How is Age represented?
Camera
Camera Angles have been used to show authority, for example when the teenage girl, and the man were arguing, it was clearly he was the more dominant one, as the camera angle illuminated I'm by recording from a lower angle pointing upwards. The low angle shot would make her seem smaller and would highlight the aim of the scene, that he has the power, probably due to the age difference and the fact that shes actually a girl who is in the hands of this man as she is living in his household.
In the scene when they are all working together at the Farmland, the camera angle is in such a way that it makes all the characters in that scene seem equal. This also links to the fact that they are all working together as a team, and are all, seemingly, around the same age.
Sound
Different sounds have been used to help set the mood of different scenes. A prime example of this would be when the director shows the contrast in the different scenes of when they are working together in the Farmland, and the teenage girl planning on leaving due to the argument she had with the Man of the house. in the farm-working scene, a jolly tune has been used to actually express the jolliness of their work, and to give that sort of nice team-working atmosphere where everyone is happily working together.
However a switch to the teenager quickly expresses a sad atmosphere, with a more slow tune that helps set the tone of the scene due to her leaving. the difference in the music expresses the difference in the scenes, and therefore helps set the tone of the scenes. A clever contrast and switch between these two scenes will create more of an impact as one scene presents a more fast paced, jolly-style instrumental whereas the other scene presents a more slow-paced tune that then helps make the scene more saddening, and also helps the audience realize what is actually happening.
The Sound here shows the difference in Age through their moods, as shes a teenager, they are, in these scenes, representing her as a girl who is going through mood swings, and is sad, whereas, the elders are more jolly, due to their age, and are happily working together.
The fact she crashes gives her that amateur look, and obviously highlights the fact she is young, which is why she probably cannot drive that well. This is a major part of how her age ius represented as it is the first actions she does that represents her age. The fact that someone runs to her to ask her how she is also expresses that she is young, and needs protecting.
Mise-en-scene
The elders are presenting in a more dull, typical style clothes, with majority of them wearing similar clothes, which are a shirt and a jacket to cover it, both of which do not have eye-catching colors. This has cleverly been done to actually ensure that they are looked at a more serious light, and are presented in a more mature, elderly way. The teenager, however, wears a yellow top, which arguably, is the most eye-catching color, this paints her in a more young way, and belittles her. Her hairstyle is in a ponytail, with a hair band that is shaped like a flower, which also, makes her seem more young, and little.
The rooms thy both have represents their age in a significant way, as her room consists of bright colors, and small puffy pillows giving her that child-like look. furthermore, to aid this representations, her room consists of several teddy bears, which also make her look young, and represents her in a more child-like way. In her last scenes, we are shown her handwriting, which is written in pink, and is curly, and written in a fancy, fairy-tale story type way, which also helps represent her in a child-like way, and aids in belittling her. Her top eyelid has a form of blue makeup on, which also gives her that teen-look the directors were going for. On her bed there are also magazines which ensure that she is given that teenage look, and since it is expected of a teenage girl to have some interest in some girly magazines, even though it is an obvious generalization.
The man however, is presented in a more sophisticated manner by placing him in a gentlemen's club, where he hosts a visitor. This shows his authority over the household due to him, which, by and large, represents his age. He greets the visitor with brandy, and even has the right Brandy vase, expressing his financial sophistication, and therefore hinting at his mo0re mature, age, and his responsible manner, as he is running the household. The room is made of wooden walls, giving it a dull-like atmosphere, however the fact that its different to the rest of the Household gives it an interesting touch.
In the scene where the Man is telling of the teenage girl, his acting helps show the age difference as he is illuminated, and he points and shakes his finger at her, giving it that typical telling-off gesture, which by large shows his superiority. There is also the scene where the girl is in the blue Car, and through ther camera angle it gives a more analysing way, as if we are analysing the girl as it semi-rotates around her. She is repeating procedures she has been told presumably by the Man of the house who taught her how to drive. The fact she does this gives her a young look, and exposes her youthness.
The fact she crashes gives her that amateur look, and obviously highlights the fact she is young, which is why she probably cannot drive that well. This is a major part of how her age ius represented as it is the first actions she does that represents her age. The fact that someone runs to her to ask her how she is also expresses that she is young, and needs protecting
Editing
Through editing the teenage girl is represented in a fast way, showing hat her youth makes her more fast-paced person. For example when she leaves the household, right after the old lady walks in to look for her, even though they are trying to convey it in a way that she did not run away straight away, and that she had left a while ago. They make this clear through how they camera angle moves up from the wall, showing time has passed.
There is also a gap in the time when the old lady goes to tell the Man of the house, who is busy working on the farm-lands, that the young teenager had ran away, since she arrives at the place right st the next scene.
The part when the girl is driving the car, the Camera's are focused on the other members of the scene, who are loading items on another Car, and then the loud crash is heard, showing there is no continuity error, and it gives that atmosphere that the Camera was left to roll.
Wednesday, 22 February 2012
Wednesday, 8 February 2012
Monsters Film Commentary
Despite having a budget of £5000, Gareth Edwards managed to steer Monsters to success, with a Box office of 4,118,738. Where once the point of CGI in cinema might have been to produce images of crystalline, almost architecturally detailed clarity, now its future seems to lie in smudging, smearing and making indistinct. This terrifically exciting sci-fi movie from smart young British film-maker Gareth Edwards is a case in point. His digitally created beasts, and the exotically wrecked landscape they inhabit, seem to have been created from a kind of social-realist grime. It's strictly 2D: Edwards is the anti-James-Cameron. The effects don't draw attention to themselves: tentacle-waving aliens are all part of the general, grubby absence of law and order.
The film was devised, story boarded and directed by Gareth Edwards, who also worked as the visual effects artist. Allan Niblo and James Richardson of Vertigo Films work as producers on the production. The filming equipment cost approximately $15,000, with the budget coming in at under $500,000.The film was able to be made on such a low budget due to the use of prosumer cameras to capture digital video rather than the more expensive 35mm film. Any settings featured in the film were real locations often used without permission asked in advance, and the extras were just people who happened to be there at the time.
Edwards had the idea for the film while watching some fishermen struggling to haul in their net and imagining a monster. He had the idea to make a monster movie set "years after most other monster movies end, when people aren't running and screaming, but life is going on" and "where a giant, dead sea monster is considered completely normal." He pitched the idea to Vertigo Films, and they asked Edwards to watch a film called In Search of a Midnight Kiss which starred Scoot McNairy and had been made for $15,000. As the chemistry between Edwards's two characters was so important, he wanted a real couple, and luckily McNairy's then-girlfriend (and now wife) Whitney Able is an actress, and joined the project.
The film was shot in Belize, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Texas in the United States, over three weeks. For about 90% of the filming the crew comprised seven people transported in one van: Ian Maclagan (sound operator), Jim Spencer (line producer), Verity Oswin the Mexican 'fixer', Edwards, a driver, and Able and McNairy, the stars. As the low-budget production didn't run to a camera dolly, Edwards made do by sticking the camera out of the van window, cushioned on some bundled-up clothing.
As most of the extras were non-actors who were persuaded to be in the film, their action was improvised. "As a result of all this random behavior, the idea of scripting the film went out of the window. Instead I had a loose paragraph describing the scene with just the main points that had to be hit; how the actors carried this out was left up to them." Each night during the shooting period, the editor Colin Goudie and his assistant Justin Hall would download the day's footage so the memory sticks could be cleared and ready for the next day's filming. While new footage was being captured, the previously captured footage was being edited back at the hotel in which the production team was staying.
Back in the UK, Edwards had over 100 hours of unique, ad-libbed footage (rather than repeated takes of scripted scenes) to edit into a coherent film. Edwards did all the special effects himself using off-the-shelf Adobe software, Zbrush and Autodesk 3D Mask. The first assembly was over four hours long, but this was trimmed to 94 minutes after eight months of editing. Once the film was locked, Edwards had five months to create all 250 visual effects shots, a process he undertook in his bedroom. "[I was] churning out about two shots a day, which was fine until I got to the first creature shot. Then suddenly two months went by and I still hadn't finished a single creature shot; it turned out to be the hardest part of the whole process." Due to time constraints, the sound effects had to be produced before the special effects were undertaken. Edwards claimed that the advances in computer technology in recent years made it possible for him to create the films visual effects on such a low budget; "You can go in the shop now and you can buy a laptop that's faster than the computers they made Jurrasic Park on".
Monsters has been widely, and with good reason, compared to Neill Blomkamp's apartheid satire District 9, which also imagined extra-terrestrials in a post-awe spirit. These dirty, ramshackle creatures were just another species of the dispossessed, to be feared and hated by the white overclass. Edwards's movie imagines that Nasa received news of alien life out in the galaxy, sent up a space probe to recover some of its seeds and spores, but that the returning craft crashed in Mexico, where the aliens came to grow and roam, turning that entire nation into a bio-hazard zone. Could the panicky US authorities have deliberately allowed the alien-bearing spacecraft to crash down Mexico way, thus keeping the yucky immigrant aliens well out of American territory? Either way, the situation is now a Swiftian cartoon: the rich nation fearing its poorer neighbour. It is here that photojournalist Kaulder, played by Scoot McNairy, finds himself on assignment, snapping the aliens and their human victims. He is furious to be ordered to "babysit" his boss's beautiful, vulnerable daughter Samantha (Whitney Able), accompanying her through the ultra-dangerous alien zone to the US border. Inevitably, their relationship begins to change. The chemistry between these two characters, as expressed by Edwards himself was purely based on the actuality that they are a married couple in real.
Edwards went for the jungles of Mexico, Guatemala and Belize to tell his tale of two Americans crossing through an infected zone, six years after tentacled aliens, with a fondness for wrapping themselves around fighter planes, took up residence.
The film was devised, story boarded and directed by Gareth Edwards, who also worked as the visual effects artist. Allan Niblo and James Richardson of Vertigo Films work as producers on the production. The filming equipment cost approximately $15,000, with the budget coming in at under $500,000.The film was able to be made on such a low budget due to the use of prosumer cameras to capture digital video rather than the more expensive 35mm film. Any settings featured in the film were real locations often used without permission asked in advance, and the extras were just people who happened to be there at the time.
Edwards had the idea for the film while watching some fishermen struggling to haul in their net and imagining a monster. He had the idea to make a monster movie set "years after most other monster movies end, when people aren't running and screaming, but life is going on" and "where a giant, dead sea monster is considered completely normal." He pitched the idea to Vertigo Films, and they asked Edwards to watch a film called In Search of a Midnight Kiss which starred Scoot McNairy and had been made for $15,000. As the chemistry between Edwards's two characters was so important, he wanted a real couple, and luckily McNairy's then-girlfriend (and now wife) Whitney Able is an actress, and joined the project.
The film was shot in Belize, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Texas in the United States, over three weeks. For about 90% of the filming the crew comprised seven people transported in one van: Ian Maclagan (sound operator), Jim Spencer (line producer), Verity Oswin the Mexican 'fixer', Edwards, a driver, and Able and McNairy, the stars. As the low-budget production didn't run to a camera dolly, Edwards made do by sticking the camera out of the van window, cushioned on some bundled-up clothing.
As most of the extras were non-actors who were persuaded to be in the film, their action was improvised. "As a result of all this random behavior, the idea of scripting the film went out of the window. Instead I had a loose paragraph describing the scene with just the main points that had to be hit; how the actors carried this out was left up to them." Each night during the shooting period, the editor Colin Goudie and his assistant Justin Hall would download the day's footage so the memory sticks could be cleared and ready for the next day's filming. While new footage was being captured, the previously captured footage was being edited back at the hotel in which the production team was staying.
Back in the UK, Edwards had over 100 hours of unique, ad-libbed footage (rather than repeated takes of scripted scenes) to edit into a coherent film. Edwards did all the special effects himself using off-the-shelf Adobe software, Zbrush and Autodesk 3D Mask. The first assembly was over four hours long, but this was trimmed to 94 minutes after eight months of editing. Once the film was locked, Edwards had five months to create all 250 visual effects shots, a process he undertook in his bedroom. "[I was] churning out about two shots a day, which was fine until I got to the first creature shot. Then suddenly two months went by and I still hadn't finished a single creature shot; it turned out to be the hardest part of the whole process." Due to time constraints, the sound effects had to be produced before the special effects were undertaken. Edwards claimed that the advances in computer technology in recent years made it possible for him to create the films visual effects on such a low budget; "You can go in the shop now and you can buy a laptop that's faster than the computers they made Jurrasic Park on".
Monsters has been widely, and with good reason, compared to Neill Blomkamp's apartheid satire District 9, which also imagined extra-terrestrials in a post-awe spirit. These dirty, ramshackle creatures were just another species of the dispossessed, to be feared and hated by the white overclass. Edwards's movie imagines that Nasa received news of alien life out in the galaxy, sent up a space probe to recover some of its seeds and spores, but that the returning craft crashed in Mexico, where the aliens came to grow and roam, turning that entire nation into a bio-hazard zone. Could the panicky US authorities have deliberately allowed the alien-bearing spacecraft to crash down Mexico way, thus keeping the yucky immigrant aliens well out of American territory? Either way, the situation is now a Swiftian cartoon: the rich nation fearing its poorer neighbour. It is here that photojournalist Kaulder, played by Scoot McNairy, finds himself on assignment, snapping the aliens and their human victims. He is furious to be ordered to "babysit" his boss's beautiful, vulnerable daughter Samantha (Whitney Able), accompanying her through the ultra-dangerous alien zone to the US border. Inevitably, their relationship begins to change. The chemistry between these two characters, as expressed by Edwards himself was purely based on the actuality that they are a married couple in real.
Edwards went for the jungles of Mexico, Guatemala and Belize to tell his tale of two Americans crossing through an infected zone, six years after tentacled aliens, with a fondness for wrapping themselves around fighter planes, took up residence.
Photographer Andrew (Scoot McNairy), who admits he can get $50,000 for a picture of a dead child and nothing for a live, smiling one, is charged with escorting his boss’s shellshocked daughter (Whitney Able) safely across the US border. There’s a will-they-or-won’t-they romantic element that Edwards keeps dangling. Neither is particularly sympathetic.
What’s waiting for them at home isn’t security but further doubt, making the movie a rejoinder to the consoling structure of a War of the Worlds, whereby aliens appear, wreak havoc and leave us hugging our families. Here, they linger, and despite skirmishes in the mist, their main function is to tell us something about ourselves.
Although calling Monsters a sci-fi film isn't quite right, it's more a romantic road movie that just happens to have aliens in it. Think a cross between Cloverfield and Before Sunset and you're somewhere close.
A few years in the future, much of Mexico is under quarantine after a NASA probe crash-landed and released giant octopus-like lifeforms. With a huge wall separating the country from the US, a photojournalist is instructed by his boss to get his daughter back across the border and to safety.
Although calling Monsters a sci-fi film isn't quite right, it's more a romantic road movie that just happens to have aliens in it. Think a cross between Cloverfield and Before Sunset and you're somewhere close.
A few years in the future, much of Mexico is under quarantine after a NASA probe crash-landed and released giant octopus-like lifeforms. With a huge wall separating the country from the US, a photojournalist is instructed by his boss to get his daughter back across the border and to safety.
However, what you’ll remember most about the movie when it’s over, though, are the performances of Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able, a real-life couple playing two people who have never met before the story begins. McNairy is Andrew Kaulder, a photojournalist for a major news publisher (called New World, wink wink) who gets a call while finishing up a job in Mexico: He is to escort his boss’ daughter Samantha (Able), who’s been vacationing in the region, back to the U.S., where she is soon to be married. That’s easier said than done, since a large part of the country has been walled off for the past six years, ever since a NASA probe crashed there bearing extraterrestrial stowaways. Now, enormous, tentacled creatures roam the quarantined area, requiring travelers south of the “infected zone” to take ferries to America. It wouldn’t be a movie if things were that simple for Andrew and Sam, who eventually find themselves forced to make the trip directly through that zone, traveling by boat, car and on foot through jungles and up rivers with the help of assorted strangers.
While it’s in the nature of a movie like this that its central duo will inevitably face problems and obstacles from the start of their journey, Monsters doesn’t succumb to predictability. The complications are never quite what we think they’ll be, and Edwards keeps the tension humming by subverting expectations at numerous turns. Also by keeping the monsters largely offscreen—which is not really a tease, since we get a pretty good look at one in the opening sequence, which helps us imagine that they’re lurking just out of sight in any number of moments later in the story. Eventually, one of the giants does take center stage, in a scene that’s chilling and awe-inspiring—and, once again, doesn’t pay off the way you might anticipate it will.
Throughout, McNairy and Able are wholly believable as two people navigating their way through a perilous situation, and in the midst of the suspense, Edwards finds time for plenty of quiet moments allowing the audience to get to know them better as they get to know each other. The spectre of potential romance raises its head, of course, and it’s handled gracefully by both the characters and the filmmaker. Despite Sam being engaged, we wind up wanting these two to wind up together in the end—in part because that means that both will have survived.
Monsters has a few concerns in common with District 9 (set as it is in a region from which “aliens” frequently trek into the U.S.), but it’s not nearly as overtly political. Mostly, Edwards utilizes the Mexican settings (actually shot largely in Guatemala, Belize and Costa Rica) for their unfamiliarity, and the same goes for those locals pressed into service as performers, who add much to the overall authenticity, as well as moments of humanity and humor. The jungle locations are both beautiful and foreboding, and the final reels play out amidst a landscape of startling, evocative desolation. Monsters may not be a consistent scarefest, but it engages the emotions so well that its frightening moments, when they do arrive, are all the more potent.
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