The Shining Scene Analysis

Lloyd Scene

The scene begins with Jack walking down the corridor with backwards tracking long shot, the lighting is clearly from the candlelit chandelier. In the scene we hear non-diegetic music playing as he walks through the corridor, the way in which the stringed instruments are played gives the impression that something has happened and his mind isn't quite right at the moment. In the scene there is mirrors on the left side of, as he walks past this mirror his attitude changes and he becomes more angry, this is shown with him waving his arms up and down, this is also shown through his facial expression, I heard what i thought to be the sound a child makes when he doesn't get what he wants, another thing to suggest how his mind is handling the hotel. He is alone as he walks down this corridor, which could suggest his isolation. The non-diegetic music that is playing sounds as if it is trying to build tension as it gets louder. When he walks in "The Gold Room", the whole room is under low key lighting, until he turns the lights on, which then completely shows off the gold aspect of the room. It cuts to a side on tracking shot of Jack as he walks across to the bar.The room has green tables and red sofas all around the room, which is a contrast because of the connotations associated with the colours, green represents nature, growth or safety, whereas, red represents fire, blood, power so not the safest of objects. The music then begins a  diminuendo, immediately after its crescendo. The lights are on, but the room still seems to have low key lighting. the camera stops and pans across as Jack continues to walk and we see several mirrors and Jack's reflection. We then get a corner shot from the bar as he sits down and we can no longer see the mirror, he looks left and right looking for something, his sanity maybe? When he is looking we get sudden bursts of sound as he turns his head. He starts talking to himself, when he is alone, saying that he'd "Do anything for a drink" covers his face with his hands then looks directly at the camera, which happens to where the mirror was. He says "Hi Lloyd" when we know that there's no one else in the room and the camera is exactly where the mirror was. We then have a view to the side of Jack looking forward to see no mirrors but a person standing there. Whilst they are talking you can hear an echo in their voices because the room is empty, isolated. Jack mentions that Lloyd is the best bartender from Timbuktu to Portland Maine, this means Jack has seen Lloyd before, possibly because Jack is insane ,sees people and hears voices. He then starts talking to Lloyd about how he didn't hurt Danny, when he mentions Wendy, his face went from a smile to angry, could show hate towards her. Then he says that he did hurt him once, but he says it with a smile on his face,generally if someone harms their child, they don't smile about it.

Delbert Grady Bathroom scene 

At the start of the sequence we are shown a red and white bathroom, two colours with opposite connotations towards them, we also hear diegetic music play combined with the diegetic sound of their voices. When the door is about to shut the diegetic sound of the clapping after the music from the sequence before has finished, but Jack, Wendy and Danny are the only ones in the hotel.The whole bathroom is full of high key lighting. When Delbert is wiping the drink off Jack, he seems to go into the position of someone who is receiving a pat down from a police officer, this could be foreshadowing. In the scene, there are mirrors in which we cannot see either Delbert or Jack in, this could be the angle that Kubrick has chosen to obey the rule of thirds or he had them there to show how Delbert isn't actually there. It cuts to a mid shot of both of them, whilst Jack is looking through the mirror, and not at Delbert, when he is meant to be talking to him, maybe he is. When Jack is told Delbert's name his facial expression changes completely, from happy to confused to angry.He then looks in the mirror again, after asking if he has seen him somewhere before. Jack asks about his family, Grady responds with "a wife and two daughters", the two daughters we keep on seeing throughout the film and the wife ,who was in room 237. Jack seems to be acting all smug about how Grady was the caretaker even though he denies it. The scene follows the rule of thirds, as always for Kubrick. After Grady informs Jack of him being the caretaker, there's a moment of silence and confusion on Jack's face. We then get a mid shot reverse shot of the characters to show Jack's reaction to the revelation, this is to add effect on how Jack's character has developed as the film went on. This film has many racial slurs in it because of the time it was made. When they are talking about the outsider being brought in the way in which both of them are standing are completely different to each when they are meant to be the same person, this could just be all in his head. The performance by Phillip Stone is great because of how he went through this scene with basically only one facial expression, disgust due to the Danny bringing Dick into the situation. After this, Delbert tells Jack that Danny s a very willful boy, Jack continues to look back at the mirror constantly, it's as if he doesn't know what is going on. Inference is used a lot during this scene as it is not obvious, to me, what they are actually talking about. Delbert tells Jack that he corrected his twin daughters, corrected could mean correction as in death, this is shown in the way he says the word "corrected".

Genre themes and conventions

Western

Conventions

• Six shooter guns
• Cowboy hats
• Saloons 
• Horses
• Lassos

Themes

• Duels
• Bar fights
• Robberies
• Cattle herding
• Sheriffs in control 

Fantasy

Conventions

• Elves
• Magic
• Dwarves
• Unicorns
• Dragons

Themes

• Save the princess from the dragon
• Religious concepts e.g Heaven and hell
• Different worlds e.g Middle Earth
• Mythological
• Historical

Film Self Reflection

Film Self Reflection

Our film really, really did not live up to our overall expectation, this is due to multiple reasons that I will explain. As a non-horror fan, the project seemed sketchy in the first place, but I had to try anyway, and I did, the storyboard we created worked well. We all liked what we had come up with, we came up with the expected amount of scenes, 10-12, and what they entailed seemed good. However, we did not manage to film that many scenes, this is due to the group not communicating as much as we should have. we did not organise enough out of lesson meetings to finish filming and by the time it came to editing, we did not have enough scenes to be able to finish.
The editing process seemed to be a failure due to all the background sound, not enough scenes and lack of experiences using the software. I was in charge of editing this film but i did as much as I could without the others. If we had met up I would have asked opinions of which music we should put over the top of the background sound. I was told that I had duplicated scenes when editing, which is a mistake that would have fixed when the scenes had been finished. The film, having not met the expected scene amount, also did not have the expected shots that were required, our film had a pan, medium long shot and an extreme close-up.
The editing could have been improved if we had more time to do this film, we had less than an hour planning and roughly an hour to film. We did not manage to film all of it in the hour given so we used the editing time to finish filming, and we still did not finish, We then had no lesson time to edit, so me and another member of our group helped me edit part of it, out of lesson but still didn't finish due to the lack of scenes. I went off on the storyboard unintentionally but I did nevertheless.
Overall, the film turned out as a failure and I believe no one in the group was impressed on the outcome. Personally, I believe it to be more my fault than anyone else but the whole of the blame could not be placed on one person.

Film clip Analysis

Cold Mountain 

The clip begins with an extreme long shot/establishing shot over a snow covered forest with a mountain range in the background as a man walks across the snow. At this point I was confused as I had never heard of the film before, after i watched the clip I researched a little bit into film. The scene has music to develop the emotional feeling of sadness as it starts off slowly and increases to  high pitched notes on a stringed instrument throughout the shot.
It cuts to a mid up of the man walking up some snow and it pans up him as he's walking up the mountain. This scene shows off the mountainside in the background when the man has his back to the camera. The camera the cuts to the man as he sits down and cuts to the a mid close up of the man's face to show his emotion, the man then huffs as if to say he's fed up of all this. We then hear a female voice saying " my love, where are you?" creating confusion within to the audience, who watch this clip, the man then looks up as if he can hear this, then it cuts to a woman who doesn't speak but we can assume it is her who is narrating, she says "with no hope of reaching you, I write to you, which could imply that it is a letter with her narrating, like some films do with letters. The woman seems to have a quill in her hand and smudged ink on the bottom of her hand. the lighting in the scene is the candles that are in plain sight in front of her although not in focus. The woman seems upset due to her husband/boyfriend, unclear which, being away, this becomes more clear when we see a tear come from the woman's eye when she turns, which is probably done to make the tear more clear with the candlelit lighting.
It then cuts to the a night scene in the middle of the woods and several people are around a campfire. We see Brendan Gleeson singing, diegetic sound, as he puts more wood on the campfire, another person walks through when it cuts to the outside of the campfire, where we can all the area, and he has more wood. Then, someone else comes into the shot holding a dead pig and saying " Do you reckon we can eat this?" he says this the way he does to add comedy to the scene ,in my opinion because I found it funny. Others come riding to the ones around the campfire which gives them a little bit of mystery behind them, this whole scene is set at night with the only natural lighting being the campfire. More mystery is added when a kid is shown peering over a log, I found this to be confusing and all I could think was "why is this kid hiding from the rest of the group?" and "who are these people?" There's no music throughout most of the scene until they all start singing but the music remains diegetic. During the scene when they first meet the ones on the horse, one of them says "that your wife?" ,with a slight country accent, and Brendan Gleeson character responds with "that's a he" which adds comedy to the scene in my opinion. During the campfire scene right before the character that joins them sits down it shows a long shot that shows the amount of people around the campfire and the pig that is roasting over it. The sound of the fire can be heard to add the affect as it burns throughout the scene.
The man, who was asleep, wakes and is greeted by the person next with "evening Mrs" which also adds comedy. That man , to me seems to be not all there when Brendan Gleeson seems to lie about where they are heading and that man just tells the one he was lying to where they were going.
When they start playing I felt crept out and disgusted because I don't like the string instruments and the way they sound but it still didn't sound like they knew what they were playing. The words of the song don't seems right either "and the poor girl was dead and gone". During their song we get a look at a very creepy looking man, played by Charlie Hunnam with a mid close up and then a mid close up with Brendan. Then we see a medium shot of Brendan, the other player and the man, the man gets up to leave as Charlie's character watches, creepily in my opinion, as Brendan looks at the man with what looks to me as disgust. It then cuts to a mid shot with the man on the right in focus, but looks a bit suspicious as if he were going to do something really bad. It continues with the men singing and playing their instruments but then it cuts to the man again who looks even more suspicious but is a side on close up this time, then he begins to sing ,which puts me in edge as I don't like him because he seems wrong. Charlie Hunnam looks at him and this also puts me in edge because I don't trust these characters. The words to the song add more effect of creepiness. We then see a kid again, appearing throughout the clip, and he doesn't look trustworthy either because he is hanging at the back of the part they are, he's away from them, this is shown through the lighting of the shot and the unfocused log at the bottom of the screen. After the song is finished, Charlie's character says "broke my young heart" in a sarcastic tone and given what he looks like and he said it without changing his facial expression makes him seen more creepy to me. The characters that came in the scene earlier on, have now given commands to the others in a unfriendly manner and have now shown why they looked untrustworthy. The kid is shown, seemingly about to throw up, indicating that the is disgusted with what just happened. The man then tells the other person to "quit smiling" again, showing they are not nice people. The man then shoots the other person after telling him to put his hat over his face, this creates sadness and shock throughout me and the audience, Charlie shoots Brendan as he attempts to run also creating shock , even in the background we hear the horses screeching with shock.
We then cut to the morning and on a farm where a young lady is cutting wood and she looks over when we hear the kid shouting "they shot your daddy", the woman seems to be angry when we next cut to her walking to a barn with someone else in, she grabs a saddle soon after. The other woman she is with is clearly upset as you can hear it in her voice. The music then begins again after as they are talking to create more of a sad atmosphere.

Induction Tasks

How did Jurassic world become such a success

Jurassic World completely stole the show for a number of weeks in the box office. It was monstrous throughout its first month. In this discussion i shall go through the possible reasons on how it became such success.

Considering what it had to top with the first movie, Jurassic Park, it did extremely well in most people’s opinions. The second and third Jurassic Park films paled in comparison to the first leaving Jurassic fans disappointed in what that got. Jurassic world changed all that and left Jurassic fans pleased with what they got. After 14 years since we last had a Jurassic park film and 18 years since we had the genius Steven Spielberg directing, fans of the films were excited to see how much 22 years could do to the islands of the coast of Costa Rica. This film was set 22 years after the events of Jurassic Park, which is a long time and if people watched Jurassic world as a kid, they would now be fully grown adults, with the possibility of children with them, that being said, it is fair to say that those children that watched Jurassic Park 22 years ago would like to see the next chapter in the saga and it is likely that their children would also like to see this film because not many kids don’t like to see dinosaurs.

If we move away from the film for a minute and discuss how perfect the timing of this film was, that could have played a huge factor in the films success. It was released in the early summer months before films we all knew were going to be a massive blockbuster and it was timed with school holidays in mind so that more people would have their chance to see it.

Jumping back to the film, its success could be due to the change of characters rather than doing what the other sequels overly-relied on, which was the characters. The other sequels kept bringing back character we had already seen before and giving us nothing much new but what Jurassic world did was bring in entirely new characters with different backgrounds and professions.

Whilst on the subject of characters, for these characters they have had to bring in new talent to play them. New talent that includes Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard etc, but they also used some not-so-new talent in Vincent D’Onofrio, Irrfan Khan and even BD Wong, who returned from the first to bring in as an antagonist and a slight hint towards a sequel.

We now live in a movie world chocked full of sequels and relation to other media e.g comic books, this gives directors and other members of the crew to put in nods to the nostalgia and jurassic world is one of those films. It hints towards every Jurassic Park film with slight things like Ian Malcolm’s book, Mr DNA and the man that created it all John Hammond. Thankfully it doesn’t over-rely on these little nods

My favourite film of Summer 2015

I have been to see many films this summer it is a little difficult to choose a favourite, most were good, some were bad, but one i think topped them all. The one that topped them has to be Ant-man.

I liked Ant-man because i believe recent superhero movies have just been spectacular, this one imparticular. Marvel were coming off the heels of another great superhero film in Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-man is not a very well known character if you are someone who doesn’t read the comic books, so to a lot of people this film doesn’t seem that appealing, i am a comic book reader and i knew about Ant-man.

The film uses comedy very well, unlike a lot of films recently, which helps lighten the mood for what would otherwise be a dark tone for a 12A film.

Marvel have changed their cinematic universe compared to their comic books because Hank Pym is the creator of Ultron ,the antagonist in Avengers 2, but in Avengers 2 Tony Stark and Bruce Banner created Ultron. However, in Ant-man Hank Pym wasn’t even part of the Avengers, as it showed him being part of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The casting of Paul Rudd gave a split reaction to many superhero fans but I thought it could be promising...it was a brilliant idea and went down great for me, Michael Douglas did a great job as Hank Pym and Corey Stoll, the antagonist Yellowjacket, perfected the character and the antagonist behaviour.

This film wasn’t short of great action, it was explosive all the way through, had many great sequences , my favourite being when Anthony mackie makes a cameo appearance as Falson when Scott Lang, Ant-man, start to fight over a piece of equipment Hank needs.

It also wasn’t short of emotional parts, like when the ant that we form a bond with ,”Antony” gets ,seemingly, killed by Yellowjacket. Other things like when yellowjacket goes after Scott’s daughter.

The film has great visual effects and CGI but also not too much of it. Visual effects on the ants were absolutely stunning.

As a custom for marvel films there were 2 post credits scenes which were fantastic and clearly expand into the larger marvel universe. Stan Lee made a great cameo as usual.

Ant-man will clearly be part of the upcoming Captain America film, Civil War.

Obviously Ant-man won’t compare well to big films like Avengers, Captain America or Iron man but is still a great and enjoyable film to watch. It wasn’t unbelievably good but was still a good family fun film.

Ant man changes the tone from dark,gloomy and no humour for the very humorous tone to bring Ant man into its own league. It was very funny, great action, great characters, good but predictable plot and completely stunning visual and CGI effects.Overall, a brilliant and must-see film for fans of the marvel cinematic universe or just fans of good films.    

AS Film Horror Essay

AS Film Horror Essay

The horror genre has changed a lot since first appearing in 1895 by Thomas Edison, believe it or not, but this film is actually only 18 seconds long and is called “The Execution of Mary Stuart”, although there has been controversy about this. Since that time horror films have increased in length over the past 120 years. It has experienced many different things from Frankenstein in 1931 to Saw in 2004, it has experienced reboots of other famous horror films. Overall the horror genre is there to create terror in your hearts for about 90 minutes or so and, for most of them, as long as they can afterwards.

The whole genre has many different things to play with, whether it’s your psychological standpoint or your thrive for action. It is intended to manipulate you, like most films, but does it so that you’re frightened. Horror films can be many different things, they can actually be frightening, they can sick, they can funny, they can be manipulative, they can be the unknown or they can be creepy.

The frightening films generally are the ones that use techniques such as jump scares and uses the music in a way that it can grab you and make you grab your blanket to cover your eyes because you don’t want to see what happens next. These films class as drama usually and horror obviously as it generally builds up tension.

The sick films, not in a good way, just are plainly twisted because they usually show things that are otherwise unimaginable; examples of this would be The Human Centipede series, Orphan,   they tend to just not censor things, or try to make you imagine what is happening, to be honest I don’t know which is more twisted.

The funny ones, my preferred type as I’m not much into horrors, are the ones that will always make joke out of otherwise serious situations and normally don’t use music that often. Some of them can create opportunities for dark comedy films that have a serious tone but do bring along some funny scenarios. Zombieland is a film that just makes you laugh even though it is a world taken over by zombies. American psycho is more of a dark comedy that has a serious tone but also comedic scenes.

The manipulative ones tend to mess with your mind as it builds upon the characters emotions and the tension that surrounds them. They are there to make you uncomfortable as you watch.

The unknown type can be known as supernatural or science fiction, it can basically be anything out of the ordinary. They can be from aliens to superheroes. To name a few, Alien, Man of Steel and The Purge.

Finally, there’s the creepy, the films that you want to watch but afterwards you can’t sleep because you think something will happen. These films tend to be similar to supernatural and follow that sort path. They just creep you out and make you cringe due to the horror of it or because of it being just weird. Films like this are Paranormal Activity, Sinister or Insidious.