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the rats

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Film 2: The Rats/Las Ratas

What did you like about the film? I liked that she wanted to get revenge  What didn’t you like? I did not like how fast it all went.  
What ideas could you use? Narrative or style? I would use the idea of getting revenge for her family  What ideas won’t you use? Why?   I will not be using the fact that the other woman killed the man, not the girl who needed revenge

In-Depth study – Mise-en-scène

FeatureExample – how does it convey meaning or create an effect
Set Design  A small resteraunt  
Costume   Waitress outfit, chef outfit and a man in smart casual wear.
Space   Lots of space to move around
Lighting  Low lighting in main resteraunt, bright lighting in the kitchen  
CompositionLighting dramatically changed from room to room  
Hair and makeup Very minimal makeup    

Eisenstein’s favourite method.

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Eisenstein’s favourite method was Intellectual montage, he would link people to animals like bears and owls. he did this because it was a silent film and he wanted people to start to have opinions on the different characters, by comparing them to animals.

this example is a fox, they chose a fox because he is meant to come across as sly and untrustworthy. this is a good example because foxes are known for being the “bad” character in films and known for not being very good.

another example of this, is the man as a monkey. they chose this because he is almost inhumanly and he is acting like a wild monkey, they chose to represent him as a monkey because he has wild limbs and he chops up things all unsteady.

methods of montage

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Metric editing- this has metric editing because the clips are all the same length, it is a conversation but all of the clips last 4 seconds and they all stay that length through the whole conversation.

rhythmic montage- this is a rhythmic montage because they robbed a bank then the next clip was them eating lunch at a diner.

tonal editing method- this has tonal editing because the red mood lighting was because he was doing injections then it cuts to a dull drained out light to show he’s having a come down from his hit.

the soviet fine art movement- coco

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Extreme angles, flattened forms, garish colors, and distorted views distinguish Expressionism, an international movement in art, architecture, literature, and performance that flourished between 1905 and 1920, especially in Germany and Austria.

Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas.

They used jagged, distorted lines; rough, rapid brushwork; and jarring colours to depict urban street scenes and other contemporary subjects in crowded, agitated compositions notable for their instability and their emotionally charged atmosphere.

El Lissitzky, Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, 1920. Courtesy Tate

László Moholy-Nagy, A II (Construction A II), 1924. Courtesy Guggenheim

El Lissitzky, Study for “Proun” 8 Stellungen, 1923. Courtesy Guggenheim

soviet constructivism- coco

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from 1917 to 1953 Russia went through a lot of changes which led to less people coming to the cinema because it was not as popular. the people in poverty could not afford to go anymore. they were in a war of politics.

From the outset, the leaders of this new state held that film would be the most ideal propaganda tool for the Soviet Union because of its widespread popularity among the established citizenry of the new land

Lenfilm, a film studio based in Leningrad, was the second-largest production company in the Soviet Union, after Mosfilm, the Moscow studio. At its height in the 1960s and early 1970s, when a cluster of young filmmakers began making adventurous new movies, it produced up to fifty films a year.

la jetee

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La Jetée (Marker, Korea, 1962) – Analysis Sheet for Evaluative Commentary

Part 1: Brief Reference

What did you like about the film? I liked the idea of the story  What didn’t you like? It was only photos. There was no real acting.  
What ideas could you use? Narrative or style? I would use normal talking acting instead of photos  What ideas won’t you use? Why?   I will not use just music and pictures because I feel like we cant see it in detail

Part 2: In-Depth Study – Narrative

Narrative FeatureExampleYour own example
Establishing protagonist – what information do we find out? How is it conveyed?Introduced only in narration – first in third person as “a man marked by an image”; then in first person -memory of incident at the airport. We don’t see him until the first experiment is shown. This shows how core the act of remembering is to his identity – indeed we find out very little about him (he remains nameless) apart from his ‘remembering’ (even when he is travelling in time).  We find out that it is experiments on a man, we can see his dreams and what he is thinking about in that moment. The man remains nameless and so does the woman, accept it’s the woman that died when he was younger, he seems to be thinking about her a lot. We find out a lot of different details about his childhood throughout the short film. He has a lot of things attached to his face and head so the people can track all of his thoughts.
Establishing other characters – what information do we find out? How is it conveyed?The Woman is the first person we see (“the only image to survive the war”) – and she is defined only by the fact the narrator remembers her. Feminist critics may comment on the fact she barely seems to exist outside the experiences of the narrator and her growing belief in him.  The woman in this film, she was killed in a plane accident when the man was a child, the woman seems to pop up in his memories a lot through put his dreams. Only the man can remember the woman showing up in the memories from when he was younger.
Establishing location (time and place) – what information do we find out? How is it conveyed?We are told immediately that the location is Paris. The bombed out wreckage of the city (real WW2 images) don’t immediately establish that this is the future until the narrator mentions radiation. The underground location beneath the Palais de Chaillet is shown by intercut images of broken cherubs and other sculptures.  We find out at the very beginning of the short film that we are located in Paris. And it shows us images of real WW2 photos of how Paris looked at that time. The underground location is shown by intercut of broken sculptures and different structures; this is telling us that the current state of Paris was not doing very well from the war.  
Creating Enigmas – what are they? How are they created?The image the narrator obsesses over is the central enigma: who is the man he witnesses dying? How does he die? Who is the woman? The still images and voiceover powerfully evoke the nature of memory.  This short film should make us think, who  was the woman that died? How does the man die? Why is he there? Why did they choose to experiment on him? The voice over narrative makes us think we are in his head.
Narrative binary oppositionsThe ‘Living Present’ vs Past/Future. As the film progresses, what constitutes the ‘present’ (for the protagonist) seems to shift from his dystopian subterranean society to the ‘past’ of pre-apocalypse Paris. This is conveyed by the faster rhythm of the montage and the sequence (18:00-18:49) where the images almost become like traditional cinema.  As the film progresses we can see that it shifts a lot from his childhood to more recent memories of him that are more like dreams because the woman is actually dead. The traditional photos they use of different times are brought into the films like the war photos and the pictures of the man and woman together as adults
Crisis – how was this conveyed?Is it the first experiment? The moment the man spots the woman from the airport? Or is it when the future society offers him the chance to escape to the future?  The moment the man when he was a little boy spots the woman at the airport with her bags waiting for the flight, this was the scientists first thought of them bing confused.
Resolution – is it closed or open narrative?The narrative is closed – but it is also in a loop: the narrator is both the dying man and the child watching the scene. This ‘time paradox’ has inspired films as diverse as The Terminator and Looper (as well as 12 Monkeys which is almost a remake).  The nattative is a closed one, because the people do not actually speak, there is sometimes a weird whispering noise because the scientists are discussing the dying mans dreams and memories.

Part 3: Meaning and Effect

What did you think was the intention of the filmmaker(s)? Intellectual message? Emotional response? Everyone is trapped in their time – they cannot escape it, even through memory. It is also about concept of photography and cinema itself, trying to ‘freeze’ time with images despite time always being in motion.How was this achieved? The use of photomontage separates each frame of the story into a frozen image – even though these are joined together using traditional narrative film techniques such as voiceover, dissolves, fades and music. As the man begins to ‘live’ more and more in the ‘past’ with his lover, the space between these frames speeds up to resemble ‘motion picture’ speed at one point. The stuffed animals in the museum are also ‘frozen’ in a single moment. Your own idea: The message was that I the old times they actually could not read minds, and we still cannot not, its showing the effects that the war had on people.            
Aesthetic binary oppositions The use of still photo images are combined with traditional narrative cinematic techniques that bring them ‘to life’… until the moment around 18:00 when they flow together.Effect of these oppositions? Shows the intensity of emotion the narrator feels with his lover: like he is finally ‘living’ in moving time rather than a series of frozen, separated moments.   Your example: The use of using a narrator was really good because we could still understand what was happening in that moment but only seeing the photos, so the narrator explaining the story was good.        

the story of film- odyssey

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birth of a nation was directed by- D.W Griffith. The Birth of a Nation, originally called The Clansman, is a 1915 American silent epic drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. The screenplay is adapted from Thomas Dixon Jr.’s 1905 novel and play The Clansman.

Comedian, actor, producer, writer, and director Charlie Chaplin is widely regarded as the greatest comic artist of the screen and one of the most important figures in motion-picture history

One of Keaton’s strengths was his sense of character development. He didn’t need a laugh in every scene. He wanted the audience to believe in his characters, which only made the comedy that much more impactful. Keaton’s deadpan expression, underreacting to incredible gags and stunts, sold every scene.

In 1928, Variety proclaimed him the highest paid film star. Harold was an innovator in the movie business. He pioneered new camera techniques and was one of the first filmmaker to preview his comedies to a test audience, and then re-shoot, re-cut and preview them again.