat is, at times, accompanied by vocals, which correspond with not only what is happening in the scene, but also the internal diegetic dialogue—another important motif.
This paper will focus on the film techniques used by Cameron in his three most known movies, Titanic (1997), Avatar (2009), and Terminator series. Mise-en-scene according to John Gibbs is used in film studies in the discussion of visual style. Translated literally it means “To put on stage”, but for the purpose of students, it is defined as the contents of the frame and the way they are organized (p 5). In addition, a director’s style can be identified only through the arrangement and orchestrations of the film’s mise-en-scene (Nelmes, 425).The films Titanic, Avatar, and Terminator series were successful
The Kuleshov Workshop explored the effects of juxtaposition in film, and how sequential shots convey a
By making small but significant changes to the conventions of cinema, the artificiality of the