Lighting

 

        I have never paid attention to lighting in films as closely as I do now because I now see how important lighting can be to tell a story within the story. If there isn't a lot of dark or dim lighting, then we can assume the mood in the scene is a happier scene or there isn't much conflict. If there is dark or dim lighting then our character or characters could be depressed, maybe the darkness plays into the character or characters personality, or maybe that dark lighting is telling us something scary is going to happen. It depends on the genre of the movie though. Or they are possible night owls naturally like we saw in rear window, Jeffries would stay up at night and his room would be dark and the natural moonlight would peer into his room as he watched Thorwald throughout the nights of his broken leg and the investigation he started from his room. It really depends on the movies context because I think lighting can be interpreted in many ways.

        In Chapter 5 of Moving Pictures, it talked about lighting a great deal. I thought the term low-key lighting was quite interesting, I have never heard of it till now and this term meant that the film has a lowering or removal of key lighting and relies on more indirect, relatively hard fill and back lights, these create shadows and high contrast in a scene. This type of lighting is used to create mystery and terror and reflecting back to many of the horror films I have seen low-key lighting has been used quite a bit, especially in the scary parts of a horror movie when the jump scares happen. I think a lot of the scary parts in a movie can be predicted, but some are so hard to see coming. There is also natural lighting and artificial lighting. A lot of movies use natural lighting from windows in a morning scene when someone is waking up and artificial lighting in maybe a lab where there is an experiment is being done. I think of the scene where Peta in the Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 1 was going crazy in the white room as he was tied to the hospital bed when he saw Katniss again, but his brain was so damaged from the capital he couldn't think straight, that to me is what artificial lighting is in a scene. 

        The rule of thirds was pretty interesting to me too, we use this concept in drawing too when we map out how we want to draw something and certain areas may have more emphasis than others. The same thing to me is done in film, there will be certain boxes within the frame that will have more emphasis than others and that will depend where the character or characters are in the frame and where everything else in the frame is, it will vary for each frame. The lighting could feel proportionate in the frame or maybe it doesn't, maybe one area has more darkness than the other areas or visa versa with bight areas or even color or certain colors, even objects. There are many possibilities to tell a story by just breaking down a frame by its lighting and what is included in the frame. Some are easier to interpret than others, but each will tell a unique story. 

What we have done so far

 

            

        The group in the back as we call ourselves did not really write out a story board for our film, we just went with the flow of ideas we came up with and combined them all into our own story. Basically we did not write anything down, but we brainstormed quite a bit about what our possibilities are for our project. We also talked a lot about our favorite movies and certain scenes in the films and some of those ideas gave us ideas of certain camera shots and angles. Movies like The Hangover, The Godfather, and many others came up in conversation, but we just came up with something on our own, but it was good to think of our favorite movies for some ideas/inspiration. We honestly came up with a simple, but kind of confusing storyline, because we almost wanted to make it seem like we are in the process of making a movie within our own movie for class, but we were just talking about it, then had a fight about the idea and then agreed on an idea, but realized we didn't film anything, but really we did, we just didn't realize we were filming our thought process which turned out to be the movie we made. 

        In the book Chapter 5 on Cinematography, it talked about lighting and for our film we relied on natural light in some of the scenes and artificial lighting in the indoor scenes. Our movie was filmed either inside the Wentz Science Center or the outside of the Wentz Science Center, and I think we did a good job to have a balance in between the two settings. We wanted to make sure we had a variety of different types of lighting because not all of our film is just one type of lighting and we aren't fixed to just one room. We also wanted to make sure we had different types of shots. We had a few over the shoulder shots, medium shots, long shots, and a few close ups. There was some camera movement as well, but sometimes our cameraman stood still in one frame, but most of the time it was multiple frames in the filming process. Overall, I think we did a great job with the use of lighting and the various shots throughout our film. 

        I am not sure about how the editing process went, Matt did that for our group, but I can imagine he had to cut out the beginnings and endings of some clips because of laughter or things of that nature. Also he would make various edits to make sure the main parts are in the film when we were ready and expected to be filmed were concise, because he wouldn't include Derek or I saying "Are you recording?" then Matt saying "Yeah", he would just have all of the important parts included where we were acting. Matt also added the free music that was available in the platform he used to edit the film, and I think the music he used had great timing with how the film went. Music to me makes the films story truly come to life because of the added emotion tied to it, and I think the music in a film amplifies how the character or characters are feeling in the film. Music also sets the tone for the entire scene too. I think the editing process can take a while, but I think it is the best part of the film making process because we get to make our movie into something of our own, and put our own cinematic style onto it. 

Shots

     

                                                                        

       I think if people looked harder into the films they watched they would get an even deeper meaning behind the story being told. I remember during my senior year of high school I took a film class and the teacher told us that this class will ruin our way of watching movies because we will think about the concepts we learned in class as we watch movies. Long story short he was right because after taking that class I got more out of films than I ever did before because I thought about the concepts we learned such as the purpose of certain lighting, music, shots, angles and so forth. I was grateful for it though, because if I could get more out of a movie then I don't see an issue with thinking about concepts I learned in a class if it benefits my cinematic experience. I would re-watch my favorite movies and as I watched I would notice the deeper meanings in the certain scenes that I didn't see before and I was thankful for noticing the differences because therefore I understood the story even more than before. When I see like for example a over the shoulder shot or a medium shot of two people talking at a table, I will not just pay attention to the conversation itself, I will pay attention to the lighting, sounds and or music, what is going on around them, body language, and what the camera is doing too. Then I can anticipate what is going to happen next and I also get more out of the conversation other than the words being spoken. 

        For example, maybe the setting is a dark room and this is a superhero movie that we are watching and these two people are thinking of doing something malicious, but fool the audience with what they say, like their conversation is about something positive, but in the end these two people do something drastic. Then we can think back to what this scene in the dark room really meant, and think oh maybe that conversation wasn't really meant to be positive after all, the lighting and maybe the music was sugar coding what they really felt and wanted to plan. I feel like these kind could happen in more movies than we expect and we just never pick up on it until maybe the second or third watch. I honestly pay attention to the smaller scenes more at times and scenes that may not seem like they have a useful part in the story, because more often than not those scenes may include certain clues for the rest of the film that we may not have picked up on. Now it depends on the movie I am watching, but usually I do that with horror or adventure/action movies that may have a plot twist or something like that. 

        Personally my favorite type of shot in a movie would be a medium shot of a character. The image above is what I am referencing when it pertains to my favorite kind of medium shot. The Big Lebowski is a classic and I enjoy how close the camera is to Jeff Bridges's face (the actor who plays Jeffery "The Dude" Lebowski) because it doesn't have to be super close for us to know how Jeffery is feeling. We see a blurred bowling alley in the background so we know the focus is Jeffery at the bar with an angry look on his face. I like these shots the best because honestly any kind of close-up is just too much emphasis in my opinion and as an audience member I would rather not be so close to someones face as I watch a movie. A medium shot to me does justice in telling us what they are feeling in the best way in my opinion because we can see what is going on around them and it doesn't feel so isolated to the character. I think it is open to interpretation on which shot is best to depict emotion, but I just think medium shots depict emotion in the best way because we can see the background, lighting of the setting, and we can see body language too and objects around them too and not just their face. 

Marie Antoinette

 

Get Out

 

    There are many key scenes where oppression and racism occurs during the film and I think a lot of cultural relevance can be related to these scenes because Black people are still treated unfairly and differently from White people unfortunately. I think everything I am about to state makes Peele and auteur because Peele is Black and Peele creates Chris who is Black as the center of the movie because Peele is telling a story of how Black people are and can be treated through Chris's character. Peele has probably been treated in similar ways throughout his life, so directing a film making White people the antagonist was great in my opinion because unfortunately it is usually the other way around in films and in reality. My favorite cinematic scene was where it pans out over the groundskeepers shoulder and he watches how Chris was accepted "better than him" as he watched Chris meet his girlfriends parents. It all adds up in the end that it seems like he is jealous of Chris because we find out the groundskeeper is Rose's ex boyfriend and now slave. He is jealous that Chris was with her, but felt bad because he knew what was going to happen. An example of mise-en-scéene to me was how Peele had the same set up when Chris was watching TV as his mom died, and when he was trapped in the chair as he is about to be operated on watching a TV with similar graphics as when he was a kid really struck me because there was an over the shoulder shot that matched the same shot we saw of Chris when he was a kid and when he was trapped in the chair. That example of mise-en-scéne and how Peele staged the frame the exact same really made me as an audience member feel Chris's pain because of how the blind man and Rose's family especially the mom (through hypnotism) made sure Chris felt bad for the death of his mom and made him have flashbacks of the exact moment in his life. They neglected the fact that he didn't want to talk about it at the dinner table or at all, and that made me upset because it's like Rose's family didn't really care about his feelings and made his life and his trauma seem like it was meaningless. 

    Here are some examples of how racism and oppression were displayed throughout the film. This is how Peele is an auteur because he has experienced events like this in his life. To start, when the white officer asked for Chris’s ID for no reason and his girlfriend stands up for him, when Chris did nothing wrong was a prime example of a Black man being oppressed for no reason, when he didn't do anything wrong. Another scene/aspect was when Rose's family has a stereotypical house of black servants, but they don’t think of it as racist they appreciate what they do and actually care about how they are doing and they support Obama, (that's what they want us to believe and Chris to believe), but in front of Chris it seems to be different and Chris isn’t phased by it because he expected the racism to happen. The most important and moving scene in my opinion was the hypnotism the mom did on Chris made Chris think back to the day his mom died and how he watched tv in the rain and she made Chris think about the situation and Chris didn’t really want to talk about it, and he was afraid to call anyone and as the hypnotism kept going he couldn’t move and she made Chris feel powerless as he cried in the chair and then he sunk into the floor and felt like he was just floating in space. As the camera come back there’s a closeup of Chris in tears and then he is swimming up to the room and then wakes up breathing hard.

       A huge point in the movie where racism occurs was at the party. As Chris meets the family members at the party the first couple asked him about sports and golf and how they knew Tiger Woods and he wanted to see Chris’s form. This is clearly racist because Chris and Tiger are both Black and this gentleman wanted to compare Chris to see if he was like Tiger, and to see if Black people have a certain way of playing golf. The next couple asked Rose a very inappropriate question about her love life with Chris and how “is it better”. That would be very embarrassing, but I understand why she asked Rose that because she wanted to know if Chris was fit enough for the job he had no idea was coming. “Black is in fashion” the next guy says, making it seem like it’s not normal for a Black man and White Woman to be together during his time, but it is normalized now. Like really dude, why did you even say that?

    Chris later on during the party told Logan that he felt better about his presence there and the whole conversation seemed so awkward. It seemed like Chris knew Logan and he actually did, and Logan just seemed like he was brainwashed to Chris. Chris was just so confused and didn’t know how to feel about the people there. As Chris walked back into the house everyone went silent and then looked up and Chris went to get his phone and he noticed his phone was unplugged again because when he woke up that morning it was unplugged too. Chris thinks that the Black people have all been hypnotized by the things they say and how they’ve been acting, he is right. Especially with the lady who unplugged Chris’s phone, she started crying and smiling and just laughed and it creeped him out, it creeped me out too, like who acts like that. Then the Asian guy asked Chris about his experience as a black man in America which was uncalled for and Chris asked Logan the other Black guy to answer the question instead and then he began to answer the question and Chris took a picture of him with a flash accidentally, which caused a “seizure” and then Logan went after Chris telling him to “get out”. Roses father asks Chris what his purpose is, and then his father talks about how everyone dies and then Rose finds the keys but then the entire family turns on him and Rose turns on him too. All of these examples I believe is a way Peele is an auteur because Peele firsthand has been the minority in a White dominated space. 

    I also felt like there were a lot of key scenes where there was symbolism and suspenseful action. This scene creeped me out specifically! The scene was when Chris found a red box upstairs with all of the pictures of the house keeper, the grounds keeper and Rose was in every picture and it seemed like she set up Chris to be next. A key scene where something didn't seem right was when the groundskeeper seemed jealous when him and Chris talked about Rose as he chopped wood, it was like the groundskeeper knew her well and we found out that’s right because they used to be a couple. Rose attempted to manipulate Chris into becoming a slave because she was “in love” with him and she just wanted him to meet her family so they could hypnotize him so the blind man in the family could get his eyes. She was so close to succeeding. The teacup played a huge role in the movie and the tea cup put Chris into the “sunken place” and that teacup was used to hypnotize Chris and that is how they were able to then get him into the room outside of the medical room where he was going to be operated on. But Chris was like heck no, and bashed the guys head in and that guy ended up being Rose's brother and he was going to take him in to get operated on thinking Chris was out of it. He had ear plugs in so he didn’t hear the tea cup and wasn't hypnotized this time. He then killed the father that operated on the blind man who was going to get Chris's brain it seemed and his eyes. Chris then broke the tea cup and killed the mom next and then the brother came back to attack him and they fought and fought, but Chris killed the brother. Chris took a car and hit the “Grandma” and he went to save her like he didn’t save his mom, hoping that doing so would save him from his trauma of not saving his mom. That wasn't the case. Chris crashed the car because the grandma was going crazy and the grandma died in the crash. Chris was attacked by the “Grandpa” and then Rose went to shoot Chris and Chris took a picture of the grandpa and the grandpa shot Rose because the flash did something to the grandpas mind to turn him against Rose and then the Grandpa killed himself. Chris’s friend in TSA came to save him and they left Rose to bleed out as she watched them drive away. 

Rear Window

 

Gilded Cages

     

       Emotion can be expressed verbally, physically, or we just have to look at a person's facial expression. In this video we can see that a close up shot at someone's face can tell us the story that is being told or a possible answer to a question that wasn't verbalized. Or if it is from distance, we can tell how they feel by not only their facial expression, but their surroundings, body language and lighting. Another theme in this video was that in a group setting or if you are alone, emotion was different for each person. If they are alone there could be happy things going on around them, but really, they are depressed or in deep thought. Same with being happy, a character could be happy as can be, but everything around them is sad. The lighting like I said before can determine how someone feels, like when Bill Murray was in his room his face said that he was sad, but everything was clean and well lit, so maybe he just had a bad day and not deeply depressed. If his room was a mess and the lighting was dark, I could see him being severely depressed. 

    Music can tell us a lot about how characters are feeling and just the mood of the movie. In this video I didn't hear any happy music, I didn't see many smiles, I just saw upset faces of people who are going through a lot. Many of the scenes are in someone's room, car, but one is in a pool, and another is in a store where the girls were actually happy. That tells me that it is important to have a place to go to express your emotions, either in a group setting or alone. The scene of the girls in the shoe store tells us that we need a healthy escape to forget about all of our problems. For me personally that is the gym, I go to the gym to forget about the world for a few hours. 

    All of us can relate to a time in our life where we were upset and just needed to just be alone or left alone to think. I think that this video sums up our society now a days, because a lot of people are unhappy and just need to work on themselves. I really enjoyed the cinematography of each clip because it was a stationary camera capturing the people or person and what is going on around them without having to move. The camera focused on the persons face too, because many of the clips had the characters face in the center of the shot either from a distance or close up. Having the persons face in the center tells me that the film maker wants us to know that emotion is the focus, because there may not be anything happening in particular within characters, but how the character is feeling moves the movie along. Very clear and concise video too, I could tell that many of these movies are recently filmed. I saw in the credits that the years of the movies were 1999, 2003, 2006, 2010, and 2013. A lot of these years had significant events happen during those times, I won't get into that too deeply, but I am sure some of us may know or remember. I think the events may play a role in the emotion of these movies.