Dystopian films

1. Experimental – Metropolis (1927) Fritz Lang – basic plot, messed up world, brings the basic features from a dystopian film and creates the emotional broken world around a protagonist who tries to save the day.

1. Classic – Blade Runner (1982) Ridley Scott – ruined world, people want to change it, death, good people die, reality in destroyed world. Things get better in the end. Blade Runner brings certain aspects of dystopian films in a way that connects the characters to the audience and creates distinct features for dystopian films.

1. Parody – The Hungover Games (2014) Josh Stolberg – parody of the Hunger games. Includes people fighting for their lives. like the hunger games but silly and they’re hungover. Done to make money on the back off the hunger games.

1. Deconstruction – Under the skin (2013) John Glazer – Alienation, metaphor for people that don’t fit in. Weird sounds,costumes and stuck as someone she doesn’t want to be. This takes Dystopian films to a new level and it has a dystopian base layer but in a deep and meaningful way.

“A film movement is a wave of films usually following a particular trend in cinema of the time. Most trending movements in cinema are regional but influence world cinema. These films have cultural origins usually influenced by national tragedy, popular culture, or social issues.

Experimental techniques can be used to create the innovating filming styles. Boundaries in editing are also pushed to the limit at times to give these films a unique identity. These innovating films impact Hollywood and are very important in not only the history but also the future of cinema.”

Source – 18 Important Film Movements Every Movie Buff Should Know by Anthony Crossland (2015)

You will be assigned a particular cinema movement to research and then you’ll present this  information to the rest of the group.

You should create an illustrated Blog post which summarises your findings on the assigned movement.

Your post should cover 4 specific things: •Ethos or approach to film making of the Movement •The social/historical/political context of the Movement (dates are really important!) •Examples of Directors Connected with the Movement •Examples of Films Connected with the Movement

Remember to cite the sources of your information by referencing specific websites/books where information was found cf. “academic honesty”.

This work should be complete by Mon 22^nd Feb when your work will be presented to the rest of the group.

Director of ‘Love Actually’ and ‘About Time’.

Screen played films such as ‘Nottinghill’ and ‘War horse’

Ricard Curtis is a Romantic comedy Auteur who creates sentimental films with special moments that connect the characters to the audience. Through the film, characters get closer together whilst the films aren’t always straight forward and things don’t always end in happy endings which make the films more emotive because we learn to love the characters through their relationships with others.

Richard Curtis is different to other film makers because he uses the dialogue from the characters to create humour and to also show us the relationships with the characters. EG. in ‘About time’, Richard Curtis shows flashbacks and memories of Tim and his dad and through the emotional dialogue, he shows the strong bond between the 2 characters which is carried on through the film and it becomes more sentimental and powerful when his dad dies and Tim goes to the past to have more moments with him. He focuses more on the choice of actors and screenplay rather than cinematography, editing and sound. He does this because he wants the characters to show a strong relationship with each other so it makes it more emotional when characters die or something bad happens.

Richard curtis writes about what he knows and uses his experiences to make his films relatable and meaningful. His films are based in london because he lived there for a number of years so he’s familiar with what its like. He also uses past expeirences that has happened to himself such as the death of his dad to write the dialoguwe in ‘abvout time’ and to make it more meaningful and relatable to the audience because the character ‘Tim’ has a chance to say things that many people wish they said before their parents die.

I think the best thing that Richard Curtis does that makes him an auteur is the use of dialogue to show the relationships and connections between the character and then he adds plot twists to make the audience feel emotional and to add sympathy for the characters whilst always going back to key sentimental parts to emphasise the relationship of the characters that are dead or that had something bad happen to them with the protagonists.

Wes’ Style

Wes usually makes comedies and uses comedic camera movements like whip pans and regular pans. He uses male protagonists such as Ralph Fiennes’ M. Gustave H. He uses pastel colour palettes, which gives his movies a distinct look and utilises symmetry to make every frame memorable. Most of his movies feature a score composed by Alexandre Desplat, a French composer. Many of his films are set in Europe (eg; Grand Budapest Hotel, French Dispatch and Fantastic Mr. Fox).

Film Biography

Recurring Actors

HE DID NOT DRAW THIS

“Auteur is a term used to describe an artist, usually a film director, who applies a highly centralized and subjective control to many aspects of a collaborative creative work; in other words, a person equivalent to an author of a novel or a play.”

Ari Aster is a noteworthy auteur that started his career with a handful of short films, but reaching his feature film directional debut with hereditary (2018) and later Midsommar (2019). Despite only having two feature-length films, Aster has made a significant impact on the horror genre.

His talents lie in capturing bewitching cinematography, slow burning yet effective horror and engaging stories. often subverting horror standards to a really amazing effect. i.e, trope of horror in darkness is subverted by the light in Midsommar.

Miyazaki is an auteur of animation, creating immersive and whimsical worlds, aiming to enchant his audience. His mise en scene is one of the most iconic parts of his work, with the worlds he creates being recognizable immediately. They feature muted colours and tones, and create a sense of wonder to engage the audience into his story. As he is an animator, the art style of his films should also be considered. h

Some common themes his films have are:
– Strong female protagonists
– Involves humanities relationship with nature
– The importance of art and creativity
– The value of just living

Robert Neil Eggers is a New-Hampshire-Born director, who, despite having an extremely small body of work (2015-2019, with more films on the horizon), has created an extremely distinct Auteur style of direction, screenwriting and production which has elevated him to fame, success and award-winning status, though he isn’t without his detractors, as his unique style is divisive with some.

ACTORS

Given the point in his career, Eggers has not yet established an Auteur’s Entourage fully, as many of his contemporaries garner in their decade-spanning careers (think Tarantino with Sam L Jackson, or Nolan with Michael Cain), but he seems to be starting on it early. He clearly favours character actors who can play to quite bizarre tonal shifts, and especially the rugged leading men who tend to display complex or fractured minds.

This is especially clear with The Lighthouse (2019), wherein the two leading actors are Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, both portraying foils to one-another, tired everymen who hide a hideous other half under their outward masculine bravo. Eggers seems to be fond of Dafoe, however, as he is set to be cast in the upcoming movie, The Northman (TBA).

VISUALS

Eggers is primarily a horror director, and as such, needs to make a horrifying visual atmosphere. He tends to grade his movies extremely desaturated, with The Witch (2015) being extremely greyish, and The Lighthouse (2019) being fully greyscale altogether. This is to suit the expected tone of his 19th Century American settings, as movies set in the past often suit a less colourful look.

He is meticulous with his framing and shots, being very in-depth on a level as granular as the aspect ratio, which was actually the first detail written on the notes for The Lighthouse (2019), along with its specific framerate and filmstock. This shows how perfectionist he can be with his visuals, and how well it pays off, with his extremely specific pre-planning leading to beautiful shots which play into his style.

His shots are each like paintings, making present the inspiration he takes from German Expressionism, where he composes the shots with minimal camera movement, like a stage, which the mood overtakes. Momentum is something Eggers fully foregoes in his cinematography, preferring instead to let the feeling that each scene creates drive it along.

SOUND

Robert Eggers is a two-time collaborator with soundtrack artist Mark Korven, and the two seem to be an inseperable pair from the work they have already put out. Korven has a great understanding of what the ‘sound’, or ‘tone’ of Eggers’ horrific New England fantasies, and manages to translate that into the score. The Witch (2015)’s score is permeated with a number of creepy strings, wavering harp plucks which not only reminisce of something hidden sneaking through shadows, but of a traditionally feminine sound and instrument undergoing a menacing corruption – as the film confronts in its writing.

The Lighthouse (2019)’s score, on the other hand, takes an even more cognitive approach, existing on a semi-diegetic plane wherein the sounds of Korven’s music weave in and out of the sounds of the lighthouse itself. This is because the movie uses many pipe and horn instruments, which was a conscious choice on the duo’s behalf, to avoid the traditional Post-Williams, Post-Zimmer, generic movie score sound, and it works. The use of sounds in this score is truly unique to the hypermasculine, working-class nautical theming, and it mixes in and out of the SFX of the movie, most of all an iconic and well-used Welsh foghorn which perforates the film’s timeline with its cacophonous blaring.

The mixing in Eggers’ movies is also unique, far more clear than many action directors’ mixes, but still muddied when it needs to be. He seems to understand what to silence for the focus on another point in the soundscape, and how that may affect a watcher. When the sound effects need to overtake the surrounding area, they do; when the dialogue must become the focal point, it does, and when the music should be in the forefront, it is.

INFLUENCES

Eggers seems to pull from a variety of sources when making his work, his auteur style, and special brand of horror standing proud with its roots. For example, his fixation on New-England settings, natural ‘deep’ magic, domestic horror and, in The Lighthouse (2019), semi-aquatic nightmarish gore creatures, the body of work of classic 20th century pulp Sci-Fi and Horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft was famous for pioneering the genre of ‘Cosmic Horror’ (also referred to as Eldritch Horror or Lovecraftian Horror), as well as a few notable stories, most notable of which being ‘The Call of Cthulhu’. This influence is very present through his body of work, and helps Eggers’ films display a brand of horror wholly unique from that of contemporary ‘Haunting’ stories (Annabelle, The Conjuring, etc), ‘Gore-Porn’ movies (SAW series and similar films) and ‘Thriller/Monster’ horrors. His work most commonly resembles the direction of fellow A24 director Ari Aster, though Eggers seems to skew more toward surrealism than Aster’s psychological horror.

Similarly in the vein of bygone classics that Robert Eggers pulls clear inspiration from is the Expressionist Cinema movement present in pre-Nazi Germany, which is responsible for the way we see horror today. This is something that Eggers is forthcoming about, apparently working on his own retelling of the Conrad Veidt classic ‘Nosferatu’ for a later point in his career. Worth noting is that ‘Nosferatu’ was actually Eggers’ first ever foray into directing, a younger Robert having directed his high school’s theatre production of the story in decades past. This influence pulls through in the painterly and stage-based vision Eggers has for cinematography, each shot being part still image, a moment for the eye to bask in, and a fixed frame inside of which the events of the scene can unfold.

Quentin Tarantino has become one of the most successful filmmakers since his debut in the early 1990s. He has developed a signature style throughout the making of his 9 movies and has established himself as an auteur.

Tarantino set out to make 10 films across a variety of different genres when he first began his career, he has one more film to go and many fans speculate it will be of sci-fi genre since that is the only genre he hasn’t covered yet.

Quentin Tarantino has become known for his signature aesthetic of way over-the-top cartoon-like violence and long-drawn-out in-depth dialogue between characters which take up a large chunk of his films.

Tarantino regularly has scenes with whole pieces of music where he utilizes match-on-sound which can create a childish, slapstick type feel to his films. This has become recognizable across all of his work. Tarantino movies are shot on 35mm film since he refuses to use digital film-making and is strongly against his films being shown digitally which gives them a signature look.

Alfred Hitchcock is considered by many the greatest director of all time. His title of “The master of suspense” defines his film making as his cinematography, soundtracks and themes are all deliberately and masterfully used to put the audience on edge.

Narrative themes

Hitchcock’s films often explore the existential theme of being thrust into a situation outside of your control. This is often defined in Hitchcock’s protagonists. For example, Guy Haines the protagonist of “Strangers on a train is inadvertently

Cinematography

Edgar Wright is an English direct who I believe easily fits the criteria to be classified as an auteur director. Edgar Wright is best known for the “three flavors cornetto trilogy” and other films such as baby driver and Scott Pilgrim vs the world. I would class him as an auteur director as his visually comedic style and his stylized montage sequences, though sometimes brief are heavily stylized with quick whip pan shots and zooms that give comical effect when paired with whooshing sound effects and dramatic lighting queues. His work is easily distinguishable, especially in 2015’s Ant Man where he co directed and wrote portions of the film such as a montage sequence where they plan a heist which is clearly in Wrights style with quick fast paced shots and lots of whip pans and zooms.

Wright also writes or co-writes the scripts for his films and his writing style is distinct with fast pacing in most sections but with enough breathing room in the script for jokes to be set up and land. He also uses the camera and whats in and out of the frame as a way to make a joke or illustrate a point, for instance in the worlds end when Andy says he doesn’t drink anymore we see the POV of four pint glasses filling up with beer from the bottom of the glass then one with water, which is an inventive shot and when he adds a rising Shepard tone to the quick sequence it perfectly illustrates the plot point with visual storytelling.

His most well known film is Shaun of the Dead (2004) which is part of the cornetto trilogy where he uses Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as two of the main characters throughout the films. Shaun of the Dead features all of Wrights aforementioned qualities and was his first big project that he ever created