Stop-Motion

Over the past few lessons we have been looking at stop-motion clips and how they are developed and produced.

We watched some excelling and internet famous stop-motion clips online such as T-Shirt Wars and Jan Svankmajer's Food: Lunch.

Both of these films looked as if they were very time consuming.  I got to this conclusion after trying to work out how many photographs were needed in order to actually make a short movie; in Svankmajer's clip there were so many frames that in some cases it almost seemed as if it were a video.

I also looked at how they incorporated inhuman abilities into their videos. In T-Shirt Wars, the duo on film had shirts which 'moved by themselves' and would be affected by real-life occurrences.  As well as this, they were also able to place things into their shirts or take things out of them due to the vast number of shirts they had purchased in order to make the video.  In Food: Lunch, Svankmajer used clay on the lower half of his actors' to make it look like the central characters could eat large objects whole without the need to cut them smaller.  All of this would not have been possible if it weren't for the stop-motion element of their films.

Preliminary Task: Sprite Club

"A continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and exchanging a couple of lines of dialogue. The task needed to demonstrate match on action, a shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree."

I worked in a group with Annie Powrie, Michael Gukas and George Huggins to complete this.

We decided to chose the idea of Sprite Club (Fight Club spoof)

It was our first real opportunity to use the cameras to film and then the editing software in post-production

Sound in Slumdog Millionaire

How is sound used primarily in this clip

In this clip, sounds is predominantly featured in order to create suspense whilst provoking fear and emotion for the viewers and the characters.

There is mostly diagetic sound in the clip with a few rare flashes of non-diagetic sound throughout the clip.  Because it is a flashback, all sounds in this clip come from Jamal's own memory, therefore when he first see's the attacking mob, everything slows down and the sound becomes distorted, helping add suspense to the clip.

As the flashback ends, there is complete silence and we see a close up of Jamal's face deep in thought.  This silence successfully juxtaposes to the extreme terror and violence coming from inside his mind as he thinks back over his experiences.

Three other things to comment on

- All suspenseful tones die out as the violence starts and the slaughtering is the only thing audible.

- Faint and delicate music is audible as the character of Latika is introduced to the story.

- Before the attackers arrive, the sounds of children messing around in the river and friendly conversation can be heard.  However, all the innocence and playfulness is drowned out by the deep, heavy tones which are played over it as the attackers leave the train.

What is expected from the opening two minutes of a movie?

For me, when you are watching the first two minutes of a feature length film you would expect it to include a variety of different techniques. These are done both to inform and intrigue the audience.  Here are some ideas of what would be expected in this period:

Credits

In almost every film you see, in the first two minutes of a film, the names of the director, producer and people involved or acting in the film will discreetly flash on screen. Now these names may appear in the corner or the centre of the screen, I've even seen examples where the credits will appear behind people or be involved in the actual film (interacting with characters etc); the point I'm trying to make is that it doesn't matter where or when they appear, they will always be shown sometime during the film, often in the opening two minutes. An obvious example where the title credits are rolled is The Usual Suspects, where the opening two minutes literally only show the credits in front of a dark blue river.

Introducing Setting

In the opening two minutes of a movie it is common for the setting to be introduced.  This may be done by them using the camera to scope the landscape, giving the audience a brief idea at the terrain that the actors are performing in or the name of the characters' location could physically appear on the screen, like in movies such as Fargo.

Introducing Characters

Finally, potentially the most obvious thing you can see, but not the most common, in the opening two minutes of the film is the introduction of characters.  In many films, but definitely not all, the main or secondary characters will be introduced to the story.

'Romeo + Juliet' (1996) Opening Scene

Sampson draws his sword after instigating a quarrel.

The Mise-en-Scene of a scene in a movie refers to what we can see on the screen at any set time.  This includes the setting, props and the costume of the characters visible within a shot.

In order for us to understand this better, we watched the opening scene from the movie Romeo + Juliet starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.  This film depicts a modernised version of this classic Shakespeare tragedy, however it keeps the majority of the original language from the play, allowing the film to give a new and fresh feel to a classic and well-known story.

Director, Baz Luhrmann, decided to set his movie in and round the fictional Verona Beach.  He did this because the original screenplay of Romeo & Juliet is set in the city of Verona in Italy.  His opening scene takes place at a gas station.  He may have decided to shoot his scene here because it is an exciting and perhaps stereotypical place to set a shoot-out, especially when Luhrmann could be trying to exaggerate the fact that he is making a modernised version of the 1600s story.

The costumes for the different houses, Montague and Capulet, are very different and are chosen as a way to divide the two groups.  The Montagues are given bright Hawaiian-style shirts and seen quite uncouth and urban in their appearance whilst, on the other hand, members of the Capulet house seem to dress very smartly and professionally, wearing mainly deep reds and blacks, with expensive looking leather shoes and jewellery.

Finally the props are used for effect in this scene also.  For example, when shots are firing, a sign saying "Add more fuel to your fire" starts spinning.  This is done to show the audience that there are multiple shots firing in different directions all around the gas station.  This is a good visual effect to show the watcher that gunshots are being fired without showing the shooting itself.

Overall, the scene is good at showing many visual stimulants in a short period of time and allows the viewer to understand the feud between the two houses from the very start of the film.