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.