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Visions of Light.
Convenions other than color and sound.
- M.O.S. meant light camera and more freedom of placement and movement.
- Hand held camera to fit into tighter spaces
- steadi-cams and pana-glides
- Moving the camera with the use of a helicopter, dollies, and cranes.
- Influences- star driven, studio system and "look"
- Gloss of Paramount. Hard Edge of Warner Bros. Glamour of MGM.
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Narrative Conventions of Sunset Blvd.
- Fem fatale- as black widows, powerful, and sexual
- Iconography of tight clothes and claws
- Weak or flawed characters in doomed love triangles
- Money, sex, drugs, and crime
- Underworld or demi-monde
- Noir love is twisted passionate, obsessive, and dangerous
- Bad luck, doom, and despair
- Fate- why me
- Unhappy and more realistic endings where people die.
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Touch of Evil
Style of Film Noir
- Characters in “real city” environments; undergrounds, rain soaked streets, sewers and subways as “city poetry” and as “visual correlative of hell”
- No escape; isolation; alienation—lighting darkness alters the space psychologically by working on subconscious
- Canted angles reflect subjective experience of characters
- Single source lighting
- Low wide angles
- On location, small budgets, short schedules
- Wet streets
- Dark vs.light as more or less “primal”
- Shadows; venetian blinds
- Sparse, Throbbing neon- heighted jeapordy "free to leave?"
- Tenebrism- walking in & out of light
- Manichiist- light & dark = good & evil
- Flagging- slashes of light
- Hand held- Canted angles of the horizon so it's not flat. designed to disorient the audience,
- Dutch angles in chase scenes
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Combat film Conventions
- Myth-
- Clear-cut right and wrong; good and evil, sacrifice made to “Liberty and freedom”
- War, death and sacrifice has a politically correct, moral meaning, and satisfying, simplistic pay-off
- Propoganda
- Conflict/frame—foreign conquest or domestic “reintegration” to home front
- Subject/treatment—gruesome realism, heroism. The “ideal” platoon—a racially integrated, well-led winner of war—fighting by Code, willing to sacrifice all for popular cause.
- Theme—sacrifice of the platoon, service of duty, honor, country
- Treatment—morale building, approved by OWI gov’t censors, films “by device
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Patriotism vs. Realism - Disparate communities united around cause
- “Heroism” equates with service; posited as reality, not “myth”
- “Realism” equates with “truth”; nothing added, no effort at deception
- Films which minister to a sometimes deceitful form of “truth” to reinforce public opinion
- Treatment of the “enemy” as evil, vicious killing “machines” or “animals” without rules or humanity
- Treatment of U.S. Soldier as “glad to die” for
causeRealism- The only legitimate movie about war would have a rifleman behind screen shooting at the audience who are wounded –Sam Fuller
- Recreating the experience of death and combat, requires a “representation” of reality, once removed, sometimes heightened or made “surreal”.
- verisimilitude \ver-uh-suh-MIL-uh-tood; -tyood\, noun:
- 1. The appearance of truth; the quality of seeming to be true.
- 2. Something that has the appearance of being true or real
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Platoon
- TAG: the first casualty of war is innocence. The “heads” know more…”feed your head” G. Slick
- “ARC- Taylor Ends his innocence “glory” of war to “realism” of survival…
- Setting up the perimeter, bugs, Buddha, “fogged” blue light
- Montage of daily life—drudgery, boredom punctuated by seconds of madness
- Black jungle, shallow focus, blurred enemy, heart beat EXPLODES in “seconds of madness” smoke, flares, screaming and blood
- MONTAGE: Don’t see the enemy, but feel them
- Realism, hyper, surreal-
- Jiggly stuff, panning fast, long lens, shifting POV making conflict and enemy unclear; a “worm’s eye view”
- Frames of reference to John Wayne & Rambo
- Visible techniques
- Scar to help characterize Barnes
- Colored flares
- Editing in the fight scenes
- Pyrotechniques
- POV Rack focus of Taylor’s blurred vision when Barnes returns in bush
- Copter aerial shots
- MONTAGE use of Addagio (Geo. DeLerue) juxtaposed with slow motion control of Elias death scene
Sentiment vs. Professional Ethics - War as exciting or exactly as it was fought or both
- The 2 “leaders” of 2 platoons contrasted as “exaggerated warriors”, representation of distinct father-figures
- INTERCUT “stoners” vs. “drinkers” as world of extremes; amber and crimson “art” of the underworld—born again, Taylor’s life begins
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Hurt Locker
- Tagline: you’ll know it when you’re in it…*
- Realism
- 1st hand account of imbedded journalist
- Location Amman, Jordan for Baghdad; portions only 5km from Iraq (Casablanca rejected)
- Real Talon Robot (Northrup Grumman) not able to fake or build; actual camera feed to Humvee used
- Camera placement 4-5 “ninja cameras” used to achieve POV (bird’s eye; worm’s eye, etc)
- 4-5 16mm “phantom” or “ninja” cameras were used to film scenes in documentary style.
- 80 lb Kevlar suit
- Real heat, real sweat, real immediacy
- Sfx dept instructed to create real shock wave
- Conventions and controversy
- In calling this a genre-flick what is the implied criticism?
- What conventions make this a classic combat film?
- Gov’t cooperation?
- Representations of the “Ideal platoon” and “heroism”?
- Moral ambiguity? Rules of engagement?
- Perception cultivated of “the enemy”?
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