Kylie Mawn Professor Rodais CINE 121 Midterm 4 March 2018 Question 1: Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) is a film that is well known for pushing cinematic boundaries in many ways. One commonly recognized technique in Welles’ film is deep focus photography. Deep focus photography is used in films to allow everything in a shot to be in focus at once. Typical, only specific characters or objects are in focus in any given frame in order to guide the audience’s attention in a scene, but deep focus can bring a new level of sophistication to a shot. While using deep focus photography, a cinematographer may have to rely on framing, lighting, or composition to guide an audience in a way that typically would be done by focusing on objects or characters in the foreground of a shot. Many of these techniques are found in the scene which shows young Charles playing in the snow while his mother completes the transaction to have him taken from his home. Throughout the scene, Charles can still clearly be seen through the brightly-lit window, even while the adults are talking in the foreground of the shot. The ability to see Charles at all times emphasizes that although he is not directly involved in the conversation, he is still the topic of interest. This deep-focus aids in the mise-en-scéne of this scene by allowing the cinematographer to strategically include Charles as a focus of the scene without directly involving him in the dialogue. This is the first of many times where Charles
hurt with Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, and Bill Murray in the comedy Caddyshack, and see life from the eyes of mob henchmen, Tom Hanks, in the crime and gangster film Road to Perdition. American cinema has used Alfred Hitchcock to create fear for many years like it was displayed in the horror film Psycho, has allowed us to sing in dance with the cast in the musical Chicago, and check out, momentarily, from reality in many science fiction films. American cinema has taken us back in time as we rode horse-back with our western heroes John Wayne and Clint Eastwood or put on the badge with the brothers of the law in Tombstone. Some of the greatest impacts from the world of cinema have been from films that covered war.
Welles uses deep-focus throughout the film and a good example of this is the shot of Kane’s mother signing her son over to Thatcher (David Bordwell, 1979, p. 334). At first this shot just seems to be a long-shot of Kane as a young child, but the camera moves back to show that he is actually outside in the
Some key topics the class discussed about for Shadow of a Doubt Hitchcock’s use of Dutch angle when Charlies was in his room as he’s freaking out about being discovered. This was compared to the Dutch angle used in The 39 Steps and the scene with Mr. Memory. Also discussed was how Uncle Charlie’s arrival in Santa Rosa lead to the emasculating of Joe. How he was reduced to sitting at the kid table while Uncle Joe got to read his paper along with Charlie humiliating him at his work.
The show Band of Brothers was produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks who, at the time, recently had success with a World War II film entitled Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg and Hanks used their expertise on war films to craft the exceptional television series Band of Brothers which originally aired on HBO in 2001. The show follows “Easy” Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, of the 101st Airborne Division, from the moment they begin their training to the moment their deployment ends. Throughout the show we see the men of “Easy” Company mature a thousand times over. The men experience love, loss, and death at rate that is inconceivable to someone that has never experienced the theatre of war.
The novel Monster by Walter Dean Myers is half written as a movie script, and it uses cinematic effects in order to emphasize certain things in the story. These effects include but are not limited to: close ups, medium shots, low shots, high shots, and cuts. For example, during Bolden’s testimony, Briggs takes up a line of questioning that makes little sense for Bolden to answer and is altogether not moving the trial along. (Myers 54) Normally the inanity of this line of questioning might be lost on the reader.
Citizen Kane (Welles, Orson) is known as one of the greatest movies of all time, and I agree completely. The movie was the first of its kind, making it unique. It was the first movie to use deep focus throughout and everything on screen is seen in focus, unlike other movies made in this time. This movie had to be thought out perfectly and most scenes were filmed in one shot in order to make the most of the focus. It was visually stunning and innovative for its time.
Bad Day at Black Rock Kathryn Abbott October 29 2015 DRAMA 3030 The unexpected arrival of a stranger to a small, Midwestern town creates a feeling of scepticism and suspicion, and through this the explicit meaning is revealed: Fear of the unknown and the moral and physical deterioration of a town left to its own devices. The film exemplifies these concepts through the use of mise-en-scène, and vivid cinematographic elements. The blood red coloured train stands out against a muted background.
Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionistic science fiction film, directed by Fritz Lang. Much of the plot is established following influences of the first world war, and the culture of the Weimar Republic in Germany. Although criticised for its allusions to communism in the resolution of the film, Lang explores mostly themes of industrialisation and mass production, which, coincidentally, were two developments that provided a large influence in the First World War. Lang also explores themes of the Weimer view of American modernity, communism and fascist rule. Politically, this film was shot after WWI, meaning many of its influences were extracted from the horrors of the First World War.
When most people feel like they are close to God; they usually make good moral decisions. In Doubt by John Patrick Shanley; Sister Aloysius tells Sister James that “In the pursuit of wrongdoing, one steps away from God. Of course, there’s a price.” When stepping away from God someone is committing sins and they are doing things that are usually not accepted. As the main characters stepped away from God, they had to pay the price of making wrong choices and the price of being pressured by those choices.
Directed by Orson Welles, the 1941 motion picture “Citizen Kane” is the story of the rise and fall of a great, influential man. The opening scenes of “Citizen Kane” are quite different from what follows during the rest of the film. Fading in and out of different landscapes instilled mystery. This mysterious vibe was carried on during Charles Foster Kane’s death through the use of shadows, quiet music, and close up shots. Isolated in his vast empire of a home, Kane uttered only one word before he passed: “rosebud.”
Citizen Kane challenged the traditional narrative and technical elements of classic Hollywood cinema mainly in the area of sound. Orson Welles was ahead of his time when he created his works of manipulating sound to transfer meaning in the film Citizen Kane. Welles used concealed hanging microphones to obtain different levels of sound throughout the film. The manner, in which the story was told, from Kane’s death flashbacked to his life of success and ultimate failure, was also a new style of storytelling for films. Welles also used symbolism with his last mumbling word “Rosebud.”
The background and everything in frame was focused in the screen shot. This technique is combined with lighting and camera lenses to produce this effect on scene. The scene starts out the movie by showing Charlie playing in the snow outside while Thatcher meets with Charles’s mom to sign guardianship to him inside the house. The mise -en- scene is able to utilize the whole focus of scene and explain the story. An innovation that cinematic technique was developed was the wipe which allows the one image to be moved off screen to another.
The Godfather (1972) is said to be one of the greatest films ever made. When this movie was released in 1972, it was nominated for Ten Academy Awards and it won three: Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay. The film was adapted from the book with the same name written by award winning author of mafia fiction, Mario Puzo. This film takes place in a span of ten years following the life of Don Corleone, the head of the Corleone Crime Family. It was a film that changed the history of cinema, introducing a very talented filmmaker and several acting legends in the telling of a story of a Sicilian Crime Family.
Death of a Salesman has been extremely influential in regards to theatrical performance and it has been performed by multiple different theatre groups. It has also been made into a movie, which has actors such as Dustin Hoffman as Willy Loman, John Malkovich as Biff Loman, and Kate Reid as Linda Loman. All of these actors’ performances were true to the character and were extremely realistic. It was easy for the audience to get caught up in the characters that these actors portrayed. Throughout the movie, Dustin Hoffman, John Malkovich, and Kate Reid all provided an outstanding performance by ensuring that their facial expressions, body language, and emotions always shined through all the while they were creating realistic characters that were easily believable by the audience.
In this essay I will be comparing the themes and the narrative techniques used in both films. Starting off with the film “Citizen Kane” as mentioned it is a story of a millionaire, Charles Foster Kane. It begins with Kane’s death and speaks a single word: “Rosebud”. The reporters in the hunt to know