Essays on Cinematography

Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing is true to the characters, plot, and language of the original play. However, it is not just a flat, uninspiring copy. Instead, it builds on Shakespeare's language and the play's cast of characters with the addition of cinematography, sound, and other elements. The effectiveness of these elements is especially prevalent in the early part of act 1, scene 1, where Benedict and Beatrice trade barbs after Claudio and Hero have been introduced. The effective use of sound and blocking in this scene serves to highlight how others view Benedict ...

Throughout the history of the film industry, the cinematography was aimed at expanding and solidifying the nature of storytelling. The development of cinematography influenced the development of cinema as a whole, while cinematography itself was impacted by the expanding methods of storytelling. Cinematography also makes you involved in the art of expressing your thoughts and worldview to many people and allows convincing and sharing your opinion with many at the same time. In a movie, you have an opportunity to employ your imagination and explain things that can be hard to explain. For some people, cinema provides a platform ...

Introduction

Numerous types of color processes in film has been witnessed throughout time. It is evident that some color has been more successful in film than others. As a matter of fact, some colors have remained dominant for an extended period while others fade away quickly if not required. In the future, the film industry will go ahead to experience advanced technology that will enable filmmakers to use more attractive and sophisticated colors. Probably an essential point to remember is that the evolution in film has been undergoing a gradual transformation since time immemorial. Like a century ago, people thought ...

There are five major elements of films which are narrative, cinematography, sound, mise-en-scene, and editing. The use of all five of these elements can be found in the movie known as Wadjda. Similar to the majority of movies, in Wadjda the audiences are given a visual of what a writer or writers tried to portray in their scripts. One way for a film to be successful is to have a grand narrative. The narrative is simply another way to say storytelling. In movies, the narrative is the story the writer or writers want to tell his or her audience. ...

The film depicts the fear and terrors that children in Beirut faced during the 1975 uprising that divided Christians and Muslims. The film is based on the boyhood memories of the director and writer. While the film presents an adequate progression and a series of characters and events that portray the fearful state of the children at that time. However, the narrative, to some extent, departs from the confines and structure of the classic narrative. Classic narrative requires a depiction of the emotional life of the main character which is lacking in the film. The director's focus is on ...

Stage 1: Analysis

Ms. Biglow indicates film as the interchange where different ideas intersect (Dargis, 2009). Each film is a creative work of a big team and, while analyzing a movie, we must realize that it is all a huge team work. The aim of the paper is to give the analysis of the science fiction film Back to the Future. It gives contextual information, describes the difference between the story and the plot in the movie, and explains aesthetic choices, social and personal impact of the film. Film theory explores the backbone of the cinema and provides methods for understanding not ...

“Madeinusa” is a film about a naive teenager who lives in a small, anonymous village with her sister and father. The film centers on two characters, Salvador, a grungy backpacker and the other is Madeinusa, who is considered a chosen girl and her father is unusually attracted to her. The plot is set against a bizarre festival, and the two main characters fall in love. The outsider from Lima is disliked by the local who fear that he will spoil the fun of their festival while Madeinusa sees an escape through him. What follows are a series of events ...

Cinema

The art has long become an integral part of the human life. Thanks to him people can express everything they want: beginning from the intimate personal feelings and ending with the patriotic aspirations. In the modern society cinematography is the most popular kind of art, which accompanies a human being from childhood to old age. The cinema is able to entertain people or even made them interested in some phenomenon or event; sometimes the cinematography even forces people to start understanding some phenomenon or event in a different way. The cinematography and the history of mankind are connected by ...

Analysis of the opening sequence in ‘A touch of sin’

The opening sequence of the film ‘A touch of sin’ (2013) is taken into consideration for analyzing the scene by using the mise-en-scene, cinematography, and editing for the scene. This scene starts at 1: 47 and ends at 3:50 in the movie’s timeline. The scene begins with a toppled truck spilling all the tomatoes on the two lane highway and blocking most of the road. The scene explains the situation when a traveler is attacked by three roadside thugs who try to loot him and all of them threaten him with an axe. The traveler seems to be ...

Pedro Almodóvar is considered to be one of the most provocative directors of modern Spanish cinema. His style is complex, and tend to be a break from the conventional concepts and norms associated with filmmaking. According to Mikaila Weaver, every film that Almodóvar directs highlights issues of sexuality and gender, and "creates an arena for the negotiation of these culturally constructed labels and categories" (4). One of the key elements associated with Almodóvar films is that of formalism. Formalism is a specific type of film study theory that involves heavy editing or the ways in which ...

Introduction

Cinema in India is a very powerful tool that has succeeded in influencing the minds and image formation of the viewers all across the country. Although the films are made in several Indian languages targeting several viewers across the populace, it is important to note that it is only films made in Hindi have appropriated the label of the Indian cinema. In spite of a large amount of critical work that has been produced on Indian cinema in the last decades since independence, there are several misconceptions that still abound about Indian cinema. This essay is going to critically ...

Introduction

There are a number of ways by which the media forms communicate with their audience and tend to convey the underlying themes and ideas using them. Specifically, in the case of films, the use of visual content, sound, construction of a shot and it’s editing, performance, recording, etc. It is obvious that an effective use of visuals aided by supporting multimedia always results in a deeper impact on the audience as the visual has a deeper response generation from the brain. This concept, when strategically used in the making of films results in tremendous changes in terms of ...

Art has long become an integral part of our lives. At the present stage of the social development cinematography occupies a special place, as for the representatives of mankind it’s the most affordable and favorite kind of art. The great advantage of the art, including cinematography, consists in the fact that it can give people some special feelings and emotional experiences that they cannot or simply fear to experience in the real life. The world of cinema has become valuable for all people - starting from a mischievous child and ending with old car mechanic. Moreover, there is ...

Beyond doubt, D.W. Griffith is one of the stalwarts in the domain of cinema who has left an immortal mark in the minds of the film critics and the audience with his seminal works of art that have been deemed to be among the best the medium of art has ever seen. The primary importance of Griffith’s cinematic works lies in the use of innovative filmic techniques that went on to define the language of cinema in the future years. A close scrutiny of the films like The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916) would enable ...

Shot in 1972, The Godfather by Francis Ford Coppola has become one of the iconic motion pictures in the world cinematography, and is still watched by the contemporary audience. The key to success of the film is hidden in the director’s profound artistic approach to reflecting the novel written by Mario Puzo. The talent of the author who provided the screenplay for the film together with the talent of the director who made it visually unique provided the future of the motion picture that is quoted and alluded to most often among others. This paper is thus going ...

The film Citizen Kane was produced on September 5th 1941. The lead actors were Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton and Dorothy Comingore. The film was directed by Orson Welles who was also the lead actor in the film. The head of cinematography was Gregg Toland. Charles, the lead actor in the film, is depicted as a man who is so engulfed in his search for material things that he loses his humanity and soul and becomes a greedy man . The plot of the film is developed through the eyes of the young Charles, giving the audience a window into the ...

GoodFellas, the 1990 gangster film directed by Martin Scorsese, has achieved legendary status as one of the best mobster movies of all time. A classic example of Scorsese’s signature energetic style and deep, abiding sense of mood, GoodFellas examines the life and times of gangster Henry Hill, played by Ray Liotta, and his friends Jimmy the Gent and Tommy DeVito, played by Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, and their rise and fall through the world of organized crime. What is most fascinating is the use of point of view and perspective through editing to tell the story ...

The film, A Brand New Life (2009), directed by the celebrated cinematic artist, Ounie Lecomte, is a South Korean work that can surely be deemed as a fine work of art. The film is one of the best examples of the cinematic work directed by a woman director as the filmmaker exudes her aesthetic quintessence and perfect use of the cinematic techniques to leave a lasting impression in the minds of the avid audience. This is a very sensible film about this 9-year old girl who is left at an orphanage by her father who has remarried. Before coming ...

The following analysis of Persona and Solaris reveals how movies from unlike countries and of different genres portray the development of opposite human personalities while losing or gaining humanity under the external influences and internal self-recognition. The attempts to create a fine movie about internal and external of human life do not often impress much, especially nowadays when we experience an endless flow of visual images. Probably, it inspires people to look back at the classic works that not only represent the unusual transformations in the forms of self but also produce extraordinary rhythms in the scenes (Tarkovsky 113). ...

The Oscar-nominated film ‘12 years a slave’ stands as an epitome amongst all the period films which have their central theme based on the plight of slaves in America. This review aims at assessing the various aspects of the film which made it a huge success and a matter of adulation for the global cinema lovers. The content of the film is extremely well crafted via using an autobiographical account which makes it perfectly competent for its plot(Cameron and Belau 227). The most interesting part of the film is that the story focuses on the most traumatic and ...

The cinematography is one of the greatest arts. It combines the elements of literature, theater, music, painting, architecture, ballet, etc. As a result of the synthesis of the traditional arts appears a new type of the art - film. Despite the fact that the cinematography is a relatively young kind of the art, it has already become extremely valuable for us. Moreover, it is simply impossible to imagine our lives without movies! After all, we are accompanied by them from the early childhood. Of course, cinematic preferences of a person may change, but it is also worth noting that ...

Many critics called the film Sholay (1975) directed by Ramesh Sippy the best film in the history of Bollywood, or the "Film of the Millennium". The critics praise it so much so that several critics insist that "innovation in Hindi films ends with Sholay and that everything after that is repetitious trash" (Banker 55). This picture is a mix of crime thriller with the elements of "Japanese samurai epics and American and Italian Westerns, most obviously The Magnificent Seven (which was based on Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai)" (Banker 55). The director involved a number of best Indian actors ...

Undoubtedly, Terrence Malick is one of the most enigmatic artists of the modern cinematography. The majority of his films affect the most profound and controversial issues of human existence. The director is well known for his visual and poetic approach to cinematography, for which he is occasionally praised and scolded by critics. Recently, he turns to the Christian themes and speaks directly about God and with God in his films. In the film "The Tree of Life," Malick raises the question of the knowledge of God and the meaning of suffering, while his picture "To the Wonder" interprets love ...

David Fincher’s 1999 film adaptation of the Chuck Palahniuk novel Fight Club provides a uniquely slick, stylish filmic presentation of the book’s gritty, darkly comic sensibilities. Tracking the life of a disillusioned, emasculated, narrator (known only as Jack in the film, played by Edward Norton) and his newfound rebellion against the existential crises of modern American life with the help of charismatic lowlife Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), Fight Club explores both the immense appeal of rebelling against the hegemonic systems set up for men in late capitalist society and the unique beauty and eroticism of masculinity. Director ...

Movies have always been a brilliant reflection of reality. Many directors all over the world have done their best to create masterpieces, which would catch a person and would not leave him until the end of the movie. Undoubtedly, cinematography has always been a perfect tool to express the feelings and emotions of people by reflecting hem in the movies. It should be stated that thrillers and dramas are the genres of movies, which don’t but reflect all the aforesaid in a more vivid and bright way. Not only do these genres cover topics, which have always worried the society, but also ...

Surfing, which originated from pacific islands, had a significant and lasting impact on American Culture.

“It's all about where your mind's at.”

~ Kelly Slater

It is definitely an incontestable fact that surfing has a significant and lasting influence upon the American culture in all its manifestations. Surfing was initially an integral part of the Polynesian culture, and later was adopted by the European settlers, who arrived to the Pacific Islands. Hawaii, Florida and California are considered to be the most vivid representatives of the surf culture and true examples of how surfing has influenced the American culture. Mark Twain, one ...

Our society has been influenced by television since its invention in 1920’s. Likewise, film production, being a part of magnificent TV empire, seems to manipulate people greatly without them realizing it. Namely, it may impose and establish stereotypes of racial-ethnic groups, thus, perpetuating strong, more often negative, images of a specific racial group in society’s consciousness. On the contrary, films can also impose positive attitude towards racial issue, making people feel themselves as a comprehensive whole, disregarding race, gender and age. This makes film industry very helpful in getting rid of stereotypes. It may seem paradoxical, but it is media that ...

INTRODUCTION

In the 1982 science-fiction film Blade Runner, director Ridley Scott takes great care to fashion a detailed, unique dystopian world for the characters to inhabit. The setting is Los Angeles in the (at the time of production) dystopian future of 2019, where corporations rule the world and synthetic humans called replicants have been outlawed. The film follows bounty hunter Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) as he is tasked to hunt down several replicants who have escaped to Earth. The care taken in the creation of the world of Blade Runner, in combination with the dreamlike, meandering story, creates a visual and cultural ...