Week 3 saw us addressing Frozen River (2008, Courtney Hunt), whose masterful screenplay illustrated dialogue and writing with vast depth and subtle nuisance, which debatably didn’t  transpore onto screen as well as we all anticipated from the reading. Mostly accredited to subtle changes in the script (tone of the mover driver), location not exemplifying tone as well as it did in the script and casting choices (Specifically substituting strength with vulnerability for the main character Ray). In class we discussed a series of questions as groups delving into this topic further by evaluating how to weave dialogue in a way that’s not jarring.

 

Continuing on from this discussion in groups we were tasked with addressing a series of questions including:

How does the world affect the tone of what we see?

It is about internal logic: how does the world operate?

It is about the emotional experience of the audience: how is it generated by the world?

It is a vessel for theme and meaning: what stories can be told in this world?

Does the world have its own voice, attitude or perspective?

 

The main points of which my table concluded is that the constraints and limitations of the world exists outside what is seen in the shot/focus of the narrative and instead is established through dialogue/conventions and genre based on expectations of the audience. When our expectations are challenged as an audience this either leads to us questioning the constraints or accepting them. This can all be based on how it is implemented but based on discussions what truly resonated with me was the notion that you could tell one lie in a narrative and that can be accepted, with our tutor Stayci providing the example of a child making a wish on their birthday for something impossible by real-world standard and it coming true, but from that point onwards the world would be required to follow the already established constraints and any further changes would lead to the audience rejecting and questioning the narrative. While in some genres such as Fantasy, Sci-Fi it is much easier to warp or manipulate the constraints and limitations, there is always something to provide context in justifying why there has been a change. The best example of which I can think of being Star Wars which often would show or highlight the impossible through the omnipresent powers of “The Force” which is used as the tool to help provide context as to how things can occur otherwise impossible in any world abiding by the same laws of physics and conventions as ours. This will clearly be a topic I will explore further in future classes as it could have applicable use in upcoming assessments.

Week 2 of Another World saw us experiment with establishing worlds with a limited number of visual prompts in the form of 6-8 images that would form a coherent plot or story.The key source of inspiration that prompted this exercise was this quote:

“It is characteristic of the vast majority of cities in the movies that they focus not on architecture per se, but on architecture as it affects, and is interpreted by, citizens”

After discussing in the classroom some specific examples, with our table focusing on the vast array of Batman films as well as other city landscape features like Coming To America and Chicago, we concluded that location and visuals are often used to bolster tone or imply narrative emotion, the best example being in Coming To America where Prince Akeem (Eddie Murphy) arrives in Queens, NYC to a dismal and backwater part of the suburbs that from the viewer perspective looks dank and unwelcoming however to his character based on his physical response he stills loves it and idolises its beauty, a clear contrast to viewer expectations.

 

From the group exercise, myself, Andrew and Ella made a short series of images that told the story of a medical accident that at first misleads the audience through assumption as to thinking the character is reading about hurting himself when really they are trying to help their friend, we liked the idea of playing with this concept as we believed that world exists both within and outside of the cameras focus but it only through what is presented (visually/audibly, etc) that helps audience understand the conventions and narrative of the world.

 

I watched “Logan” (2016, directed by James Mangold) yesterday, and it got me thinking about manipulating or changing existing and established worlds to influence changes in tone and aesthetic within film genre and narrative. The already critically acclaimed film, builds upon the existing mythos of the X-Men series however the biggest shift in this particular installment is the vastly alien environment in which the film is set. Set in the near future in a dystopian landscape blending elements of western films and desolate and ravished landscapes, the films setting assists in exposing the vulnerabilities of the key characters and establishing the recurring themes of age and degeneration (both holistically metaphorical and physically) . With the landscape itself, often showing boundless plains in the mexican desert, rusted and worn buildings and trinkets ravished by time. The world feels lived in, assisting to acclimatize the viewers to what would otherwise be a jarring jump into the future without any environment to give context.

(Shot from Logan, featuring an abandoned factory in the heart of New Mexico, the landscape being shown as no longer functional an echo of the protagonist’s inability to function as he once did, one of many examples of the world being used to convey narrative themes)

From a course relevant perspective, this had me thinking of other possibilities in utilizing world as a tool placed above dialogue and narrative to establish setting in the vein of the phrase “showing rather than telling”, with the latter usually being the key encumbrance in distinguishing good from bad screenplays. While in a vastly different strain of the same principle, The Truman Show (1998,  Peter Weir), a common film discussed in this weeks tutorial classes, embodies similar traits as world was clearly a key factor in bolstering the surreal feel and look of the world in which Truman goes about his day to day life in. With this in mind and given the focus and expectations of the course structure, I believe this will be a key point of focus in my own outcomes, as the concept of environments and set pieces of a world as a narrative tool to convey information is a powerful asset when utilized correctly, and in practices this I hope to be able to distinguish between correct usage and finding balance between subtlety without oversaturation.

(Shot of Seahaven, the fictional city in which Truman lives, the environment and the people inhabiting it set up for the grand revelation that the world is curated and designed for a reality TV show, through using the environment to establish this earlier allows the audience to not feel as if the grand reveal was unexpected as they have been given tools through the landscape to formulate this for themselves without needing to be told.)