Visual Effects in “Constantine” (2005)

The topic for this week’s lecture was VFX, also known as Digital Visual Effects (DFX) which means to use computer hardware and software to create effects. VFX technology is also often associated with CG or Computer Generated effects/elements. The advantage with using CG and VFX is that the costs using it are low and it adds flexibility and realism to the movie creation. Almost all Hollywood movies uses VFX to some degree to enhance the look of the movie, create sceneries and situations that can not exist in real life. When using VFX in movies there is a wide range of tools and techniques available to create the scenes and situations that former just have existed in imagination.

Constantine stars Keanu Reeves who is a kind of exorcist who can see demons and angels and also helps people being possessed by evil creatures by using relics. In the movie he travels to hell to help a police detective finding out what happened to her sister and also find out that demons from hell are getting closer contact with the world. So he has to find a way of fighting them off.
This movie required an enormous range of visual effects to be able to make the action scenes, meeting with demons, how you travel to hell, what hell looks like, how angels look like and how demons interfere in the world. I thought the movie has succeeded in a great way with the creating and visualising of these things and made the movie look very realistic.
In the class we also watched some of the extra material for the movie. The movie has a great special feature part showing the creation of the visual elements, the production face, how “Constantine” was conceptualised from being a cartoon figure to a movie character and also about the cosmology behind “Constantine”. These clips showed what kind of VFX combinations they had in different scenes of the movie. They also showed the great range of physical objects and robots that had to be made for the movie to make the scenes look real and these clips answered a lot of the thoughts I’ve formerly had about how it is possible to make certain scenes look so incredible real, because there are several times I’ve been thinking in movies that there is no way all of this is just made on a computer.
It was fascinating to see the big and detailed process the film team made to visualise hell in the movie and how they actually had to create a big part of it and its figures. Another thing these behind the scenes material taught me was how they created a lot of the creatures of the movie. I found it fascinating how it is the combination of different elements, costumes, actors, computer generation and 3D markers that makes these creatures look real, and it also tells how much work it is to make the elements look real.
My favourite scenes in the movie is first when Constantine meets Gabriel in the library when you suddenly see the enormous wings behind him which gives him an extreme authority and you can see why he is God’s archangel. I also like the scene when Constantine visits hell and the uncomfortableness the scene creates and makes you feel. I also like the final scene when Satan arrives and you see his feet dripping and landing before he gets to Constantine, you know he is Satan and how superior he is. I really like how the movie has managed to create great authority to the characters because it is dealing with some of the supposed greatest authorities in the world.

In this week’s lecture the topic was editing, and since the technique in the lecture room failed we couldn’t watch a movie this time so we were asked to just write about editing.
The most popular editing technique is the conventional editing, and it is this type of editing we see in the traditional Hollywood movies. The most essential characteristic of this editing technique is that it takes out all the non essential elements in the content without destroying the flow, which means that it compromises time, uses the smallest amount of takes. Another editing element is to connect multiple storylines together through parallel editing. A movie can have several sub stories within the film where the movie switches between these stories and they make progress in the main story, and through the different sub stories we also get to learn more about the other story.
As the stories are tied more and more closely together, the swopping between the stories gets faster and faster, which means that the pace of the movie speeds up as the movie closes up to the climax. An example of a movie that uses several sub stories that gets bound together towards the end through the speed of the pace is “Smokin’ Aces”.


Like the big scene at the end of the movie where Alicia Keyes and partner are preparing to shoot from a building and the police closes up to them, the several very different sub stories suddenly gets connected to each other and the movie ends up making sense in the end and because of the clever editing in the movie you get surprised over how it ends up, and impressed by the story.
I’ve noticed that there are several directors that like to use certain editing techniques in their movies.
Baz Luhrman for example often uses a lot of fast editing in his movies to keep the intensity, together with a lot of montages, especially in Moulin Rouge, but also in Romeo+Juliet, when Romeo and his friends come to a party and takes some drugs.
Quentin Tarantino likes to use different and unusual editing in his movies, in Reservoir Dogs he uses retro perspective editing, in Pulp Fiction he uses non linear editing where the stories jumps back and forth in time, in Jackie Brown he also uses non linear editing in some parts of the movie, in Kill Bill he uses chapters to edit and separate the movie parts and in Death Proof he has two different sequels in the movie, two parts that even though they have a lot of similarities they have few connections to the previous story.

Editing allows the director to shoot parts of the movie out of plot order and to shoot scenes at different places and return to them for example. When there is a change of location in the movie, the editor usually uses an establishing shot showing where the scene takes place, either in a bank building, a mountain or in Paris, to illustrate to the audience where the scene takes place.
Another example of a movie that uses sub stories that first in the movie does not seem to have any connection to each other but later is tied together is the Cohen Brother’s “No Country for Old Men”. The movie starts very slowly with very long takes and little action, but through the use of faster pace and shorter takes the movie eventually becomes filled with action and excitement.

Reflections over Digital Video Course

When I first chose this course I didn’t know quite what to expect to learn. I’ve always been interested in movies and have become more interested in evaluating them by looking at the quality of different aspects and think of what makes me like a movie and what makes me dislike a movie. I also have a friend who’s been studying media and communication and from the things she could tell me about the different tricks and techniques film-makers do to make the movie more interesting also made me think of doing a closer study of movies myself.
My expectations to this course was to learn more about how movies are made and whether or not there are certain recipes for how to create a good movie, and what kind of tools and techniques directors do to set the audience in the right mood. In the course description it also said that that we would learn more about the process of making a movie like costs and use of time

I find movies interesting because they are such a great way of learning people about different aspects of life, society and history, especially since more and more people has become less interested in reading literature on these topics, so movies are a great alternative to get some of the same knowledge we get through books. I know so many people who never read books or newspapers or watch news and quality current news programs on TV, but often discuss or learn about important matters as mentioned by watching movies, so I think movies are an important resource in educating people outside of school and learning them about right or wrong or at least makes them reflect more over things that happen in society and why they happen.

Another reason why I find movies interesting compared to books, is that I've learned so much from being sceptical and negative to movies where I can't see there is a very interesting plot in from reading the cover of it. I used to be very sceptical of dramas, superhero-movies, foreign movies and also to low-budget movies and thought they must be really boring. But there are so many times I've been negative to watch a movie, especially if someone else have picked it, just to find out it was really great! That is also a difference from books and movies, because you need to devote a lot more time and concentration when you read a book that if it doesn't get you straight away, you just put it away and find something else. With movies they are so short that you get time to get into the story faster, even though it is a bit boring or confusing.

During the course I’ve learned a lot of what I was hoping to learn more about, what I’ve found particularly interesting was when we learned about scriptwriting and the script-formula, and the basic rule to make a movie successful. This also included the five essential elements for a good movie, which has in particular had an influence for how I look at a movie now and think of how the movie fulfilled these elements.
We have also learned a lot of useful things about the technical aspects of creating a movie and why it is important to have good lighting, soundtrack, clipping and framing techniques and what kind of function they have in a movie.
The course has definitely changed the way I look at movies. I’ve probably become more cynical of how I evaluate a movie, especially if it is a poorer one. I think of where the filmmakers have found the inspiration for a movie, how they’ve conceptualised it and why a movie of that topic would be interesting. I focus more on how good the technical aspects of it are, and sometimes think of how they could have been improved.

Lighting: "Commando", 1985

In this week’s lecture we learned about lighting in movies and we watched an action movie from 1985 directed by Mark L. Lester called “commando”.
Our task was to see how lighting was used in the movie and write about it in our blog.
I spent a lot of time during the movie to look at the lighting techniques, so much that it took a while before I realised that there is a lack of good lighting techniques in the movie. In fact there are a lot of mistakes and big parts of the movie seems dark and a lot of details are unclear and confusing.
“Commando” is about a former soldier whose daughter gets kidnapped by gangsters who wants to force John to kill a president for them. But he refuses to do so and starts a long journey and fight where he kills everyone who gets in his way of getting to his daughter. He also gets some help from a flight attendant.
Since this is an action movie I think it is particularly important that the lighting quality is good, because there are a lot of fast, chaotic shooting and to be able to pay attention to where the focus is in the scenes. Although I think some of the problems with the lighting in the movie can be blamed on the fact that it is made in the 80’s where the film-quality probably was a lot lower than what you can expect in movies today.
The scenes that really made me confused about lighting use in the beginning was the scenes in the car-shop, and inside shots in the car in particular. The characters became very dark and had a lot of shadow covering for the face details. I couldn’t see any lighting use in these scenes at all, except from the light shining in from outside.
In the beginning of the movie when Arnold Schwarzenegger is introduced, I noticed how they use the light from the sun in one of the scenes to make a natural backlight on him as he walks on his way home.Another problem with the lighting use in the movie, was that I think it often made the people’s face look very shiny and almost sweaty all the time, Arnold in particular, but maybe this is made intentionally to.
In most of the conversations during the movie I also noticed how the characters face often lay half dark in shadow, and I can’t remember seeing any scenes where there was use of backlight on the characters, or hair light or filling light.
This means that most of the lighting use in the movie probably comes from use of natural lights. Like when Arnold is climbing to get into the warehouse in the end of the movie, I noticed how the scene was lighted up by the natural lighting on the building. I also used the example with having daylight shining in through the windows in scenes taken inside when it is possible. The is one scene where there should be a lot of potential to use natural lighting, but where I still thought the scene seemed a bit dark, and that was the scene in the shopping-mall.
All over my conclusion is that it was a very entertaining action movie, but the lighting use could have been a lot better, especially since it was an action movie, but maybe a lot of it can be blamed on the fact that it was made in the 80’s.

Blades of glory

For one of the lectures we missed in the beginning of the semester we were asked to write a blog about a movie of our own selection, and include the five essential elements of a movie.
I chose the movie “Blades of Glory” from 2007, directed by Josh Gordon and Will Speck, as it is one of my favourite movies from the last year, and is a movie I like to watch over and over again.

The five essential elements:
1. A believable lead character.

The two lead characters Chazz Michael Micheals and Jimmy MacElroy are two professional ice skaters, even though none of them seems very smart and are both easily distracted by emotions that more than once destroy for their career. We find them believable and likable because they are funny and both kind and harmless of nature, even though it may not seem like that in the beginning.

2. Their urgent and difficult problem: They both get shut out from all future skating, which has been both of their lives until now, and they find themselves in a depressing and disgracing situation with no job or friends.
3. Their attempt to resolve the problem, which fails and make their situation more desperate: They find a way to get back into skating again by competing in couple’s skating and starts training together. They become better friends and everything seems to go well, until their competitors, Stranz and Fairchild Van Waldernberg, previous champions in the sport, tries to destroy their friendship by setting them up with, Jimmy’s girlfriend, Katie, and makes him think she’s been cheating him with Chazz. Jimmy runs away and refuses to let Chazz contact him, and it is the day before the Olympics.

4. The crisis, their last chance to win, the anticlimax: Both Jimmy and Chazz is captured by the Van Waldernbergs so they can’t make it to the competition.
5. The successful resolution: Chazz manages to escape from Stranz Van Waldernberg, by using ice skates to get loose and races him to the competition. Jimmy also manages to find his way out, but first has to overcome his fear of bad hygiene by getting the key to his handcuffs from dirty toiletpaper from the bin. They both manage to come to the competition in time and wins.
They become friends again when Jimmy finds out that Chazz didn’t betray him with his girlfriend. Chazz who has been a lonesome wolf as he puts it himself, now admits that he has found a “brother” in Jimmy and won’t be lonely again.

Audio lecture: "Elephant"(2003)

The topic of this week’s lecture was audio, and the movie we watched in this lecture was “Elephant” from 2003, directed by Gus Van Sant and the second movie in his Death Trilogy, of movies based on actual incidents. This movie is based on the school massacre at Columbine High School in 1999. In the movie we follow several ordinary students at a high school, each living out their ordinary school life, totally unconcerned of the shooting massacre that is about to happen. Our task for this week’s topic was to take a look at the soundtrack used in the movie.






The movie is very slow in style and action, with very long shots with little action where we mostly follow students for a long time, not doing very much.ole movie almost seems neutral and banal sometimes, with very little action in it, and a long build up before the climax. One of the scenes is over five minutes for example, and this makes the movie a long and slow process to watch as the tension builds up and the school massacre starts. The quietness and calm of the movie also emphasises and increases how we see the two students planning and the great relaxation and how normal they think and act their horrible plan out, how incredible little feelings and consideration of how bad they are about to destroy their fellow students and their families life.

There are four elements of the soundtrack in a movie: narration, music, sound effects and the dialog. These elements are used in various degrees in this movie, but even though these elements may not be as clearly used in this movie as in many others, they still serve an important role for the mood of the movie.
There are few if not any elements of narration in this movie. This element of the soundtrack is mostly used in educational movies and documentaries, and even though this kind of tool to add information to the movie could be used in “Elephant”, since it is based on school massacres from realities, the director has chosen to let the characters and the story itself tell what is happening, through shots of students in their normal school life, letting us know or feel that something is about to happen which will change these students life drastically. We also know that one or two of these students are the actual gunmen, but all of the students we meet seem like normal people, including the two boys we later find out are the boys who is planning the school massacre. This increases the feeling that behind the apparently normal surface of these high school teenagers, there is so much inside everyone that no one knows about that can both be good or bad. There is more to a person than its surface.

The music used in “Elephant” suits the mood and the slow action of the movie. The main purpose of the music element is to add emotion to the moving pictures and to guide the audience to know what to feel in different sequences of the scenes. The music used in “Elephant” is most classical piano music, especially Beethoven, but also Hildegard Westerkamp, and probably has connection to one of the gunmen, Alex who we early in the movie meets playing Beethoven’s “Für Elise” to himself on the piano. In the final scene with Alex this song is also played in the background, maybe to remind us or illustrate that this is the same boy who we earlier met so innocently playing the piano to himself seemingly harmless.
The use of music in the movie has little purpose to build up tension in the scenes. The music doesn’t tell us clearly when the scenes are getting scarier, happier or more exciting, as a thriller or action movie would in a much stronger degree. In the scene where we follow the bulimic girls through the cafeteria, the music used is an exception, because then the music is very hectic and fast, using a lot of rhythmic instruments, maybe to illustrate the chaos and the hectic tension that can be experienced in a high school cafeteria during lunch break.





In “Elephant” the use of sound effects is very important to create the feeling of being on a high school. The most important sound effect elements used is the various sounds from students nearby that we can’t often see when we follow the various students on their way around the school, and we get the feeling of the students being just one of hundreds of other students on a high school. The noise from students, classrooms and other school activity is often used in increasingly and decreasingly degree, as to show that the characters are moving from crowded areas to less crowded areas and so on. Another important sound effect element used in this movie is the sound of the various shotguns and explosives. In the last part of the movie, when we follow Benny for example, there is no music, but the sound of screaming people, explosion sounds and gunshots tells us that something very bad is going on, and increases the feeling of being present the school when this is happening. I would say that this movie relies more on the sound effect part of the soundtrack to create the wanted mood and tension in the movie and with the audience, than the music.

At last it is the dialogue. The dialogue in this movie is special, because a lot of it was improvised during shooting, so a lot of the script was created as the scenes where shot. Most of the characters in the movie used their own first names and many of the actors didn’t have any previous acting experience. I think this was to make the characters seem more like normal students, with normal reactions and conversations. The dialogue is mostly very ordinary, and a lot of the time the characters doesn’t even say that much, if it’s not the students we follow through their random conversations, like Nathan and Carrie, talking about a party they’re going to and the girls talking about going to the mall.



So the contrasts when we first meet Eric and Alex, who also seems to have an ordinary conversation, and then we find out that it is actually about planning to kill their fellow students, makes the shock for us viewers bigger to find out who the gunmen are, and this turns up the tension in the movie slightly and keeps it going towards the end. From this point on, the dialogue in the movie becomes more and more surreal and unconventional.

So even though this movie was a movie without any particular action or excitement, it succeeded in keeping me as the viewer still interested, by building up a tension and an expectation of something very unusual that is going to happen, all of this much thanks to a special use of the soundtrack for it.

Framing and Composition: "Kill Bill, vol.2"

Composition and framing was the topic for this week’s lecture, and the movie we watched was “Kill Bill, volume 2”, directed by Quentin Tarantino. Composition is considered as an art, and if the guidelines for composition are broken, it must be done by someone who understands and recognises how they can be successfully transcended. In this movie, Tarantino uses a wide range of untraditional and original composition- and framing techniques, which differs a lot with the traditional principles. He does it very successfully and makes the movie spectacular, interesting and aesthetically pleasant to watch.
The way he uses the framing and composition techniques also play an important role for how the story is told, making it easier to guide the viewer through the story.




For example, he uses black and white colours in the scenes from the wedding massacre at the Two Pines, illustrating that this is something that happened long ago, in the past. In another part of the movie that shows scenes from the past, Pai Mei’s training of the Bride; it is used cold, gray/blue/green-looking colours, which also contrasts that it is something from the past.

One of the examples of where it is used untraditional composition techniques is in the scene when the Bride is outside the chapel and meets Bill there. When they are talking to each other there is not enough talking room and it is use of big close ups on both persons. When they are talking to each other, the camera is only showing one of the parts at the time, but rather focuses on their feet to show how they are closing up on each other. There is although an object in the background of the characters, the electricity chain pole that connects the two people to each other.

Another scene that uses unconventional composition is the training scenes with Pai Mei. There are a lot of fast changes in the framing sizes of Pai Mei, that illustrates how fast and unpredictable he is, and also suits to the fast clipping Kung Fu movies and Kung Fu scenes are well known for.

In the scene where the Bride finally faces Bill, there is a fast and intense close up as she sees him, which illustrates that the final moment she’s been waiting for is about to happen, and also illustrates her strong emotions about Bill and what he has done to her.
In this movie there were a lot of camera angles that impressed me, and I liked how the big effect of these camera angles had for my viewing of the movie and for the understanding of the plot and also how it illustrated the mood and the action in the different scenes. One of the scenes I liked the most and made the biggest impression on me, was the scene where the Bride is buried. It gave you great understanding and empathy for the panic and fright she must have felt and for the progress of how she finally gets control of her feelings and start the fight to get out. Since it begins with total darkness, you understand the confusion and panic for not knowing where she is, how far beneath the ground she is and you get the feeling of being there. When she finds the torch and starts the battle to get through the lid, and finally starts to dig her way up to the surface, you see how she overcomes an impossible task, so it seems more impressive.
I was also impressed by the fighting scenes between the Bride and Elle Driver, because the camera angles managed to show how both parts are struggling to fight each other off, and how they desperately seeks for new tools and strategies. The camera angles manage to show how good both of the girls are, and how much they have to use all of their skills and knowledge to stay alive. The finale of the scene is a very good ending, with the Bride using a very dirty trick to put Elle out of action, by stabbing her eye out, since Elle herself always have been using the dirtiest tricks.

The fighting scene between the Bride and Pai Mei was also very impressive. It makes Pai Mei look supernatural and really shows how superior he his.

Screenplay: West world (1973)

This week’s lecture topic was about screen-play, and in the movie we watched we were specially to pay attention to how the screen-play-formulary was used in the way the story was build upon.
A script-editor called Syd Field read about 1500 scripts during 25 years, and noticed a certain receipt for what made a movie successful or not, and developed the Screenplay-formula. During the movie we watched we were told to look for how the screenplay-formula is used in the script. What is particular with the screenplay-formula is that all sections of the movie is of a particular length, and if you follow the correct direction 1 minute screen page means 1 minute screen time.



We were supposed to watch “3 Kings” but ended up watching an older movie from 1973, called “West world”. This was a science fiction movie that takes place somewhere in the future where it has been created a special high tech amusement park for rich people. They pay to get into RomanWorld, Medieval or Western World, and the people they meet there are human-looking robots how are programmed to respond positive to the guest, and the guests can kill them or involve with them romantically if they want.


ACT 1: approx. 30 min

Who? The main characters of the movie are two cowboys who travel together to this amusement-park where they have chosen to stay in Western World. We meet them first as they are sitting and talking together on the air plane about their expectations for the vacation. They seem like ordinary men who only seek a different and exciting holiday in WestWorld. Both are lawyers of profession, something that indicates that they have no extraordinary powers or skills. When we meet them they are talking about guns and gun belts and are discussing what they are going to do when they arrive in Western World, so we know which world they are going to.

Where? The setting is set somewhere in the future in reality world, where technology has reached as far as creating human robots to please the needs and pleasures of humans. It is created for rich people, as being something expensive and unique for them to experience. It’s a place for them to realise their material desires.

What? The story is about these two cowboys and their vacation in this futuristic amusement park and the problems that occur and it is also about how the robots works, the functions they have and what happens when everything does not works. It is clearly that something will happen between the human visitors in the world and the robots. The resorts slogan “where nothing can possibly go wrong” gives us an idea that something then will go wrong, and what happens when it does.
Plot Points:
The script formula also talks about plot points, points in the movie that turn the story around, makes it more interesting and pushes it forward. They will force the character into take action in some way. Plot point one also turns the movie into act two of the movie, from the set up to the confrontation, and the next plot point will further turn it from the confrontation into the resolution part. The plot points can also be more and rapidly in thriller movies, with a lot of smaller heights of drama, instead of fewer, big ones.
Plot point 1:
In the movie, the first plot point is when one of the honky tonk girl’s eyes suddenly opens wide and stiff, and the engineers later find out there is an increasingly malfunction with the robots. This gives us an idea that something is staring to go wrong.
Plot point 2:
When the remaining of the cowboys sees the bottle of acid and throws it in the face of the cowboy. He has found a weakness in the robots and can use it as a way of rending harmless the gunslinger.
Although I have pointed out these episodes as the plot points, there are also several small pitches (minor plot points) that keep up the tension, and indicate that the movie is of the thriller genre.
The five essential elements of the plot in “WestWorld”:
1. Believable lead character: The two cowboys, who are ordinary people travelling in to a high technological world, where little else seems ordinary.
2. Their urgent and difficult problem: The malfunctions of the robots
3. Their attempt to resolve the problem, which fails and make their situation even more desperate: The cowboy escapes on his horse out in the desert to escape the gunslinger. Takes up the fight with him but fails and escape further into Roman world and down into the underground tunnels.
4. The crisis, their last chance to win, the anticlimax: The face to face fight with the gunslinger down in the robot work shop/lab, when he ends up being faced with the gun pointed to his face.
5. The successful resolution: Fights off gunslinger by throwing acid into his face and finally destroys him as the robots stops working in the end.

Image sources:
http://thisdistractedglobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/Westworld.jpg

http://www.daniellight.co.uk/uploaded_images/filmpara-776508.jpg

"Speedracer"- turning cartoon into a movie-concept

This week’s lecture topic was “Visualisation Conceptualisation” and in order to explore this topic more, we watched “Speedracer” which was a movie that came out earlier this year in cinemas. Our task for this week’s blog was to do some research about the movie, the cartoon it is based on and the producers of the movie, the pervious work they’ve done and see if there are any similarities with other works they have made.

“Speedracer” is another example of a cartoon being transformed to a movie concept, in this case with base in Japanese Manga. Manga is the Japanese word for cartoon and is considered to many as an own form of art. It has a characteristic look of how the characters, specially, look like. The movie is based on a “Manga” cartoon strip, called “Mach Go Go Go”, and later “Speedracer”. It was created in 1966, and in 1967 52 episodes was dubbed into English and sent on American broadcast for 20 years. The cartoon is about young Speed Racer who drives his race car, Mach in races around the world. He often gets help from his family who all have a strong interest for car-racing, and also from his girlfriend, Trixie, and the mysterious Racer X.
The feel and look of the movie is clearly inspired by the cartoon as most of the environment is animated in strong candy-coloured and fantasy looking settings that clearly lets us know it is not real. The opening scene also remind us of the cartoon foundations of the story, as Speed Racer’s little brother sits at school drawing cartoons of race cars.
In the movie, all the classic characters as earlier mentioned, are involved. Speed Racer grows up in a family crazy about motors. The tragedy hits them when Speed’s older brother, Rex, dies in a mysterious accident. 8 years later it is Speeds turn to fight for victory in the same race, but he also discovers that the biggest sponsors use dirty methods to win the race.
The story has all the five elements of a plotted story.
1. A believable lead character: Speed Racer
2. His urgent and difficult problem: Royalton Industries who threats him that he will do everything to make sure he doesn’t win the race, and other sponsors who also use dirty tricks to win the race.
3. His attempt to resolve the problem, which fails and make his situation more desperate: Together with Racer X, his girlfriend and Japanese Taejo Togokhan, he competes in Casa Cristo/the Crucible to fight against Royalton and his fellow cheating sponsors, against his father’s wishes.
4. The crisis, his last chance to win, anticlimax: the Grand Prix
5. The successful resolution: wins and becomes friends with his father again.

The story isn’t very original, but the directors make it spectacular by using an extreme use of special effects, animation and creative and spectacular clipping. The race tracks looks more like some kind of rollercoaster, with loops and tracks going up in the loose air, and the cars certainly have a lot of other abilities than normal Mazdas and Hondas, like the ability to jump over other cars, for example. The strong chewing gum looking scenes and objects, together with a sometimes very intense, fast and confusing clipping, makes the movie a bit hard to watch on the eyes sometimes. But it also looks fantastic, and makes it far more interesting by creating these spectacular effects, then it probably would have been without them.

The directors of the movie are the Wachowski-brothers who became very famous for making the action-genre more spectacular and exciting with the animation- and effect-use in the Matrix- trilogy. They’ve also directed “V for Vendetta” a movie that also was based on a cartoon. This movie is also placed in a futuristic society, but has a far less children friendly theme and story, as “Speed Racer”, since it based on dystopic future-visions, where the society is ruled by a totalitary government.
When briefly comparing these three movie-works by the Wachowski-brothers (I put all the movies of the Matrix-trilogy under the same creation-concept), there are a couple of similarities that can be traced in all of them. Especially the fact that all are set in futuristic, artificial environment, and also that they all contain a high level of data generated technique, used especially to create the environment the movie takes place in.

In the conceptualisation face of movie production it is important for the producers to create a special mark of what they are making, something that is unique for the work being made. I think one of the reasons why we watched “Speedracer” was that we could see how movie-makers can find inspiration to make movies from different sources, like books, real life stories, and other movies for example, and like in this movie, cartoons. We watched a clip from the original cartoon and saw how much the producers have transformed it in the process of making it to a movie. By studying some of the previous work of the Wachowski-brothers, we can also see that there are certain characteristics in these works that makes it possible to see that they are made by the same production team.

Sources: www.imdb.com,www.wikipedia.org ,www.speedracer.com ,www.nostalgiacentral.com/tv/kids/speedracer.htm

Comparison of two low-budget movies: “Brick” and “Enter Zombie King”

In our first weeks of this course, Digital Video Foundations, we’ve watched two low budget movies, with purpose to compare the two and see examples of how one can make movies without a big budget, in different ways. In our first tutorial we watched “Enter Zombie King”, which is an action-movie, where most of the cast are wearing ninja-fighter-masks and the scene is set within a (ninja?) fighter environment, on some kind of fighter-arena; where the “boss” or manager’s fighters are zombies.
“Brick” is a detective-movie, inspired by the classic film noir-genre. We follow Brendan in the time before and after his love, Emily has died under strange circumstances, where he desperately seeks to find out what has happened to her. In order to do this, he has to contact people from the mysterious high school, underground environment that Emily was involved with in the time before she first disappeared and later was found dead. We don’t know what kind of environment this is, but it is clear that Brendan was also a part of it previously, and as the plot is played, the movie slowly reveals what has happened.
“Brick” is the first-time movie of the director, and compared to “Enter Zombie King” (ZK) there is a clear difference and slightly higher level of production quality in Brick, than ZK, and I would also say that it is easy to see that there has been far more time used on details of the production as in script, shooting-style, lighting techniques and so on.

When this is said, it should also be said that the film-budget for the two are slight different, as the costs of ZK was approximately 250 000 dollars, whereas Brick’s was about 400 000. This can be an important factor that explains why the quality of picture, sound, lighting and probably acting was so much better in Brick than in ZK. But this still doesn’t justify the fact that I think the story-concept of Brick works better as a film-plot than ZK.

There are positive things with ZK as well. First of all it is an important fact that I found it quite entertaining, although it was a very bad movie. To me, it reminded me a lot about some of the same storyline you can see boys make up when they are younger, role-playing with each other, as zombies and ninjas always have seemed to fascinate young them, rather than girls, who would play something slight nicer and innocent.

In Brick there is no swearing, and this probably makes it accessible for a larger audience, like younger people. ZK is x-rated, and this is probably because of the time and attention the movie uses on showing off naked women in it. This is also one of the facts that make it easy to see that it must be made of guys, living out their dream of making an action-movie with their favourite elements: zombies, ninjas, masks and naked girls. The movie also takes the focus on breasts and nudity to a new level in one of the scenes where they are talking to a guy on a boat, by first placing a woman in the background, washing the boat, naked. Then, they go a little further by “coincidently” shooting from the angle of this girl’s breast!

When watching these movies we where also to think of what makes the difference between blockbuster and other movies, and I think the clearest factors are that a blockbuster have large budget, famous actors and good production quality. Having said this, I won’t say that a blockbuster is necessarily a good movie, because I think low-budget movies are interesting, because they have to appeal and find ways to amuse and entertain by relying and other factors, like creating an original story and especially on making up a good dialogue to weigh up for the lower quality of production and cast.

Up and running

Here is my blog for the course "Digital Video Foundations" that I have created as part of the assignment-part of the course.