This documentary focuses on one of the more cutting-edge topics in the film industry today: the emergence of digital technology, and delves deeply into the issues by actually identifying aspects of filmmaking such as motion capture, editing, visual effects, and color correction, produced by Keanu Reeves, directed by Chris Kenneally. Keanu interviews many of the industry’s biggest names, such as Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Lana and Andy Wachowski, George Lucas, James Cameron, and Steven Soderbergh, etc. Keanu also interviews many of the industry’s biggest names, including Christopher Nolan and Martin Scorsese. These are the top filmmakers, and they all have a distinct personal style. I enjoy this film because I’m a big fan of Christopher Nolan and David Lynch and it’s a great chance to see them sharing their ideas.
In the past, the technology was not yet mature, the film brought everything, is unique, irreplaceable. Until one day, the emergence of digital photography, as opposed to film photography, which was already at its peak, its cheap and easy to resist the charm of the emergence of such a force that in less than two decades of evolution, it was ready to completely replace film photography – the method of film shooting which has been used for more than 100 years. In “Side by Side”, countless acclaimed filmmakers will mention the word “story”. No matter film photography or digital photography, what will not change is how filmmakers tell stories. The story itself is the core of the film, and all media of expression are to make the presentation of the story better. The reason why people love movies is to experience what they have never experienced before, in light and shadow, and to gain empathy in different languages and expressions.
Keanu Reeves interviewed a large number of supporters on digital versus film — mostly big-name, veteran filmmakers. They divided themselves into two camps and expressed their views. It’s easy to think of it as an argument between adversaries at a distance, but strictly speaking, the film’s content is very different from the debate. Although Keanu Reeves often conveys the opinions of the opposition to each other, the director also tries to intercept the quotations of different interviewees and categorize them under the same topic, which constitutes a feeling of bickering and quarreling. The whole film is friendly and harmonious with an orderly rhythm and abundant information. By crossing opinions, the film introduces the history and technical details of digital and film technologies.
I use the word “freeze frame” to briefly summarize how film photography felt to me after watching Side by Side. Freeze frame, is the moment when the shutter is pressed, the remaining picture, which is the original concept of film photography to people. Freeze frame is a roll of film stored down the hundred years of the moment, the humanistic value is inestimable. Under the premise of not being destroyed, no matter how many years later, as long as there is light, it can reproduce the historical moment, which is the sense of history accumulated from film photography.
Since the late ’90s, perhaps no director has had a bigger impact on world cinema than Quentin Tarantino. Quentin experimented with Hollywood and created a new and popular narrative and visual style. Quentin transformed film culture into what we know it today. If looking for an example of a director being the true author of a film in support of the auteur theory, look no further than Quentin Tarantino. I will analyze several classic Quentin films in chronological order to study his style.
First of all, I want to talk about Quentin’s early work, one of the most famous films, Pulp Fiction (1994). Like the film’s title, the film’s large sex and bloody scenes are not suitable for young children. Drugs, gunfights, imprisonment, swear words and other elements pervade the whole film, the strong visual impact of language style, reached the peak of violence aesthetics. This film is not vulgar, on the contrary, it is a classic realistic film, which is the embodiment of Quentin’s violent aesthetics and expresses his criticism of the real society through the film. This film seems to have six unrelated stories independently developed the six storylines are closely linked. Everyone in the film has a good quality, but are incurable toward the dark and confused.
At the same time, the multi-line narration is one of the highlights of the film, which is quite different from other film styles in terms of shooting techniques. Each story has a causal relationship with each other and can be independently produced into a drama. Pulp Fiction is a notable illustration of the “Quentin world”. The film maximizes the visual sense of the game mode of thinking, although on the surface there is a common film indispensable story form. However, the mental state, image ontology, and image rhetoric showed in the formal language are highly uncertain, accidental, and ambiguous. It can be said that While Quentin promoted formalism to the label of his image language style, he also chose a strategy in the form component that almost runs counter to the traditional image in space, viewpoint, rhetoric, and other aspects.
PULP FICTION, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, John Travolta, Bruce Willis, 1994. (c)Miramax. Courtesy: Everett Collection
About a decade after Pulp Fiction was released, “Kill Bill 1” and “Kill Bill 2”, released in 2003 and 2004 respectively, are the pinnacle of Quentin’s violent aesthetic. The whole plot is very simple, a female killer’s wedding was destroyed by blood, and then the female killer rose to revenge, according to their revenge list to beat the story one by one. The story is unremarkable, but what fascinates moviegoers is the fight scenes known as the aesthetics of violence. When the female killer quickly shot down hundreds of the enemies from the second floor with swords, fists, and feet, the people who fell were as light and natural as the snowflakes. What he felt was not pain but the joy of full flow. Movies are about force, a throat cut by a blade cuts off a major artery, and blood splashes onto the wooden floor, rendering a simple, violent aesthetic. Every scene of Kill Bill seems to be a mixture of pre-modern and post-modern, with Italian-style American western films, Oriental kung fu films being integrated into a whole, which constantly separates the authenticity of film language and subverts the customary relationship between image reference and the world.
Kill Bill is probably my favorite Quentin movies, because I’ve always been curious about what the Eastern world looks like in the west. The film has strong Oriental styles, such as traditional Japanese architecture, Oriental weapons, Asian Actress, and homage to Bruce Lee and Shaw Brothers Studio. I also like the use of color in this film. Quentin’s bold use of solid colors to convey emotion and power sets the tone for the entire film.
After analyzing two typical Quentin films, it is easy to see that he has a distinct personal style. But I see something different in Quentin Tarantino’s latest film, which is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a story based on a true story. The film comes from a real vicious case in the 1960s in the United States, “Manson murder”. Of course, the story in this film has a general outline, but it does not coincide exactly with the case. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is based on a faded actor and his stuntmen, and ultimately presents the public’s attitudes toward the rise of hippie culture in the 1960s.
What makes “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” such an “atypical” Quentin Tarantino film is the narrative structure and tenderness hide in violence. Violence aesthetics is almost the symbol of Quentin’s films. In this film, however, except for a brief fight at the end, most of the time is subtle and slow. To be honest, this is something I didn’t expect before I saw it. I thought the film would continue its usual violent and bloody style. Since his first work, Quentin has set an anti-genre narrative structure for his work. In most of his previous works, we can see the consistent anti-genre strategy: taking genre film framework as the main body, intentionally creating loopholes in narrative and logic, or directly destroying genre elements. The most classic examples are the playful torture and killing in the Kill Bill series and the alienation and lack of protagonists in the “gangster movies” in Pulp Fiction. This time, however, Quentin was unusually “well-behaved”. Instead of playing “constantly breaking the timeline” in the structure of the film, he told the story in a normal time frame.
Therefore, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is not a genre film with a clear purpose. Unlike previous Quentin Tarantino films, this one adopts a more art-house approach. The reachability of the narrative ceased to be an important indicator. I appreciate that Quentin has a strong personal style but still chooses to break through himself and keep innovating.
To sum up, Quentin works largely is in line with the contemporary movie ontology concept idea change, also for the style of the film language type and modern to show new aesthetic concepts and images of the power wielded by the scenery – “extreme philosophy” and “violence aesthetics” two big characteristics of the combination of alternate, and become the Quentin image language form and the style of two points. I noticed that Quentin has collaborated with Uma Thurman, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Brad Pitt many times, all of these actors fit in well with Quentin’s films, and the actors are the key to making a good director’s idea come true. It can be said that the stylization of Quentin’s film language is extremely significant. His works have a carefully structured symbolic system behind the “main melody” style of sex, blood, violence, imagination, and desire, which is the reorganization and embellishment of “modern allegory” in film language and story narration. This is also the charm of Quentin’s works.
Glory is a film about during the American Civil War, a black regiment led by white men, the 54th Massachusetts regiment, was trained as a disciplined army after escaping from southern slavery to write a glorious page in the Battle of Charlatan in the South. Based on a letter from the white officer’s family, the film Chronicles this episode in a surging epic.
The American Civil War was the most brutal war in the history of The United States. It was also the most complicated war because of its many moral and racial conflicts. It is based on letters written by Colonel Robert G. Shaw, a participant in the war, which includes a new understanding of the black people and the heroic story of growing up and fighting with the black regiments he commanded. The director has successfully brought to the big screen this heroic struggle for faith and freedom, and it has become one of the best depictions of the Civil War through its meticulous characterization, magnificent scenes, and realistic war scenes.
In this film, the battle is actually to let these black people show that they are fighting for their own life, freedom, and dignity. We can see that these black soldiers were very brave, when they stormed the blockhouse, they fought bravely even if they died. As Robert Shaw said, “If we don’t fight for it, we’ll have nothing.” At the end of the movie, the final shot is particularly good: in slow motion, Robert Shaw’s body is thrown into a sandpit and thrown upside down. The audience thought it was over, but then a body arrives, the body of Private Trip played by Denzel Washington. The relationship went up and down, and Trip slipped down into Robert Shaw’s arms. The director of this film is solving it at the very beginning. What is the solution? Racial reconciliation. Black people and white people, in the final scene reconciliation, life and death together, tragic and profound.
After watching this film, we will remember, those who once fought for the sake of what the soldiers, the medal to today is still shining, it wasn’t a personal, one of a nation, but the entire human race. In times of peace, watching such films is more about appreciating them. However, racial discrimination and belligerence have always been endemic problems in some aspects of American society. It is really regrettable to think of the people who paid their lives for them.
When accompanied by written statements about historical events and personalities, motion pictures, as an art form, reconstructed the actualities of “lived experience.” I agree with that. I know very little about the history of the United States, especially about the American wars. I think if I just read the words, I might not have such a direct feeling as watching the film. Of course, the film cannot completely restore the history at that time after all, and there must be some discrepancy with the real history, or there may be some misunderstanding, but for those who do not know this part of the history, this is still a good way to understand.
The film tells the story of Chris, a black man, who falls in love with Rose, a white girl. Although the two are very close, Chris is always jealous of his skin color. One day, Chris meets Rose’s parents, Dean and Missy, and everything is perfect, except for Rose’s little brother, Jeremy, who shows a little hostility toward Him. The next day, Chris attends a party at Rose’s house. At the party, Chris meets his old friend Andre. Chris is puzzled by how differently Andre dresses, talks, and behaves. A variety of strange clues let Chris gradually realize, he seems to be caught in a conspiracy.
I think this movie belongs to the horror film. In my opinion, horror films should not only have bloody scenes but also focus on tension and suspense rather than excessive violence. While Get Out does contain violence, it is a nod to the tension That Peele has spent more than two hours building. By the time it bleeds at the end of the film, the stakes are fully established and the audience knows what danger Chris is in. Get Out is the perfect combination of fear and horror. The difference between the two is that fear is a feeling of impending tension, while horror is an emotional response after the event. Basically, fear is a process of accumulation, and horror is the consequence. For more than a decade, many horror movies have relied on startling viewers with sudden changes in images and events, often accompanied by loud, scary sound effects. Get Out proves that good horror films are based on clever and hard work to make thrillers and fears.
The film offers a high level of self-mockery in the state of American society. It can be said that this is a realistic depiction of a post-racist American society and this is the ideology in this film. Chris’s escape from the town also seems like a mirror image of American society. In this multicultural environment, it is not only blacks who want to escape racism, but Also Asians and Latinos, who have to constantly identify themselves in the process of society. As Chris told Georgina, he gets nervous when there are too many white people around. It also leads to one of the most impressive close-ups of Georgina’s tearful smile, twisted and ferocious. While serving the atmosphere of the film and the ambush pen, this picture seems to be a real reaction to the real society. How funny and sad that racism is rooted in society, even though it pretends to be harmonious. However, whether Chris escapes from the town or not, he cannot escape from the issue of race, because it is an issue that the entire American society cannot escape from. And no one can predict how long it will last. One question after another, as the film unfolds, forces us to be honest about the fact that all of us have unconscious biases. The questions that make me think are horrifying to me, and I think that’s the success of the film.
The Thin Blue Line takes a reenactment approach to the 1976 shooting of a police officer in Dallas, Texas. Eleven years later, director Errol Morris interviewed Randall Adams, who was sentenced to death and later sentenced to life in prison; David Harris, who testified against Adams; three witnesses at the trial; and the police, judges, and lawyers involved in the investigation and trial. By describing the circumstances of the case from different angles, Mr. Morris succeeds in proving Mr. Adams’s grievances. The film mainly uses interviews to track the investigation of this injustice, and finally makes the real murderer Harrison himself directly to the director Errol Morris’s tape recorder, to tell the truth, that he is a murderer.
The documentary is a non-fiction documentary because the director based the film on real cases. The film adopts a parody technique to seek the truth of the event and gives the task of analyzing the truth of the case to the parties directly or indirectly involved. The truth lies not in the analysis of the third party (such as the director), but the narration of each party. It overturns the audience’s experience of obtaining event information and logical judgment from the perspective of an omniscient narrator. Each narrator’s statement of events and characters can only represent his point of view, and everyone has his perspective, feelings, and motivation.
In form, I think this film is the participatory mode, which is the filmmaker interacts and shapes the process because Morris did have an impact on the event being recorded. After the film was released, Adams’ case was retried and he was eventually acquitted. This film adopts the shooting method of retelling the characters’ words and reproducing the plot performance, which is the biggest difference from the documentary I have seen before. In this case, which took place many years ago, there are almost no video materials, except the criminal investigation files and a few news reports. Interviews alone are not enough to make a film. So, Morris visualizes the scene through simulations, which is also considered a violation of the documentary’s nonfiction principle. I think this kind of half-truth documentary is acceptable. Its value lies not in its visual representation, but in its maximum ability to avoid misunderstanding by the audience. For example, in criminal investigation cases, it is impossible to record the first-hand footage of the events, that is, the first-hand lens in the sense of the phenomenon. This must rely on the criminal investigation file on the meaning of language character.
From my point of view, I like documentaries very much, but most of the documentaries I’ve seen before are about humanity and nature, which are the expository mode. The Thin Blue Line is quite different in both subject matter and shooting methods and I enjoy it. When I finished watching this documentary, I was shocked by the irresponsibility and corruption of the government and law enforcement officials, especially when I heard that they had recanted and falsely accused Adams to carry out the execution, just because he’s an outsider and an adult. I can’t imagine how helpless Adams must have felt at that time. It is especially ironic that when they say they want to protect the future of young people, they destroy another person’s life, while the person they want to protect goes on to commit crimes and even kill another person. I think another reason why this documentary has made a big impact on me is the difference between American society and Chinese society. In China, ordinary people don’t have the right to own guns, so I rarely hear about people shooting police. So I was shocked by this film.
As the era of silent Hollywood films drew to a close in 1951, Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane ushered in a new era in the film industry. And in this day and age, there’s an idiot director, Ed Wood. The film “Ed Wood” directed by Tim Burton is an autobiographical film about him. Every once in a while, Hollywood produces a “movie about a movie,” and Tim Burton’s “Ed Wood” certainly fits into that sequence, but it’s certainly a unique one.
The film “Ed Wood” is an unpretentious and nuanced portrait of Ed’s cinematic life. Ed is a man who has no talent for filmmaking, his films were thought to be maddeningly nausea by people at that time. He’s a crossdresser who wore women’s clothing in his role in his films. He was not eligible for filming, shocked every shoot on location in the police fled, for him, the first take is always perfect, so he never does backup remake. We can’t help but notice his love for his characters as he makes his films, always reciting his dialogues with the actors with a twitchy, intoxicated expression. The great thing about Ed Wood is that it’s easy for a director to make a bad movie in his life. The hard thing is that every movie is a bad movie. Ed Wood is revered for his hard work and dedication to film, earning him the crown of the king of bad movies.
What I’m interested in throughout the film is the relationship between Ed and Orson Wells. “Ed Wood” is not only an autobiographical film, but also a movie, art comes from life, but higher than life. The crisis in the film’s climax is the moment when Ed wood’s standing as a director is threatened. The normally upbeat Ed nearly collapsed when investors hired another director to “help” the shoot — he couldn’t help himself by changing into a dress that gave him a sense of security. Tim Burton arranged frustrated Ed goes to the bar and meets Orson Welles, the brilliant director who made Citizen Kane when he was 26. Ed poured out his confuse to the master predecessors, he asked, “Mr. Wells, do you think it’s worth it?”, Wells said:” the shooting of the film is worth, the movie is worth you strive for, why don’t you take one man’s dream of life?” Interestingly, the restaurant dialogue has a perfectly symmetrical scene and composition (the background behind Ed Wood is even brighter), a visual symmetry that suggests equal status in the film’s text.”
Encouraged by Wells, Ed returned to his passion for filmmaking, and finally, at the premiere of his next film, “Plan 9 from Outer Space”, he won applause and respect. Finally, he stood on the podium, a man of little talent but dedicated to his dreams. He made it! This, of course, is a lie. In fact, “Plan 9 from Outer Space” was later voted the worst movie of all time. But it’s also not a lie. The applause in the movie is false, but it is also real. It is the applause from Tim Burton and later generations for a dreamer.
Tim Burton mimicked the style of the Films of the Ed Wood era. The film begins with Burton paying tribute to the worst movie ever made, “Plan 9 from Outer Space,” followed by the list of producers on the gravestone, in the same wickedly funny way that Ed did in his film. The frequent underlighting and slanted composition is a homage to the horror genre of the time. In the film’s opening quote, the camera is pushed towards a window of a house on a stormy night. The window opens, the camera continues to push into the house until the coffin opens, and the man in the coffin looks the audience in the eye and delivers a quote. This is a “fake long shot” done with the help of digital technology, and the director does not mind destroying the authenticity of the film. The revealing camera movement, symmetrical composition, and special effects (lightning, coffin) that can be fully realized by the audience point to the fact that the film “makes dreams”.
Introduction to Film Studies 