This week was our last week of classes for On the Frame. There weren’t any tears shed exactly, but it was certainly a week where everyone did feel a little bit sad. Never the less we truly kicked it off with a bang, watching Mad Max: Fury Road, a film I had heard quite positive things about from school friends, but not a movie, nor franchise for that matter, that I had previously engaged with.

It was a film that I thought while watching it, I thought I might’ve needed to watch the preceding films, because I didn’t really understand what was going on in the beginning. There just seemed to be malnourished white kids fighting over stuff, maybe food. Also, they fought with spears, which I found kind of ironic considering the film is based in a fictional post-apocalyptic world, obviously in the future. I spoke to Dan about this after the screening of the film and he said that “it’s one of those films you don’t pay any attention to at the start and are just mindlessly taking in the scenery,” which gave me a bit of comfort.

However, like Dan alluded to, the scenery was brilliant. The shots mixed all these different colours with motions on screen, creating this brilliant kind of effect that kind of reminded me of Transformers if it met with In the Mood For Love. The desert car chases were unlike anything I’d ever seen before on screen. It provided for a really unique atmosphere. Oh and there was this guy who made me laugh a lot every time he came on screen:

I was really surprised by the film because to be honest, I didn’t really expect I’d like it that much. I really enjoyed the atmosphere by it, and it really did feel like the high scale production I thought it would. You kind of know it will when you have a guy ripping apart solo riffs on the front of a truck with flamethrowers coming out as his army marches into battle. It’s kind of ridiculous, but it’s good fun and I’ll probably have to watch it again at some point. It did feel really long though which kind of got to me a bit as I was a bit distracted and wiggling around close to the end of the film.

We closed out the semester by a discussion about the film, and a little on Dan’s work around the semiotics of the blockbuster in his upcoming thesis, and the context for which Mad Max fits in. In the end, Dan made the point that it kind of takes the ideas of already existing high concept films, but provides an old school touch to it, largely going back to basics in terms of character techniques and character development.

Overall, this was an excellent way to end the classes this year, and I have to thank Dan because it really was probably the most engaging set of classes I’ve had the entire year. I always enjoyed coming to class and seeing what was next, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Hopefully I’ll have Dan for another class in the future.

Cheers, Dan.