Memento Opening Credits Analysis

 Immediately from the start of this film, the story line is quite intense as the first shot is a close up of a hand holding a picture. The thrilling part here is that the Polaroid picture is of a dead person with lots of blood splattered everywhere. This is an enigma code as it raises many questions such as who is the dead man, how did he die and who is the man holding the photo.The credits continue to roll as very sombre music plays (non-diagetic), and the hand shakes the photo like one would to develop a polariod picture, however the film her is going in reverse, and the image of the the picture is slowly fading.

After one minute, we get the second shot, and the character holding the photo is revealed with a medium close up, we see him take the actually photo then and there, however it is still all in reverse. The blood is seen dripping in reverse and then there are several close ups of various fragments of what he has just taken a picture of. This reveals the story in small parts and keeps the audience guessing as to what has really happened. 

The small part of action is then fastened and we see exactly what occurred in a matter of seconds. The fact that it is a murder adds to the intensity. The non-diagetic sound makes a sort of whooshing noise as we find out it is a flashback.

Immediately from the start of this film, the story line is quite intense as the first shot is a close up of a hand holding a picture. The thrilling part here is that the Polaroid picture is of a dead person with lots of blood splattered everywhere. The credits continue to roll as very sombre music plays (non-diagetic), and the hand shakes the photo like one would to develop a polariod picture, however the film her is going in reverse, and the image of the the picture is slowly fading. This makes the audience start to ask lots of questions, and there has only been one shot so far!

After one minute, we get the second shot, and the character holding the photo is revealed with a medium close up, we see him take the actually photo then and there, however it is still all in reverse. The blood is seen dripping in reverse and then there are several close ups of various fragments of what he has just taken a picture of. This reveals the story in small parts and keeps the audience guessing as to what has really happened.

The small part of action is then fastened and we see exactly what occurred in a matter of seconds. The fact that it is a murder adds to the intensity. The non-diagetic sound makes a sort of whooshing noise as we find out it is a flashback.

Quentin Tarantino - Successful Film Director

...a great, award winning American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. He emerged on the American film scene in the early '90s, unlike the previous wave of talent in American film makers, Tarantino learned how to produce films from watching films and being a video clerk as opposed to going to a film-school.

Because of this, his own personal style developed, distancing itself from what was taught at film-school and more was relevant to the popular culture around him. His films were thrillers which set themselves apart with their clever scripts and abrupt scenes of extreme violence. His entrance onto the film scene came about at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival, where audiences viewed one of his first films "Reservoir Dogs" giving it a great review and making it a cult hit. There was a lot of buzz around him and so during the next year when Tarantino wrote and directed the film "Pulp Fiction" he was elevated to being a major celebrity.

Made with just eight million dollars, Pulp Fiction grossed over 100 million dollars as well as topping many critics' top ten charts. It has earned seven Academy Award nominations, which includes Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay (Tarantino and Avary), Best Actor (John Travolta), Best Supporting Actor (Samuel L. Jackson), and Best Supporting Actress (Uma Thurman); it won one, for Tarantino's writing.

In 2003 hype began to build around his film "Kill Bill", influenced by revenge movies of the 1970s and Asian cinema. Tarantino also helped in creating Robert Rodriguez's eagerly anticipated comic book adaptation "Sin City". Tarantino agreed to help in the filming of Sin City to repay the filmmaker for providing soundtrack music for the Kill Bill films and to also to have a try at digital film-making. In 2009 he released "Inglorious Basterds", a World War II film about a group of Jewish American soldiers forming a resistence behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied France. The film was a hit around the world, and Tarantino received nominations from the Writers Guild, the Directors Guild, the Hollywood Foreign Press, and the Academy for his screenplay and his direction. Here is the trailer for "Inglorious Basterds":

Editing to Build Tension - Enemy of the State

In this film excerpt, we can see the demonstration of excellent editing and camera shots to build tension. There is a great amount of shots in this sequence, with many of them having a shorter duration to help build the intensity of the narrative, the imminent danger of the people outside trying to break in, and to mirror how fast the characters inside are working.

The close up and medium close up shots used within this sequence are great as they really help to convey how confined they are within the building they are in and it also helps to show how confined they are in terms of time. The  close ups allow the viewer to really see the expression on the actors faces and help them engage with the characters emotions. There is a brief close up of a character cocking a gun, this heightens tension as the imminent element of danger is introduced, and at this point the audience already identify with the main character and do not want to see him die.



From 1 minute onwards the tension is is built dramatically as the two characters are fully stuck in what they are doing. They are in a confined space where little movement can occur but there is still lots of things going on within the space, this is emphasized with lots of short, close ups showing exactly what the character is doing. Some close ups of the characters faces are from behind some sort of wire mesh, this gives the audience the feel that what they are doing is perhaps illegal and they could face jail time, this builds tension.



 Cross cutting is used in this film a lot, cross-cutting is an editing technique used in film to establish action occurring simultaneously in two different places. In a cross-cut, the camera will come away from one action shot to another action shot in a differing location, which suggests the same timing of both actions. In this film extract there is cross cutting showing the action within the building where the two main characters are working and outside the building where other characters are trying to gain forced entry.



The mise-en-scene is very dark and there is barely any lighting within the building, this helps in emphasizing the shadiness of what the characters are doing in the plot. Also the costume chosen helps to show the coldness of the weather, which could reflect the cold nature of the characters. A sense of isolation is felt as the two characters rendezvous on a building top, it also shows how they are above the city in some terms. The short precise shots of everything the characters are doing and heavy use of close ups really fit the thriller genre as the audience fully engage with what is going on, they would not want to blink, fearing they will miss some small detail in the tense plot.







Preliminary Evaluation

For our preliminary task we had to create a sequence which displayed good continuity in the following actions:

- opening a door

-crossing the room

-sitting in a chair opposite another character

-exchanging of some dialogue

This would all need to be edited to show good match on action, filmed with a shot/reverse shot in it, using the 180 degree rule.

For our narrative we decided to do a sequence about two students discussing whether they have completed the homework for a certain teacher, when the teacher they are talking about walks in. We felt that this was the most efficient story-line due to the setting we were already in. Also there was no research needed for this as it was something we are already knowledgeable about. The script is o the left in fig. 1

Fig 1

On the right in fig 1, you can see the shot list which we produced to accompany our story board, this was to help our shooting session go as smoothly as possible. We all agreed on what type of shot to do and quickly discussed on how to do it best. Our story board is below, again we did this on post-it notes so we could change the order around if we wanted without wasting time.

At the time of shooting it seemed as though everything was going smoothly, however this was not the case. Even though we thought that we had filmed each shot that we wanted, we came to realize that we were missing a few, also we did not stick rigidly to the script and so many of the takes we had filmed could not be used due to conversation continuity fails.

I was pleased with the match on action aspect in my preliminary task, the opening and passing through a door was done well, there was another moment involving the turning of a characters head. You can see them in the two screen grabs below where the match on action is adjacent.

I also have an example of the character walking across the room, we used an over the shoulder shot, this was to establish the other characters presence to the audience. All of the exchanging of dialogue takes that we were able to use because they had good continuity happened to be over the shoulder shots, so it was a shame that there was no variety of camera angles. 

From this preliminary task I have learned to strictly stick to the script, and that actors must do the same thing each time in order for there to be good continuity. I also realized that you must tick each shot off the shot lost after you have filmed it, this was a basic mistake which we made which was the cause of the main issues of our preliminary task.

Preliminary Task

Latymer Opening Scene Analysis

I am going to analyze this film opening by students from Latymer, their film is called The Safehouse.



From the main mise en scene, we can see a young girl recollecting memories from a certain night. She is talking to the camera as if it is some kind of therapy session. There is nothing in the background and she is in the center of the shot, denoting that the story revolves around her and is centered on what happens to her. It can also show how she feels confined to stay within those four walls, in fear of being attacked again. To echo this, her costume is a hooded jumper, commonly worn inside the home, for comfort, showing how she is in a time of need and wants sympathy from the viewer. The lighting is rather dim reflecting the mood of the narrative, also the events in her flashback take place at night, which is a dark and dangerous time to be out for a young girl, this foreshadows the events which eventually takes place.

The music is very gentle which is complimentary to the scene as what she is discussing is a very sensitive subject. However as the sequence progresses, during the flashbacks, the music does get more louder and takes on a more serious tone. Even though it does get louder, it is still at a suitable volume, whereby the diagetic sound is still clear and coherent. With the use of the typewriter noises whilst the credits appear, it is unclear whether this is diagetic or non-digetic sound, however it still fits well with the narrative as it sounds like someone is transcribing what the character is saying. It also matches the font used for the credit, which come in the correct standard order.

There is a good example of match-on-match action in this trailer, it occurs when the main character is opening the door and walking into her house. They seamlessly edited these two shots for great continuity. The effects used when the character trips over are a positive as it helps the audience engage with what she is experiencing (dizziness).

Soundtrack Analysis - RockNRolla

Here I am analyzing the opening scene of the Guy Ritchie film RockNRolla, in terms of the soundtrack.

 

Opening Credits - RockNRolla

rocknrollastills