Just like Heaven- 2008, Directed by Mark Waters

‘Just like Heaven’ is a stereotypical romantic comedy with a classic opening where we see the logo of ‘DreamWorks ’ but instead of the classic ‘DreamWorks’ music there was an upbeat song playing instead that was very upbeat this straight away indicates that the film is going to be upbeat and have a classic lovey dovey message, the camera pans down from the ‘DreamWorks’ logo and goes through the clouds and titles in bright pink, then blue and yellow appear on the screen and then we continue to go through the clouds and then continues to show ‘Reese Witherspoon’ sitting in a chair in a very cloudy garden, all with bright colours and a warm atmosphere giving the audience a picture of a ‘Garden of Eden’ and Heaven she is wearing bright white clothing and a yellow dress giving her the look of a fairy-tale princess, the camera fades a couple of times to show a passage of time the camera then fades to her sitting on a chair with the title of the film appears to her immediate left reading in bright bold letters saying ‘Just Like Heaven’ we see the camera pan around to her from the back focusing on the chair she sitting on, the chair is not a typical chair that one would imagine in heaven it looks like a chair from a school or workplace.

As we pan back round to the front of her and the song then says “Like a dream” and she is woken up and we are plunged into her reality. When she wakes up it is a quick cut that is unsettling and just shows how fast she is woken up, we see an extreme close up of Reese Witherspoon with a hand on her shoulder being woken up we can see that she is wearing what look like scrubs and has a prop stethoscope from this straight away we can assume that she is either a Doctor or a Nurse, this is a consistent theme for romantic comedies and this is because she is a role model for young girls and the fact that she is a pretty white woman with blonde hair and blue eyes. Whoever wakes her up is shouting a name “Elizabeth” (we now know that this is the name of our main protagonist) the next shot is in a handheld fashion and this is to show the hecticity of the hospital.

Although the hospital scene is very hectic and filmed in a hand held fashion the music that is playing is still very upbeat and shows that although her life is clearly hectic and mainly about helping people rather than helping herself in her everyday life. We see that she is a very nice and wants to help everyone around her by even the old man patient asking her to marry him, yes this is in a comedic sense but it shows how likable the character is. We then do a montage of her helping her patients to upbeat music we then cut to female doctors talking in the bathroom and all of the women talking about their kids or having kids and even talking about divorce but because she doesn't say anything straight away we assume that outside of the hospital she has no life or no social life, not married and not in a relationship (as this is the basis of all romcom’s we know this is going to change in the course of the film.)

We learn that she seems to pretty much lives in the hospital and that she enjoys it. We then follow her round again in a backward tracking shot and then we see another male doctor walking next to her and we can assume that she is in some sort of competition with him, they walk up next to a black doctor (we can assume that he is in charge as he is an almost James earl Jones type of character) he asks how long they have been here the other guy doctor says “12 hours” and then she says “longer” the black doctor then lets him know that he must go to tend to a gunshot victim, the black Doctor then tells her that she ‘the job’ (that we assume that they were competing for) he doctor then tells her to go home, as she is leaving when she gets to the elevator she is stopped by a male nurse who wants her to take a look at an ‘impacted bowel’ and she does even though she should go home, we then cut to her walking toward her car in the dark we hear thunder and from this we can tell that something ‘Bad’ is about to happen to her.

On the way home in the car there is still upbeat music playing as she is driving home and talking to her sister on the phone, when she puts the phone down we see an extreme close up of her hand turning up the radio as we cut back to her we see a truck’s breaks fail and she crashes straight into the truck and we see a bright light which symbolizes that she is most likely dead and BOOM light symbolises Heaven which tells us that she has passed on and the rest of the film begins.

Harrison Marlow  

Halloween - 1978, Directed by John Carpenter

 

Halloween is an Independent American Horror film, set in the 1970’s it was written and directed by John Carpenter (Also directed ‘Assault on precinct 13’ and ‘The Thing’) other than writing the screenplay and directing the picture he also created the very famous and very iconic soundtrack, Carpenter is the creator of the very jumpy and very atmospheric music that scares the audience more than the actual events in the film. The film was released in 1978 and was an independent film which means it was made on a very small budget and was made with only $320,000 and made a whopping $47 million in the box office. Many critics credit the film as the first in a long line of Slasher Films, inspired by Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s film ‘Psycho’ (1960) although this is the first of the Slasher Horror genre of films it has very little blood and gore it is a classic horror film because of how atmospheric the music is and how jumpy it is.

When the opening sequence begins we see a black background with red title logo’s and writing this shows us straight away that the film is horror and straight away we hear the very iconic and very atmospheric music in the background the titles are red and turn to an yellow and an orange and back to a red this is meant to depict fire and hell, because in the 70’s there were not the capabilities of using editing of fire in the background so they use it as a depiction of hell and Halloween as the iconic jack’o lantern (pumpkins) they are obviously  the symbol of Halloween and are lit by flame and have scary faces this connects to the film and how the whole element of the film is just fear.

As the titles continue down the left hand side of the screen we see a pumpkin appear in the right hand side of the screen as the titles fade in and out we move to a slow forward tracking shot of the pumpkin until we reach an extreme close up of the pumpkins eye and as the candle in the pumpkin goes out we are left with just one name on the screen which says ‘Directed by John Carpenter’ as he is the director his name is the most important so it has to be on the screen alone.

As his name fades a new title in white fades in reading ‘Haddafield Illinois 1963’ a fictitious suburban town in America whilst the title is on the screen we hear a sound bridge of children singing a Halloween song (American tradition) then the film starts and we pan left from behind a tree and we see an almost establishing shot of a white suburban house in 1960’s America. We then see a forward tracking shot/ point of view of someone walking towards the house looking at two people through the glass in the front door. As the person walks closer to the house and he  slowly towards the right of the house and our antagonist views a conversation between a young man and a young woman (most likely teenagers) and the man says “wanna’ go upstairs?” the woman replies “Michael’s here somewhere” he replies “he’s on the driveway” and they proceed to go upstairs as they do out still through the point of view of the antagonist we have a reverse tracking shot to see the front of the house where we see a bedroom light turn off.

When the light is turned off we see a quick forward tracking shot of our antagonist (still Point of View) going into the kitchen via the back door then we see our antagonists hand opening a drawer and reaching a knife out of the drawer and we continue to move into the front room and we see the man walking down the stairs saying “I have to go” and putting his shirt back on this implies that they had sex, with this knowledge after the man leaves the house and we have a forward tracking shot going up the stairs where we see a mask on the floor and a hand reaching out grabbing it and putting it on so we see through the eyes of the mask and we see a bad that isn’t made and suggests even more so that they had sex. This clearly upsets our antagonist, as he walks toward her (forward tracking shot still in first person point of view) we see the girl turn around and scream “Michael” we are not sure if this is because she’s screaming for help from Michael or screaming because it’s Michael but we see through the antagonist’s eyes as he starts to repeatedly stab the girl over and over as she screams, he also seems to be watching himself stab her, almost like he doesn’t want to kill her but he has too.

Once he stabbed her and she is lying dead on the floor half naked from before, we hear the diegetic sounds of heavy breathing and almost gives us the impression that he very much regrets what he did, the camera pans round as he walks down the stairs, it is a straight forward tracking shot making it look like he is just gliding down the stairs like a ghost during Halloween. We walk through the front door and we see two people pull up in a car and get out and run towards the antagonist and shout “Michael” and for the first time we come out of first person to an extreme close up of the man’s hand as he takes the clown mask to reveal a little boy (six years old) holding a knife with an extremely blank emotionless look on his face as the camera pans out with a crane shot, this shows his beginning to becoming a lost soul getting further away from anyone he knows in becoming the physcopathic murderer ‘Michael Myers’.

Analysis of The Dark Knight Rises 2012, Directed by Christopher Nolan

The Dark Knight Rises

Analysis

The opening of the film starts with the titles of the ‘DC comics’ ‘Syncope’ production logo we then see ice cracking into the ‘Batman’ symbol breaking out of the ice, this could be broken down into meaning ‘Batman’ has to rise up again, he has stored his gear and almost retired from being anything he cannot even be counted as being ‘Bruce Wayne’ as he has not been seen for many years and the symbol cracking in the ice could mean he himself has to break out of the dark and once again become the ‘Batman’.

From this it cuts to a gathering a social party to celebrate ‘Harvey Dent’ (Two Face) we can tell this from a picture of ‘Harvey’ in the background we can also see Gary Oldman as ‘Commissioner (Jim) Gordon’ talking about what happened to ‘Harvey Dent’ in the previous film this is called a prologue and it is used to remind the audience what happened in the previous film. From this shot we can tell where the gathering is taken place in a wealthy manor with this knowledge the audience can assume it is the iconic ‘Wayne Manor’ which as we know is very ironic as ‘Two Face’ in the previous film tried to kill ‘Commissioner Gordon’s’ son and kill ‘Batman’ as well so seeing a fundraiser at the home of ‘The Dark Knight’ himself.

There is then a cut to a vehicle driving through a wheat field with a straight cut from the vehicle to a CIA agent in front of an airplane with a number of soldiers standing around him, the CIA agent is wearing casual clothes but they can also be argued to be almost combat gear we can tell he is on charge as the shot shows him in a position of dominance as he is at the front and the largest of the men from a proportionate point of view.  It then cuts back to the vehicle this time from the inside to reveal three men sat in the back of the vehicle with their hands tied behind their backs and a black bag over their heads this gives us as an audience the image of evil of terrorism and we can guess we have our main antagonist but from this first glimpse we cannot tell which is which, from the back of the vehicle it then cuts back to the plane where the vehicle pulls up and the men in the vehicle get out there are the three masked men and a character we find out to play a key role in the film a Doctor of Nuclear Physics and the men who are delivering them over to the CIA agent are very European Mafia sort of characters giving the audience a foreboding scene of trouble in this scene.

The men and the Doctor are handed over to the soldiers the CIA agent says to the doctor as he passes “you can’t bring friends” the Doctor simply reply’s with “they are not my friends.” This tells the audience that one of the men has to be our main antagonist ‘Bane’ the CIA agent asks who the men work for the European man replies “they work for the masked man, the mercenary … Bane”. With this knowledge the agent tells his soldiers to get them onto the plane.

The plane is heading to an undisclosed location where these men in the hoods and the Doctor are to be tortured, the music is very loud and slow paced this is used to show the unusual fact that the CIA agent is at the moment viewed as an antagonist, when usually the CIA are depicted as good characters who are trying to save people rather than torture them. The CIA agent then orders the men to talk and they do not so he threatens “the first one to talk stays on my aircraft” and a door on the plane is opened the army men throw and hold one of the masked on the floor with his head out of the door, this is used to try and scare the character into talking when the masked man the CIA agent shouts at the man “Tell me about Bane why does he wear the mask?!” and he fires a shot from his sidearm by the masked man’s head this is to try to scare him into talking he says nothing “lot of loyalty for a hired gun” responds the CIA agent. We then hear very loudly (badly dubbed) over all of the diegetic sound and the music a man’s voice with a strange accent, saying “Or perhaps he is wondering why someone would shoot a man before throwing him out of a plane” when the agent hears this he turns and a soldier closes the door, we then see the tied up man from a tracking shot behind him leading the audience up for a big reveal.

Then we see an almost reversal of roles from the CIA agent crouching lower than the masked man giving the audience a feeling that the masked man is much more dominant than the CIA agent, he states “at least this one can talk, who are you?” the hooded man replies “it doesn't matter who we are. What matters is our plan”  this tells us that there are more than just ‘Bane’ involved in the plot as he did not say “I” instead he said “who WE are. What matters is OUR plan” we also know that his men are willing to die for his cause and that this makes him a much more feared man than we could of imagined that they do not care if they die as long as their plan is pulled off. There is a close up of the agents hand as he slowly goes to pull off the man’s hood to reveal the films main antagonist ‘Bane’.

The music (non-diegetic) starts to get louder and faster giving us the knowledge that something is about to happen that is vital to the film, the agent asks “if I pull that off would you die?” ‘Bane’ replies “it would be very painful” he is interrupted by the CIA agent “you’re a big guy” ‘Bane finishes “For you.” The music then gets louder and faster and we can hear chanting although it is not clear what the chanting is it’s clear to the audience that there is going to be an action sequence as everything in the shot speeds up and we have a lot of handheld camera shots this shows how frantic everything is meant to be and puts the audience in the shoes of someone on the plane with the plane the CIA agent then asks “was getting caught part of you master plan?” to which the music gets faster and ‘Bane’ answers “But of course” and the agent then asks “what’s next” and ‘Bane’ finally answers “we crash this plane … with no survivors!” and he breaks out of his bounds and punches the CIA agent and with that we cut to an extreme long shot of another much larger plane flying over the agents plane and we see four people repel down from the back of the bigger plane onto the agents plane and  shooting the military men in the plane, then we see an extreme close up of the hijackers shooting some sort of equipment into the plane  (an almost grapple hook looking device). It then cuts to another extreme long shot of the hijackers being pulled back up to their plane and the agent’s plane being dragged vertically down and the wings being ripped off (using CGI to give it a real looking effect) and the back of the plane being blown off.

This sequence then involves ‘Bane’ kidnapping the Doctor, the four men seen in the picture then climb into the plane and kill the rest of the soldiers, and lower down a dead body into the plane, the majority of this sequence is filmed close up by a hand held camera this is so it gives the audience a feeling of how hectic this is meant to be and that we are meant to feel the fear of the doctor that we are being taken by this mad man, in mid air.

We then see in a close up shot the body bag being delivered to ‘Bane’ and his men they open the bag to reveal a body with a tube connected to the arm, bane then puts the tube onto the doctors arm via syringe transfers the doctors blood into the body, this is to make the authorities think that the body in the wreckage is the doctor, during this operation we can still hear the music and the non-diegetic sounds of the wind through the back of the plane and the doctor’s screams in the plane now there is only ‘Bane’ the doctor and one of ‘Bane’s’ followers they are getting strapped up ready to be pulled back into the larger plane, but ‘Bane’ stops his follower from getting strapped up and says “they shall expect one of us in the wreckage brother!” The follower just nods and replies, “Have we started the fire?” ‘Bane’ says “yes the fire rises” this gives us the impression that this is only the very first steps in ‘Bane’s’ master plan he then looks to the screaming doctor and states “calm down doctor now is not the time for fear  … That comes later” and ‘Bane pushes a trigger and the agents plane is released and falls around them (CGI), the scene goes silent (although it ads suspense to the scene it also creates a continuity error as we cannot hear the plane falling nor an explosion) as we see and extreme long shot of ‘Bane’ and the doctor being pulled back up to the larger plane.

We then cut to our next scene which starts with an establishing shots of a city we presume is ‘Gotham’ and a bridge during this we can hear the non-diegetic sounds of very light music and a clear voice talking about ‘Harvey Dent’ (Two Face in ‘The Dark Knight’) and the ‘Dent Act’ we then cut to a forward tracking establishing shot of ‘Wayne Manor’ and ‘Gotham Cities’ Mayor continuing talking about the ‘Dent Act’, the mayor states “I’d like to thank ‘Mr Wayne’ for hosting this event, even though he couldn’t be here, I’m sure he’s here in spirit” this lets the audience know that ‘Bruce Wayne’ does not want to be at an event that celebrates the man that tried to kill him and his friend (‘Commissioner Gordon’). The Mayor then invites ‘Commissioner Gordon’ to the stage and we see a close up on ‘Commissioner Gordon’ behind the podium with pieces of paper in his hand and he say’s “I have a speech containing the truth about ‘Harvey Dent’.” but as he is talking we cut to an extreme long shot of a man standing in the shadows on the top of ‘Wayne Manor’ we as the audience assume this is ‘Bruce Wayne hiding in the shadows and has been since the death of ‘Dent’. ‘Gordon’ continues “but perhaps now is not the time” as he says this it cuts back to the man on the roof but we see him just walking away, almost in disappointment about ‘Gordon’ not telling the people of the truth behind ‘Dent’ or ‘Two Face’, ‘Gordon’ continues to talk about how many criminals and high up gang members are in “Black Gate Prison” because of the ‘Dent Act’ and act that the audience knows is a lie. (Whilst ‘Gordon’ was talking about the ‘Dent Act’ there were ‘Flashbacks’ to the previous film with ‘Two Face’ and ‘Gordon’s’ family.)

 The film then cuts to a forward tracking shot of a busy kitchen full of caterers and two of them are talking ‘Alfred’ (The Butler) approaches them asking where one of the other members of staff are one replies that she is serving the guests there is then a sort of match on action between ‘Alfred’ and the caterer as he hands her a key and a plate of food and instructs her where to put it in the east side of the manor. It cuts to a horizontal tracking shot of the caterer walking up a flight of stairs. It then cuts to ‘Alfred’ talking to a woman called ‘Miranda’ about ‘Bruce’ as they are talking a business man approaches her and ‘Alfred’ and mocks ‘Bruce Wayne’ saying “he has eight inch nails and pissing into pots” he then confronts ‘Miranda’ about an investment to which she talks about wanting what’s best for the world not profits. The business man does not seen to take this lightly as there is a close up on his face as she and ‘Alfred’ walk away, this gives us reason to believe he may be a key antagonist later on in the film.

Harrison Marlow

Language & Cinema, Research into existing Products

Language and Cinema 

After the First World War, especially in Germany, soldiers would often be demented by the occurrences they faced in the war. This was the birth of the Horror Genre. The first Horror films were "The Cabinet of Dr Caligari" (1919) and the classic (and sought to be the best vampire movie of all time) "Nosforatu". These films were known as German Expression because in the films a lot of the scares used the shadows as one of the biggest mechanisms in the film, to create tension and fear in the film.

Experimental 

One of the best examples of German Expressionism is the (1922) film "Nosforatu" where the film makers use  the shadows create the illusion of the dark undead character, the film is a classic hit and is one of the creators of Horror, this film was part of 'Experimental' film making this goes along with the original Horror film "The Cabinet of Dr Cligari" (1919) 

Experimental film making is an occurrence for every Genre of film but in the cases of horror, experimental film making would be these films as the audience would never have seen a film like these and normally they wouldn't be expected to enjoy these films, so making the Horror Genre into a film type was a huge risk on the film studios back when they were released.

Classic 

Of course the horror Genre became a huge hit, creating classic and iconic films in Hollywood history as, more and more people would watch the horror films Hollywood decided that it would be a good idea to invest in them also, rather than just small foreign film companies, when they started to invest in the horror genre Hollywood came out with some of the most iconic depiction of characters in film history with films such as “Dracula” in (1931) and “Frankenstein” in the same year we all get the same depiction of the character in our heads E.g. “Frankenstein” would be thought to be green with a big flat head with two bolts either ide of his neck, we only get this depiction of him as that is how he was made to look in the classic film. With the success of these films an English company ‘Hammersmith Studios’ would re-make these films and they too would become a huge hit in America, for example, the re-make of the film “Dracula” would end up having a saga of spinoffs in the 1950’s and the 1960’s all with Peter Cushing as ‘Van Helsing (also known for playing “Grand Moff Tarkin in ‘Star Wars’ and even in a WWII Parody movie starring Val Kilmer in the 1980’s called ‘Top Secret’ where he would have a Minor role as the Swedish Book Owner) and along side him in all of these films were Christopher Lee who would always play “Dracula”, (also Known widely for his presentation of Sauroman in Lord of the Rings and Count Dooku is ‘Star Wars’).

Parody

Parody films unexpectedly starting in the 1940’s with films such as “Albert and Costello meet Frankenstein” (1948) and the classic “Carry on Screaming”(1969) Parody films are made for every single genre. For example you have the classic western parody “Blazing Saddles”(1974) and the Science Fiction Parody “SpaceBalls” (1987) the parody genre are still very popular today with the sadly very popular “Scary Movie” set of films.

Deconstruction

The Deconstruction of horror films started in 1995 with David Fincher’s Horror/Thriller “Se7en” where he questioned the whole idea of gore and noire thriller with a dark very underlining horror aspect, along with “Se7en” films in this experimental Deconstructed style spat out such films as “The Blaire Witch Project” (1998) which combined documentary and horror into one film, and “The Sixth Sense” (1999) which combines the idea of thriller and ghostly, and contains one of the biggest twist in movie history. Another Deconstruction would be the film “scream” which brings together slasher horror and teen movie, a deconstructed film is basically the combination of two types of film form the same genre into one movie.