Film Inspirations

I will be looking at two other films for inspiration:
1. The artist (Silent film)
2. Amelie (French film)

I will be looking at The artist because it is a silent movie and I am deciding whether or not I want to include verbal interaction between my characters. I will be looking at how the director has played on the use of music with no verbal interaction between the characters but with their expressions. Music can be a very powerful source in a film as it can be used to tell a story and I really want to explore this to see whether I can incorporate this into my own production.

I will be looking at the unique visual style of Amelie to give me inspiration of how I can make my piece visually appealing and help strengthen my cinematography.


Stephanie Ndubuokwu x

Film example.... Alfred Hitchcock Vertigo 1958 (Scene)

This film is called Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock. What I love about this scene is that Hitchcock changed the music a lot to fit the mood of the scene and the characters. At the beginning it’s very orchestral and soothing to show their emotion and the love they have for each other, then the music builds and the violins get stronger and sharper. This was to show that something bad was about to happen. The music builds to create an atmosphere for the audience to keep them engaged in what is going on in the scene. Basically in this film the male character that you see (Detective Scottie) has vertigo which is the fear of heights. As he is climbing up the stairs running after the female character Judy he looks down and as he does this the camera pulls up away from the floor giving it more of an elongated look, making him seem higher from the floor than he actually is. This was a very good camera trick Hitchcock used to create more of the feel of vertigo and perspective distortion. Hitchcock was known as the master of suspense and with this he chose the right music to put into this particular shot as he used very fast paced sharp orchestral music to give of this effect.

This is the perfect example of the direction I would like my film to go towards. I would like to be able to use music and camera angles to create a certain effect and create an atmosphere for my audience. I love things that have meaning. I love it when in movies characters do not have to speak but the music, their expressions and the camera angles tell the story for them.

Stephanie Ndubuokwu x

Advice from Lecturer

Hello again =D

So I spoke to my lecturer and she gave me some really good advice on making my question stronger. She said I should maybe decide which is the stronger attractor in my initial question - sound or vision and is it possible to control what the audience take in first.

I am going to take her advice and try to work out what will appeal more to the audience. I should probably work out when I starting thinking more in depth about the question and what I will produce, if I am going to base it towards a particular target audience.

I am also going to change my blog title to Double project as well because I got a bit confused. My double project is like my dissertation, research report and production that I will produce. My Independent project is actually a course in my final year which I will produce my short films and major production work.

So yeah this is just a little update for you all.

Stephanie Ndubuokwu x

Sorry

I have been so preoccupied that I have not made any posted or uploaded the videos that I was supposed to. On the other hand I know it's not related to my blog but I received my results back yesterday and I did better than I expected. I finished 2nd year with a 2:1 so I'm very happy about that.

Stephanie x

I said I would be posting clips of movies up but I haven’t done that yet. I will be doing that very soon. I want to try and post something at least once a day or a couple times in the week to make sure I do not fall behind.

Stephanie Ndubuokwu x

Today I will be looking at multiple clips from films for inspiration. I will try to post some of these clips up for you all to see. I am still thinking about the question and how I want to word it but hopefully I should have it done soon.

Stephanie Ndubuokwu x

Ok so, the idea of the title that I have is ‘How do camera angles and music have an emotional effect on a short film and the audience?’

So it’s clearly not all thought out yet and I still want to change some of the wording for the question but I want my piece to be based along the lines of that topic.

Stephanie Ndubuokwu x