By winning the America’s cup Alinghi really boosted the passion for sailing felt by the swiss population. Nicolas Wadimoff shot and edited a documentary on the swiss team when it arrived in New Zealand and a little bit before that. It was an interesting documentary to watch with some shots which are spectacular to wat watch on the big screen. There is a weak element within the documentary though and and that is the depth to which they could have gone.
L’Auberge Espagnole is one of the most interesting films I have seen recently. A young man is going to enter into the European Union offices but before doing this he must learn Spanish and understand the Spanish economy. It is for this reason that he sets off to Barcelona leaving one life behind and creating a new one. He finds the departure quite hard and once he gets there he encounters many challenges.
To what extent does genre theory, knowledge of technology at the time and understanding of the socio-political situation in America and Vietnam contribute to an understanding of M*A*S*H?
MASH, a film based on a novel is a very interesting film because of the way it goes against Hollywood’s cinema. It was created on as low a budget as possible to keep the financier’s eyes away from the set where it was being shot. It was during the editing time that Paramount studios found out about this film but it made the release.
In the film Sense, Sergei Eisenstein speaks of how each shot within a sequence is like a line within a poem. In this particular situation, the poet would be Jaques Prevert, writer of the script for Les Enfants du Paradis and Quai Des Brumes. These films were part of the French Poetic movement which was important from the mid-1930s onwards when the larger studios such as Pathe and Gaumont lost their place in the market giving greater freedom to the smaller independent producers. Producers and directors were free to make their films and had access to the big studios and their facilities. As part of this, they were also able to use the cinema circuits for the projection of their pieces so that a new wider market was easier to access. Marcel Carne who worked with Jaques Prevert on films such as Les Enfants du Paradis and Quai des Brumes inspired Jean Pierre Jeunet for his own film. Whereas there was a movement of socio-realism this movement was based upon work within studios that attempted to recreate Paris. The characters within these pieces were normally male and facing problems. A lot of poetic symbolism was used, for example with the setting, gesture. Verbal and non-verbal actions as well as movements and lighting. This ties in with Le Fabuleux Destin D’Amelie because he is using elements within that style to demonstrate Amelie within a modern Paris. The setting being Montmartre and Audrey Tautou working within a studio for certain scenes whilst going out to the Des Deux Moulins for the scenes within the café. Amelie’s character itself goes away from the French poetic movement in that she is female and works to bring happiness to herself through good actions to others.
Over the last fifteen years the media and the digital revolution have changed our lives. The digital revolution has helped people in the economically more developed countries whilst creating a digital divide between poorer countries. As the technology has spread it has enhanced the de-centralisation of industry. Those in Europe and America are part of the management whist those in Asia and around the world work as blue-collar labourers. As a result the there is divide between both groups. Alternately the world’s culture and communications have become global as in television program schedules and I-tunes with ethnic radio stations.
I Think Eisenstein was a really interesting film maker, he made a film into a peice of Opera, the shots in the countryside with huge skies and tiny people, the way he created fast pace and action with his editing style. His vision that film making is a form of poetry where every shot is a phrase and every sequence is a stanza is so interesting. His use of juxtaposition is also really interesting.
Art is a concept which is based on several factors such as your age, where you are from and how much you know about the topic. It is seen by some as something which must be clear and reflect reality. At the same time though some schools of thought believe that art can be something far more abstract where it is hard to recognise what you see as being anything at all.
A little look at Montage and editing
short introduction to give people a base from which to progress
Does Art have something to fear from the industrialisation of the processes?
Inspired by a thread on The Flipside
This is only a draft of an essay,
Writing for fun
an essay about Le Fabuleux Destin D’Amelie Poulain
Genre theory is used in the study of films in order to facilitate the categorization of films. Genre are dependent on various factors such as story line, whom the director is, what are the audience expectations et cetera. In using genre theory we create a short cut in how we are to describe films. Genre theory through it’s use is a method of shortening academic works.
In order to understand Genre we may look at several examples. When we speak of the western we know that within this collection of films we may expect to find gun fights, horses and indians, the solitary cowboy and to some degree the actors and directors of such films. Another example would be when looking at the horror film where we know everyone will die except one. The audience whom go to those films expect to see zombie, were wolves,werewolvess and more. They also expect certain content and a certain style of film making.
In the infancy of film and later television editing was not part of film making. It was staged like a piece of theatre where everything was one long take. The Lumi?res brothers for example worked with only one take to illustrate various stories. As the cinema evolved and more people began to create films new ideas emerged such as using different lenses. As films broke the idea of splicing film together to tell a story evolved until Sergei Eisenstein among many other editors began to explore Montage Theory.