FILM ANALYSIS

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《无问西东》 FOREVER YOUNG

https://movie.douban.com/photos/photo/2511528900/#title-anchor

 

 

Before I start to do the film scene analysis, I have something to say about this photo. As you can see there are some Chinese on the left top of this photo, it’s the name of this film. I’m sorry that I didn’t find out a better same photo of this film scene. If you don’t like it, please ignore it from your heart.

This film scene comes from a Chinese film called FOREVER YOUNG (无问西东), and it released in the last year. Above all, roughly to say, this film talks about three different stories happened on three different generations of university students of Tsinghua University in three different periods. The core of these three stories is love what you love, do what you do, follow your heart, and do not hesitate.

This film scene is from one of three stories, and the location of this classroom is in Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. As you can see, there are three big windows in the classroom, while the main sunlight/daylight comes into the room through these windows. Also, obviously the sunlight/daylight is the key light in this screen. It is very interesting that the windows area actually is already overexposure, which means the lights in this screen we can see from students’ faces and clothes should be very hard. However, the light is not very hard as we can see many details of students’ faces and clothes. Moreover, the overexposure light from the windows create a very dramatic visible feeling, in other words, it gives audiences the feeling of illusion and reality.

In exercise 3, we had two scene in the classroom, but the lights there were not as good as this film scene. Then after some time of speculation, I think there is a very important reason to control the amount and quality of sunlight/daylight in the room, which is the time. Firstly, this scene was shot in the winter, and in this season, from the point of view of geography, the intensity of light isn’t as strong as it in the other seasons. Secondly, the shooting time of this scene shall be in the morning because compared the sunlight/daylight in morning to that in afternoon, sunlight/daylight in the morning is softer. Thirdly, the windows are not directly facing to the South because this place locates in the Northern Hemisphere. In the end, I have a crazy idea of this scene, maybe they set many reflectors on the ground so the shadow reduced.

This film scene is definitely very useful and helpful for us to learn and investigate how to achieve this feeling and lights environment.

EXERCISES REFLECTION BLOG

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The exercise 2 we did on the Wednesday in week three but I was not there since I suddenly had the painful stomach trouble. Really thanks to Jialu Cheng, she is a nice girl who told me what happened in the studio, and gave me a copy of the exercise 2 document.

Exercise 2 mainly focus on three factors directly determine depth of field. It really similar to photography, to some extent, it’s the common area between film lighting and photography. So the knowledge is easy to understand to me because I’m interested in photography, and I self-study it.

Although I wasn’t there, there are many clips I can watch to analyse and reflect.

Obviously, the first video scene includes more background than the second one, and it’s clear to see the details of the background. The second one zoom in on the main subject so there are more details we can see on him, by contrast, the background is foggy. The first film scene is the large depth of field while the second film scene is the small depth of field.

As we can see in a film, if we want to outline or describe the background or location in scene, just need to make it in a large depth of field. Then there are more details can be showed to audiences. On the other hand, if we want to outline the main subject, just adjust it to a small depth of field.

I personal thinking that flexible to use the depth of field in a video or a film is very helpful to express the story. For example, small depth of field can make the focus point switch between different subjects in a screen, which can outline different subjects on by one or in the other ways.

Like this one, now the boy is in focus but the girl is not. If the director wants to outline the girl rather than the boy then he/she only need to easily adjust the focal length to the girl.

Video and film don’t like the photography, they are dynamic.

Regarding the exercise three, this is really a formal shooting but it seems like we didn’t do really well. I know that Robin always mentions and stress that there is no right or wrong here, but go to read the instructions is really serious.

I also did many record this time, and all of these are mostly about the location of each equipment like where is the light, where is the camera, where is the windows and sunlight. This is really helpful to let me remember how this screen was created, then I can try it next time. Day by day it will be my precious experiences.

 

Except reading the instruction, the problem that we were facing was the sunlight/daylight from windows. When we were in the process, we don’t want to put down the blind because classroom should be full of comfortable light. All the blind is up here so the sunlight is full of the classroom, then it comes to be hard. The idea we had at that time is using the additional light we have to light on us (Jialu and I were the characters) to complete that sunlight. However, the result is not as good as I imagine.

Right now there is a weird idea just came out in my mind that if there is enough blue gel or yellow gel, why don’t we try to stick the gel on all the windows? Once there are filters on the windows, the sunlight will be softer. Maybe we can try this idea next time.

LIGHTING, LIVING, STUDIO

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To combine painting, daily life, and studio technical skills.

Film lighting knowledge we learned from studio seems to be very theoretic and foggy but actually, when it acted or expressed by people, we would found out that we experience similar environment before.

In the assessment one, there was a description of the painting, someone might be curious that what’s the values? Painting is hugely different to film. Personally, I would say no, painting has valuable relations to the film. Panting was created in the times without camera, and most of the painter (except typical abstract painters) notice and value the lights (whatever kinds of lights).

For example, a week ago I went to the National Gallery, and I saw a painting of the lights in living room.

This painting shows us the lights in the living room, and for further details please see the photo above. I know that this painting seems like not that very realistic but I am very curious that how can I turn this painting into real life. The light in this painting is soft and incredible. How can I use lights and other equipment like many blue gel to control lights? How many lights that we need to set in a black room without windows. Moreover, we can see that there is warm and cold light in this painting so how to set up different kind of light to achieve this.

When we are describing a light, there is not only hard or soft but color temperature.

Let see what happen on audience’s feeling to these two photos was took by me in class in week 4. As you can see that the first photo is warm, in other words, it’s in lower temperature. While the other one is cold, in higher temperature. In the first photo, the angry degree of Robin is very high, like the fire is going to burn the whole classroom; on the other hand, in the second photo, the angry degree is lower, just like Robin got a big shock and he is frozen, can’t refresh his head.

Film lighting has magic and actually, we can see it in our life. Art is from the life. So pay attention to the environment we are in will be very useful and helpful to study and review film lighting.

 

Film scene of THE PAINIST

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THE PIANIST by Roman Polanski is really really one of my loved films

There are many good uses of lights we can see

Here is a represented scene

 

 

From the shadow on the ground we can see that the sun is on the opposite of the main character, and also we can see the light reflect strongly on the ground and main character’s shoulder. Normally, from our experience, people or objects under strong sunlight will create strong shadow, in other words, it’s hard. However, the shadow on this scene is not strong, we can see many details not only their faces but other parts. There is another interesting point that in this film scene, only the main character faces to the camera, the audience. Mass and chaos background, and lonely main character, here is the high contrast!!

The man with the Gloden Helmut

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This painting by Rembrandt is the one I like most of the resources. Oil painting normally has better and attractive colors, compared to some other painting styles. There is the high contrast in this painting, especially on his dress. But on his face, it’s soft. Obviously, the key light comes from our top left corner, his top right corner, then focus on his Golden Helmut. It highlights the Golden Helmut rather than his face, which makes audiences directly feel his might and horner for the first time. Low contrast on his face makes audiences feel like he actually was not ogreish, and there was something upset he was hiding.

Reflection to the WK2 tutorial

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Same exercise and same classroom as the tutorial one, and we did the exercise one part two. This time I was in a different group, here is the note:

I was the note guy, and I was happy to be a note guy because I can see that they are better than me at it. But it’s a little bit awkward that the final result is not that good, here are some screenshot:

There is a point that same as the exercise one part one that I did with other group mates, is the shooting position is the same one, nearby the same window. I think this is really a worse position for shooting, nobody will do this place again. The first screen we shoot, the character was facing the window because we planned to use the sunlight from the window. Although this time we have the black and white boards, we didn’t use it well. Turn to the second screen, we chose to let the character sit back the window. As you can see, the sunlight from this window was really really strong. Now there is a conclusion that if we want to make a good and soft light on the screen, get away from this window!!

I used to take photos of class exercise and examples that Robin showed to us.

Actually, I am still not good at using the black and white boards. When to use it? How to use it? Where to use it? How to put it? I think I need to exercise to earn experience or go online to do more research and learning.

It’s good to learn many practical skills like Robin told us how to use a different kind of lights, and how to recognize the camera. As a shutterbug, those basic knosledge of camera and lens are already in my memory so sometimes I look forward to hearing and learning more technical skills.

 

Reflection of 1st tutorial

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The class exercise was to make 1 min video, and I cooperated with Jialu, Kris and another girl (sorry I forgot the name). I was the character so I actually didn’t know what happened on the screen when we were in the shooting process. But from the result, it was overexposure. It’s a little bit sad that other groups they have done well on the exposure except us but it’s good to present to the whole studio as an example.

Now as a student in Film light, I need to be more sensitive to lights. Nature light which means sunlight or the reflection of sunlight is the most usual and easy light we can get. To avoid overexposure, mostly the direct sunlight is really bad and unsuggested. In the exercise one part one, here is the screenshot:

Obviously, the exposure part is on my face, the side that face to the window. There are couples reasons, and the first one is the object was too close to the window where the strong sunlight came from. On the one hand, the time we were doing the shooting was almost at noon; on the other hand, the window is on the North side, which means compare to the west side (opposite side of the sun) it has more sunlight.

Robin said we need to learn from experience and practice, and I completely agree with it to some extent. He asked us in class that before we chose a place to shot, do we imagine how it will be looked like on screen (rough meaning)? I remembered that many students they didn’t imagine it. In fact, I understand what Robin means because I am photography, and before I take a photo I will imagine how it looks like in my camera, how’s the structure, and how’s the light.

Light in photography is quite different to the light in the video because the natural light will change quickly in the video. So I think there is another skill we should better have is to calculate how the natural light will change in a place.

Snowpiercer

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The Snowpiercer is a science fiction movie describing a world that when the world ends, only few people survive and live in a train which is endless traveling the entire earth. The whole film is very cool, it seems like a science fiction film but the content is very political. This is absolutely a political satire film.

There are some very interesting and good features of Snowpiercer.

The first is that such a kind of good film like Snowpiercer came out from South Korea definitely thanks to the government police published in 1997. The government police is that abolish the censorship system and establish the film classification system. Then the South Korea film industry had their spring, more and more excellent and amazing South Korea film produced and released in the local market even the global market. Ward (2014) talks that ‘it creating a philosophical fable that teases out the impacts of blind allegiance, adherence to a cause, and ascribing significance. Its contemplation is murky and multifaceted, which is emblematic of its complexity and not of its big-budget pedigree’.Such political satire film with thought-provoking ideology would not be produced by China mainland. I was thinking that if the development of South Korea basically because of the government abolished the censorship system and established the film classification system, will the Chinese film rise up to a new level if the Chinese government do the same thing as the South Korea government. But when the day come?

The second one is that the Snowpiercer is actually an international film directed by a South Korean director Bong Joon-ho, namely, this film is not a pure South Korean film. From the actors and actress groups we can see that those important actors and actress are from three countries, United Kingdom, South Korea and United States. Moreover, from Vikrant’s lecture, he mentioned that the film production team shoot in Czech, German VFX, and this film based on a French graphic novel named Le Tranperceneige.

 

Professor Vikrant put forward some questions at the end of the lecture:

Is this globalisation? Or is this giving opportunities to new studios and audiences to share their narratives?

My answer is:

Snowpiercer presents a new globalisation, at the same time, the glolisation in film area definitely gives opportunities to new studios and audiences. Brian Yecies, Ae-Gyung Shim and Ben Goldsmith (2011) discuss that ‘Since the mid-2000s, transnational flows of films, filmmakers and film work have grown, driven in part by a ‘digital wave’ – that is, the diffusion and adoption of digital production, distribution and exhibition technologies and practices. Around the world, international production has broken new ground: more and more films are pre-produced, shot and post-produced in multiple locations and in multiple countries – all on budgets more modest than the average Hollywood blockbuster.’

 

References:

Ward, S., 2014. Keep your eye on the dystopian ball: Bong Joon-ho’s’ Snowpiercer’. Metro Magazine: Media & Education Magazine, (182), p.54.

Yecies, B., Shim, A.G. and Goldsmith, B., 2011. Digital intermediary: Korean transnational cinema. Media International Australia, 141(1), pp.137-145.

 

Comments I did:

A Critical Discussion of Snowpiercer

Snowpiercer

Hana-bi from Kitano

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Hana-bi is a very beautiful and romantic gangster film, I personally believe that.

From week 8 to week 10, there are three gangster films for us, Hana-bi is the most special one that I like. I can’t even believe that this is a gangster film, Hana-bi is totally different to other two gangster films, infernal affairs and Rakta Chariatra.

Image result for Hana-bi

As I said in class in last week, I personally don’t like gangster film, because I don’t like too much noisy film, I don’t like to see film full of blood and fighting, and I think most gangster film’s story is very similar, nothing for me to expect. So I don’t quite understand why gangster film is popular around the world. I like Hana-bi because it’s violent film rather than gangster. I remember that on the lecture of that week, Vikrant quoted Takeshi Kitano that ‘I intentionally shoot violence to make the audience feel real pain. I have never and will never shoot violence as if it’s some kind of video game.’

Image result for Hana-bi

The main character of this film, Nishi, a little bit crazy man mixed with gentle, romance and violence. He is violent, but we can see from this film that he treat his wife very kind, never will be violent to her. Even he betray his police identification for her wife, finally they killed themselves. The last shoot, the screen of the sea and sky, and the little girl, with the sound of two gunshots, my feeling and emotion is very complicated. I found out that I went deeply into this film already, I paid emotion into this film. ‘The less the characters react, the more scope the viewer has to read emotions and significance. ’ (2003) The less the Nishi says in the film, the more curiosity I will have on him. Complex personality of Nishi, make him very attractive and captivating, Kitano Takeshi does not provide fixed meanings but rather its pluralism results in its ability to be read in a variety of ways, both negative and positive.

Related image

‘This notion of ‘furious peace’ perhaps summarises the entire film as Kitano creates an exposition of sadness, violence and anger amidst an often beautiful, funny and musing on the nature of life and death,’ according to Taylor-Jones, Kate E.. Rising Sun (2013). Furious peace perhaps could be used to summarise this entire film, grief movement could be used to describe my feeling at the end. Kitano himself experienced a lot, compared to other many director, he understands more and look overs more. I think this is one of the reason of why his movies are so excellent. Romantic and violent man.

 

references:

Taylor-Jones, Kate E.. Rising Sun, Divided Land, Columbia University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rmit/detail.action?docID=2145051.

Taylor-Jones, Kate E.. The Legacy of a Violent Man: Kitano Takeshi. Rising Sun, Divided Land, Columbia University Press.

 

Comments I did:

Space and Context in Spirited Away and Hanabi

Anime Cinema – Gangster Genre

Queen and Offside

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Queen is from India, Offside is from Iran, these two countries have some similarity. Firstly, religion plays a very important role in their culture and country. Secondly, they have long history, namely, they have very strong cultural foundation. Based on these two similarity features, we can roughly conclude a point that their culture won’t be changed and updated very easily and sharp.

Image result for queen film

Queen shows us a traditional Indian woman, how she changes herself to become a new Indian woman in her European travel. The main character she travels in many European countries such as French and Holland, meets and makes some friends who are very unusual for Rani, at the same time, her opinion and sense of worth is changing. I know that Rani, she is a very kind and gentle girl, but I personally think her personality, to some extent, is cowardly. If I see my fiancé in Holland, and say something like I come here for you so you have to come back with me. How arrogant is he! I promise I will be angry and slap him very strongly. I personally think Queen is a good and representative Bollywood cinema, but I won’t say I like this film. Compared to Offside, I like Offside more than Queen.

Before I saw this film, I know sorts of knowledge about Iran, and its culture and history. I know that the social stage of Iran female is far lower than male, there are many strict rules and unfair sense of value on women. This film shows me a real Iran society, as Panahi says this is a social film, but social films always connect to politics. As I see, don’t separate society and politics, because they are accrete. In this film, those girls they all love football but they are forbidden to entry stadium, when they are only allowed to see at home on Television, they against. I think they are very brave, they already known that if they get caught they will be took away to police station, and worse more they possible will suffer unknown punishments. Pahani transfers this information to audiences at the beginning of film. There is a screen that a girl ask the soldier why women can’t enter stadium to see football games? Soldier answers that because the stadium is full of men, and they all yell some very dirty words, Iran women can’t hear that. Then the girl ask further that why foreign women like Japanese women they can entry? The soldier answers because they aren’t Iran women. The girl reply so the reason is actually we are Iran women? And the soldier get confused by the girl. What I got from this conversation is, most common people are foolish and bemused on common cultures and opinions from given. They don’t understand but they accept, nobody jumps out to question and challenge why Iran women is forbidden to enter stadium.

Image result for Offside film

Also Pahani shows his opinion and wish on Offside, ‘I hope in ten or 20 years’ time when people watch Offside they can look at it as a documentary of a moment in Iran when we didn’t have the rights and freedoms they now enjoy. You have to be very precious to think one film can bring about social or political change, but if people question the laws, the limitations and the restrictions, then the film will have done its job.’ Then I more confirm that this is a documentary film, and in this film, Pahani didn’t put many his personal emotion and opinions. What we get from film, is what we see from it. Gender this social issue is merely a theme.

 

To sum up, I think that offside is better than Queen because Offside questions a social issue from inside, namely like the eggs hatched, while the Queen is with the help from outside.

 

References:

Jafar Panahi interviewed by Jumana Farouky, “Blowing the Whistle,” Time (21 May 2006): HYPERLINK “http://www.time.com/time/ magazine/article/0,9171,901060529-1196395,00.html” http://www. time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,901060529-1196395,00.html

Panahi quoted in Ali Jaafar, “Fear of the Penalty.” Sight and Sound vol. 16, no. 5 (May 2006): 35.

 

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