Papers Please (2018)

This short film is based around the video game of the same name which follows a passport inspector as he goes to work accepting but mostly rejecting people from the country by inspecting their documents.

The Setup:

In my opinion the film does a good job of setting up the atmosphere. It opens with a wide shot of the Inspector walking to his stand, showing a run down outside building, cutting to inside the office with rustic colours being grey, greens and yellows. This makes the whole thing feel very 'communist' is probably the best way to say it where the majority of the people are quite poor and have to follow the rule or face the consequences. Or that's what I get from it anyway. We next get a few close ups of everything that's important to the inspector being; the rule book for his work, passport stamps, gun he keeps in his safe and lastly the photo (Looks like a poor Photoshop job) of his family which does get a few more close ups through out the piece indication how important they are.

Montage:

Once the film gets into what the Inspector does it has a nice montage to accompany it showing what the inspector looks for on the passport followed by a quickly showing the passport owners and them giving their stamp, until it's broken up by a character that is involved with the story. Where the inspector has to make a moral choice one that you can see he instantly regrets by showing a key item accompanied by the photo of the family followed by a mid shot that lingers on the Inspector showing his emotion. This is then followed by another montage indicating that he has to move on like nothing happened, until the montage is broken again where he faces another moral choice.

Ending:

Not gonna spoil too much but I have to say the ending is the weakest part about it more for the stiff acting if anything. But it does a good job of showing chaos that takes place with the inspector walking outside in a wall of smoke slowly dissipating until a gun shot rings out.

Overall the film is alright it's a 10 minute piece with an interesting concept but I wish there was a conflict between the Inspector with the Army solider.

Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFHHGETsxkE

Visitor Information

Visitor Information is another piece created and staring Alan Resnick and is a film about a man who lives in a parking garage and his calm cry for help. I want to talk about this piece because of it's sense of scariness, a lot of the modern day 'Horror' films for me aren't too scary as their all very cliched.
The general plot is: Character is alerted to 'horrific being', horrific being starts to haunt/kill/disturb protagonist. Some spooky scenes are show of the creature/ creature is shown fully on screen losing it's scare factor completely when it's finally reveled how the creature was created or how to defeat it. However, in this short piece the scariness is what is the person as we can see that he's a person but the how, followed by camera shots to make the audience feel creeped out.

Starting with why it's scary. Instead of being 'Here's a big bad creature this is what it can do and this how it's defeated' it straight up shows us here a person will an illness that looks very creepy, but then it has him talking about the visitor information about the building dropping hints that he wants help. Throughout the piece the camera shots make the audience feel very uneasy. It uses lots a zooms to show alot of the surrounding, but what makes it uneasy is how long it takes/ how far the zoom actually zooms. For instance there is apart where the character is talking and it slowly zooms in towards his face as he talk, however when he stops talking he keeps staring into the camera not averting gaze which make it quite uneasy to look at.

When he starts talking about himself the sound gets drastically louder as an attempt to hide that he wants assistance slowly dissipating like nothing has happened, this causes the audience to ask a lot of questions wondering what's wrong or how he ended up like this. Another thing about the audio is that it feels very raw being that when an interview like this is done everything is calm and the take their time where in this the character seems like he's not prepared and he's talking about what he has to say plus what comes to mind with him running out of breathe towards the end of the piece.

The thing that makes the piece scary isn't that it's trying to scare you. It's that the character is so normal and doing things like there's nothing wrong while talking about things that are wrong, having the character talking in a happy tone is unnerving to the audience and with the camera movements which are unnatural make the audience uneasy.

Link to Visitor Information - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsRNb7KepDA

This House Has People in It

So these piece created in part by Alan Resnick, is about a family setting up for a birthday party. But with a twist. The Daughter is sinking through floor, the father is having panic attacks, the grandma is stuck to the TV, a baby going missing and food in the oven nearly setting on fire.

Defiantly a piece of interesting media that I still don't have a solid clue of what going on, but the reason I want to make note of it is the way it's shot or should I say portrayed. The whole thing is shown through CCTV cameras. It gives the piece a feeling that someone is watching other then us like, the government or a secret research company because the camera placements make it feel like were being invasive. It does a good job of telling us little bit about the family, like how the grandma is irresponsible, the Son feels alone stuffing things under his bed and the mother completely busy ignoring her daughter sinking through the floor until she starts to actually disappear.

I don't think a film made completely made out of just CCTV's would be good but I feel like it could be a scene that could show lot of information about a character without it being told.

Link to THHPII - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-pj8OtyO2I  

Split Screen Editing

Split Screen editing was popular in the 60's, and is where a scene with action is split up into various different squares to show on the screen to show the audience various little details or focus on one detail to show the most importance item in frame. This techniques isn't really used today as in it's place we are more likely to use lots of quick fast cuts to show action and details as it flows better the the split screen and isn't as obstructive.

But I think it could be used well to show 2 very similar actions taking place on the screen, making the audience believe the actions are tied but instead can subvert the audience's expectation and really show two different location making the audience believe that the characters on screen were in trouble  subverting their expectation when they aren't.

Example of Split Screen Editing -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKpw8T4aItg

Musical - Martin Scorsese

Musicals came about the same time as the other two genres I've covered, but instead of basing most of in a gritty fiction they added colour painting a bright energetic world, to contrast the one they were living in being a depressing gloomy world where most of the people were in poverty.
The directors of the musical realized that film allowed them to convey the story in new ways because unlike the stage the audience will only view it through one eye that being the camera's.
Adding camera movement allowed the audience to feel like their in on the dancing making them, and this what achieved by fast movements following the characters with lots of different camera angles.

But after World War 2 Musicals went from being fun and lighthearted to showing the reality of life, showing more tragedies of life, from death to becoming a destroyed wreck. Some musicals were a metaphor for the view of America, being a shattered and desperate country, this was shown by viewing a director of a musical, showing how unfulfilling it was with the amount of work being put into ultimately leaving the director drained and feeling unfulfilled.  The genre also showed how showbiz can make families feel destroyed due to two creative minds both pushing off each-other. It did this by using the tunes and songs of characters to convey their emotion or even to allow the audience to learn more about the character.

The musical genre is still strong today with films like 'The Greatest Showman' (2017) being a big hit with audiences, due to the strong story backed up with songs that expresses the feelings of the characters.

Gangster - Martin Scorsese

The Gangster genre is a very interesting genre. The beginnings and what subjects it tries to push interest me. When it first started back in the 1920's it's key themes were people that were crooks and lawbreakers trying to to achieve their American dream. This was encapsulated in the irresponsible and ruthless ways that the gangsters lived. The audience loved this an eat it up, because it allowed them to express a side of themselves that they couldn't do in society allowing them to dwell on the violence and lawbreaking that the gangster were doing. Another thing that audiences enjoyed was the humor that films like 'Scarface' (1932) added in during the scene with a lot of action.

However after World War 2 the vision of the gangster changed, gone was the man in search of finding his dream, in his place was business man looking to make money, taken over by corporations. The first film that was shown by Scorsese was 'I Walk Alone' (1947), where the gangster would be in it for the money slowly building up an enterprise. It was in this second part of the gangster genre where the family aspect of the gangster would slowly start being implanted. Gone were the days of the lone wolves, now the gangsters were a family that you couldn't leave and wouldn't dare to leave. So when the film would show a character trying to leave the audience would be attached to them hoping for them the get what they want only to be dragged back in or taken by the Gangster gang.
It was also this genre that started to pose to the audience the question, that is 'how corrupt do you think society is?' and they did this by showing how the Mafia could control through bribes or blackmail the police and even some political figures, and due to it posing questions like that with the thrill of watching someone breaking the law draws the audience back to the genre.

It's a shame that the genre has kinda died out in modern day film as personally I think there's still lots that we can do with the genre. Even just exploring the modern day youth gangs would have a lot to show. And everyday we hear about a new corrupt member of authority so it would still work within the genre if not better showing that it's not just a few members but a bountiful amount...

Western - Martin Scorsese

In my last post I spoke about how characters should be more grey and not cut out as good or bad, and the next part of the journey of film Martin talks about how Western genre films helped out a lot in creating this.

He showed the same director with the same actor and same location and how each time he could change the film to show the character in a different light each time.

'She Wore a yellow ribbon' (1949) Showed the character as a warm hearted solider who is the good guy. To a misfit in 'The Searchers' (1956) that had his whole family killed by native Americans. Initially you think that the character is right and is a good person for avenging his family, but as the film progresses it slowly becomes apparent that he isn't a good person at all, becoming one of the scariest characters in the film. From shooting out the eyes of a dead Native to make sure he can't go into the after life. To then chasing after his niece, but the way he goes about it you think that he will kill her when he catches up.
All of this diverts the expectations of the film, painting the character as someone who could have just reasons of avenging his family but goes about it in a evil way.

It's in this genre where they explored a lot of the darker themes of the western genre, with most of them consisting of greed and revenge, and this is explored by showing 'The Naked Spur' (1953) and how a character instead of saving someone, goes out of their way to pull out a dead body from the river to turn the body in for money to re-buy his land.     

It was also in this time that they really started to delve deep into their characters, putting them at the front of the stage instead of the action. This in my opinion is a lot more interesting as it creates a profile for the character so the audience can understand them and then poses questions in the audience's mind such as what can the character do or think, and hopefully answer that question from the characters profile.

Thinking to a modern day version of the Western genre at the film 'The magnificent Seven' (2016) Chris Pratt's character 'Josh Faraday' is a mischievous character, preferring to scam or charm his way out of a situation. Knowing this, from what I would expect from that character is someone who would cheat his way around a poker table to earn himself a lump some of money before getting himself into trouble.

Personally I enjoy the Western genre of films as it was a time of exploring what the frontier had to explore with it's romantic and very gruesome stories. But I'm also not sure if there's much more that can be done with the genre other then reboots of films. But I could see a similar genre open up exploring settling on planets in a sci-fi western film which I think could be something that will be explored in the future, especially now that we as people are looking more and more into space and what it can hold. 

Storyteller - Martin Scorsese

"If you haven't got a story, you haven't got anything." Is how Martin starts this chapter off and I think this is one of the best lines I've heard about film making. I've made a bunch of crap, some of the crap has some nice shots but the main reason that it's crap is because It's not had a compelling story or the story felt disjointed. Now I'd like to think that I've become a lot better on creating stories, as it's one of my main passions and I've felt like that I'm slowly become more of an mature writer and trying to mold my ideas into something that can be great, which I've seen when creating the script for the ideas generation unit.
Some of the ideas I want to work on are slowly becoming good (I think) but I need to remember that I'm the entertainer for the audience and that sometime even if I don't like it I've to follow certain things because it's what the audience expects when watching a film.
These are things like film conventions, stereotypes, formulas, cliches and genres because it's all things that audiences have come to expect when watching a certain genre. For example a fantasy will have a hero that goes through a journey from being nothing to being worthy of their title, going against a villain that has taken or threatening someone or something dear to the hero. 

Another important part of a film is creating emotion, something that one of the first real director tried to do being D.W Griffith, he tired to make the audience feel worry, fear to excitement and happiness. I too have experimented with emotion in films with the biggest success being the Ambleside film, where we make the audience feel grief followed by success followed then by worry for the young boy's life with happiness when the audience finds out that he's alive. I still feel however that it's something that I need to work on as it's a big part of keeping the audience's attention not wanting them to get bored or getting distracted from the film.

Another thing that Martin mentioned was how directors slowly pushed these boundaries to keep audiences on their toes as directors twisted these narratives into something that audiences hadn't seen before,

The last thing I want to mention is a something mentioned by Shakespeare "Each man in his time plays many part" now this is something that I love because I say far too often that a character is too flat. Characters need to complex not having sometimes a good or bad character personality but more of a grey moral standard. Thanos could be a good example, He's doing something evil for sure.(I mean wiping out half the universe isn't exactly a good thing) but he's do have a just reason in doing so, with many people agreeing that what he did was wrong but would benefit everyone who's still alive allowing them to thrive. And I think there should be more of this in films, with characters not being so cut and clean like the Luke Skywalkers of film.

Director's Dilemma - Martin Scorsese

So a lot in the film industry is how well you can perform as a team player, as you need everyone to stay committed and all act as a team because it would result in arguments and potentially a crap film.  A good resent example of this would be the Solo (2018) film where from the start, the two directors  Phil Lord and Christopher Miller had creative difference which clashed affecting the production of the film, over things like understanding Han Solo as a character being more sarcastic and selfish then comedic. Which lead to both being fired and a new director being put in their place. And it's because of this distrust and not working/ listening to each other that got them fired and ultimately their idea's forgotten and reshaped by a new director. (Even though the film went under the radar before it even released, I actually think it's a decent film with some errors still)

When watching the Director's Dilemma it's clear that what Martin is talking about is still present in today's film processes. He said that "Every decision is shaped by the money men's perception of what the audience wants". Now not all films are like this but I feel like the latest Star Wars films, actually anything Star Wars related is following this at the moment. Feeling very political and targeted to a different audience then what Star Wars used to follow. And I feel like this is partly in fault to Kathleen Kennedy being the producer not allowing for the directors to flourish into their vision but one that will make them money, mainly being push these political agendas that subtract from the film or heavily relying on previous things that have made the Star Wars film popular in the past (Reuse of story threads like Episode 7 being a reboot of episode 4)

Even though Martin was talking how the producers took a lot of control back when he was talking about, it still feels like especially for the big players in the film industry that the producers/ film distributors only care about money instead of the creativity that can be placed into a film and going for the safe option.

But he also talks about how the directors would start to become more disciplined and started following the producers because in Hollywood at the time (still feel this in present day at times) that they wouldn't fit in and as a result would be almost feel like they have been forced out of the scene due to arguments and loss of funding or even having ideas rejected. But this in my eyes sparked an almost revolution against this with directors walking out on massive production that cost them time to make but would make the producers step back due to losing the whole production in general if they left completely. Thus allowing the director more control on set. Directors starting to stylize their films more so people would pay to see the name of a great director's film instead of the production company. This being seen with Hitchcock having his name above most of the films he directed.

Martin Scorsese - Looking back

So starting videos, Martin Scorsese talks about his childhood watching films and really about films that changed his life.

Now being honest with myself, I need to watch more films, there's a lot of classics I haven't seen like 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' (1966) or even 'The GodFather' (1972) which I want to get around to viewing, but watching this hasn't just told me that I need to catch up but also to watch films that really pushed the industry into what it is now like 'Duel in the Sun' (1946) or 'The Red House' (1947) because then I start to understand how the industry has changed, as well as to spark new ideas and potentially reflect on how it was created to push myself to try new things and really experiment with the tools I've got just like they did to create something intelligent and entertaining for an audience.