When I read this story it made me think of how many of us take things for granted. This story gave me an idea to make a film with a message and maybe make the audience realise that they are lucky to even be watching the film.
The Third Option by LeRoy Bohrer
http://www.short-story.net/story.php?s=1558#
This caught my attention from the first paragraph. When you realise that a woman has just shot two people you immediately want to know why she did it. This story is very descriptive and as a result you are able to close your eyes and imagine what is happening.
The twist to the story is how it ends, she takes her own life as she cant bare to turn her self in or run from the law.
The Nightstalker by Ray Cowie
http://www.short-story.net/story.php?s=268
This story is very similar to what i am trying to show in film. This story is a mixture of thriller and comedy. From the begginning right to the end you are made to believe that someone has creeped in to a couples bedroom, after lots of screaming and crying it turned out to be a "bruised and bewildered moth".
When I read this I thought it was a person and I was worried for the people, this is the effect I want to create with my film and get the audience engaged to a point where they feel scared or somehow responsible for someone.
This fast paced short action movie,was written, directed and performed by Nash Edgerton. It is a very interesting film because their is no speech or music in it at all. The sounds are all diegetic which engages the audience and gives it a realistic feel to it.
The narrative of this short film is very simple and follows Todorov's theory. The beginning is where the man in the trunk of a car, the close up shots of his bound hands and feet show the situation he is in. These shots build suspense and create mystery. The middle is when he escapes from the back otherwise known as the point of attack or inciting incident. At this point he realizes that there is no-one driving the stereotypical red American saloon. He then jumps on top of the car where the camera arcs around the car. The camera is mainly hand-held and there is lots of movement in the shots. The ending which is when he finally gets in the car and stops it is when the camera become steady and focuses on him, this happens to try and reassure the audience that the danger is over but in fact when watching it you know that there is a twist to it.
Lovefield is about a young woman who is driving and suddenly her water brakes. A farmer on his tractor spots her and begins to help. He uses a knife to cut the umbilical cord, and finds towels from the trunk of her car. After the baby is born the police arrive.
At first there is an eery atmosphere, the dull sky, gloomy looking corn in the fields, the screeching sign and the squarking crow are conventional features of horror films. The close up of a dirty bloody foot with, the persons belongings surrounding it sets the tone.
When the knife is stabbed in to the earth, you immediately think that the person has been murdered. Meanwhile in the background non diegetic music which creates a mysterious, and threatening atmosphere increases the suspisions.
The close ups and quick cuts do not give the audience time to analyse the film closer. The wide shot of the farmer shows us the location. A farmer is a key ingredient in horror films and is used by many, this further ignites the audiences suspisions.
The POV used from the back of the car makes it seem like another person is trapped in the car but it is actually just another angle from which we see him.
Suddenly the picture becomes brighter and the colour more vibrant, the corn reflects the sunlight like a mirror which reflects the magnificent thing that has just happened birth.
Before the baby is held by the farmer there is a bit of silence followed by a fade in of sweet, pure elegant music.
This short film uses conventions and opposites to confuse the audience. As the audience is familiar with genre conventions they immediately think its a horror film.
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in his native United Kingdom in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood. In 1956 he became an American citizen while remaining a British subject. Hitchcock directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades.
Alfred Hitchcock appeals to me because he makes the audience think about what they are watching. He has a distinctive and recognizable directorial style. The audience is made to understand the cameras movement which a lot of the time will mimic the person's gaze.
When he frames shots he attempts to increase the feeling of fear and empathy. One of the conventions used in his films is the story of fugitives on the run from the law alongside "icy blonde" female characters. I also find the way his endings have twists to them very inriguing and makes me want to immitate his style.
Edward Dmytryk was born in British Columbia, Canada, on 4th September, 1908. After an education at the California Institute of Technology, he became a messenger boy at Paramount Pictures.
Dmytryk became a film editor in 1929 and directed his first film, The Hawk, in 1935. Over the next eight years he directed 23 films. This included Mystery Sea Raider (1940), Her First Romance (1940), Golden Gloves (1940) Secrets of the Lone Wolf (1941) and The Blonde from Singapore (1941).
Dmytryk, who joined the Communist Party in 1944, was involved in making several politically oriented films such as the anti-fascist Hitler's Children (1943). Murder, My Sweet (1944) was a film where he helped to create the genre later known as "film noir". Crossfire (1947) was one of the first Hollywood movies to tackle anti-Semitism, won four Academy Awards.
Blacklisted by the Hollywoodstudios, he moved to England where he directed two films, The Hidden Room (1949) and Give Us This Day (1949). However, Dmytryk had financial problems as a result of divorcing his first wife. Faced with having to sell his plane and encouraged by his new wife, Dmytryk decided to try to get his name removed from the blacklist.
Dmytryk's first move was to meet with a journalist, Richard English, who specialized in writing anti-communist articles for the American press. With English's help, Dmytryk wrote What Makes a Hollywood Communist? for the Saturday Evening Post (17th May, 1951). This explained how he now completely rejected his communist past.
Edward Dmytryk died in Encino, California, on 1st July, 1999.
The Young Lions (1958), dir. Edward Dmytryk
An interesting think about Edward Dmytryk is his 7 rules of editing.
"Rule 1: Never make a cut without a positive reason."
"Rule 2: When undecided about the exact frame to cut on, cut long rather than short."
"Rule 3: Whenever possible cut 'in movement'."
"Rule 4: The 'fresh' is preferable to the 'stale'."
"Rule 5: All scenes should begin and end with continuing action."
"Rule 6: Cut for proper values rather than proper 'matches'."
"Rule 7: Substance first—then form."
From watching parts of The Young Lions (1958) it is obvious that he followed them aswell.
Robert Siodmak (8 August 1900 - 10 March 1973) was a German born American film director. He is best remembered as a thriller specialist and for the series of Hollywood film noirs he made in the 1940s.
On Mark Hellinger's production Swell Guy (1946), for instance, Siodmak was brought in to replace Frank Tuttle only six days after completing work on The Killers.
But his first all-out noir was Phantom Lady (1944). Following the critical success of Phantom Lady, Siodmak directed Christmas Holiday (1944) with Deanna Durbin. And for the first time in Hollywood, his work attained the stylistic and thematic characteristics that are evident in his later noirs.
His black and white stylisations and urban backdrop together with his light and shadow designs formed the basic structure of classic noir films. During Siodmak's tenure, Universal made the most of the noir style, but the capstone was The Killers in 1946. A critical and financial success, it earned Siodmak his only Oscar nomination for direction in Hollywood (his German production The Devil Came at Night (Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam) would be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 1956). Robert Siodmak was considered an actor's director, discovering Burt Lancaster and skillfully directing actresses such as Ava Gardner, Olivia de Havilland, Dorothy McGuire, Yvonne de Carlo, Barbara Stanwyck and Ella Raines.
Robert Siodmak - Phantom Lady
Robert Siodmak - THE KILLERS (Restaurant scene after intro)
Cinéma Véritéis a style of documentary filmmaking, combines natural techniques with stylistic cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects.
Cinéma vérité involves interaction between the filmmaker and the subject. Some argue that the obvious presence of the filmmaker and camera was seen by most cinéma vérité filmmakers as the best way to reveal the truth in cinema.
Pierre Perrault sets situations up, and then films it, for example in Pour la suite du monde where he asked old people to fish for whale. The result is not a documentary about whale fishing; it is about memory and lineage. In this sense cinéma vérité is concerned with anthropological cinema, and with the social and political implications of what is captured on film. How a filmmaker shoots a film, what is being filmed, what to do with what was filmed, and how that film will be presented to an audience, all were very important for filmmakers of the time.
PIERRE PERRAULT - POUR LA SUITE DU MONDE
Avant-Garde
"Avant-garde" is a word from the French, meaning "ahead of the crowd." In contemporary English, we'd say it's on the "cutting edge."
Avant-garde film makers experiment with new ideas and techniques which may not make sense and sh
Film Noir
Film noir ,'Black film', is used to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas from around the early 1940's to the late 1950's.
The term film noir was first applied to Hollywood movies by French critic Nino Frank in 1946.
Cinema historians and critics defined the noir canon in retrospect; before the notion was widely adopted in the 1970s, many of the classic film noirs were referred to as melodramas. The question of whether film noir qualifies as a distinct genre is a matter of ongoing debate among people today.ock the audience. An avant-garde film is a way of the filmmaker being able to express themselves to the world.
Some avant-garde films are called "experimental, " a term popularized by David Curtis in Experimental Cinema (New York: Delta, 1971), in the sense that the films may be experiments to explore how the camera can emulate and/or enhance human visual perception.
ROBERT SIODMAK - PHANTOM LADY
French New Wave
French New Wave was influenced in the late 1950's and 1960's by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Filmmaker's experimented with editing, narratives and visual style.
The New Wave (French: La Nouvelle Vague) was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced byItalian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of classical cinematic form and their spirit of youthful iconoclasm and is an example of European art cinema. Many also engaged in their work with the social and political upheavals of the era, making their radical experiments with editing, visual style and narrative part of a general break with the conservative paradigm.
The movies featured long tracking shots (like the famous traffic jam sequence in Godard's 1967 film Week End). Many of the French New Wave films were produced on tight budgets; often shot in a friend's apartment or yard, using the director's friends as the cast and crew.
Directors were also forced to improvise with equipment (for example, using a shopping cart for tracking shots).
The cost of film was becoming a major concern,for example, in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (À bout de souffle), after being told the film was too long and he had to cut it down to one hour and a half he decided (on the suggestion of Jean - Pierre Melville) to remove several scenes from the feature using jump cuts, as they were filmed in one long take.
Parts that didn't work were simply cut from the middle of the take, a practical decision and also a purposeful stylistic one.
JEAN LUC GODARD - WEEKEND 1967
DOGME 95
Dogme 95 is sub genre of the avant garde style of filmmaking which started in 1995 by the Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg. The 10 rules define this style:
The rules of Dogme:
1. Filming must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in. If a particular prop is necessary for the story. a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found.
2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. Music must not be used unless it occurs within the scene being filmed, i.e diegetic sound.
3. The camera must be a hand- held camera. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. the film must not take place where the camera is standing; filming must take place where the action takes place.
4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable (if there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).
5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.
6. The film must not contain superficial action (murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)
7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden (that is to say that the film takes place here and now).
8. Genre movies are not acceptable.
9. The final picture must be transferred to the Academy 35mm film, with an aspect ratio of 4:3, that is not widescreen. Originally , the requirement was that the film had to be filmed on Academy 35mm film, but the rule was relaxed to allow low-budget productions.)
