04/10/15 - The Shining

This Tuesday we watched The shining, a popular horror film released in 1980 and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The film is about a man named Jack Torrance a writer who becomes the winter caretaker at the isolated Overlook Hotel in Colorado. He settles in along with his wife, Wendy and his son, Danny who has premonitions. As Jack's writing goes nowhere and Danny's visions become more disturbing, Jack discovers the hotel's dark secrets and begins to unravel into a homicidal maniac hell-bent on terrorizing his family. I've never seen The Shining previous to Tuesday so the end scene baffled me as well as many others but obviously I've never thought about it before. I had many ideas as to why Stanley Kubrick added that shot in but at the same time I wasn't sure if any of them actually made any sense as that end shot must have to sum up the whole film somehow. One of my suggestions is that Jack Torrance was Delbert Grady (The waiter) all along. The reason I say this is because at the very beginning of the film we hear that a man named Delbert Grady killed his wife and 2 daughters with a axe. As the film goes on we see the personality of Jack changing because he is stuck in the hotel for months with just his family. Not only do we think his personality changes but it is confirmed throughout the film due to the amount of mirrors they use when Jack is around and it's not only a few times. I also want to say that I think the mirrors are used to show the split in personality of Jack as well at the twins in the film (who could be Mr Grady's children). The further in the film we get, the more mirrors are used. When we meet Delbert Grady for the first time we follow them to the bathroom as Jack is to be wiped down after a drink is spilled on him. There are quite a lot of mirrors in the bathroom but not one time are they used to show Jack or Mr Grady. This could suggest that they do not need a mirror as they are the same person. Mr Grady and Jack then discuss how Jack needs to have a 'talk in to' to Wendy and Danny. This is Mr Grady telling him to kill them both. Again further on in the film Jack picks up an axe to use as the murder weapon (going back to the story, Mr Grady used an axe to kill his family) so this again comes in to sorts that Jack is Mr Grady. At one point in the film, Jack is locked in the storage room due to Wendy putting him in there. A little later on Mr Grady starts talking to him. At this point I thought it was because Jack was going crazy but I now think that Mr Grady is Jack's conscience hence why Mr Grady says in the bathroom scene 'You are the caretaker, you have always been the caretaker. I should know so, I have always been here'. Him saying been here meaning he's always been in Jacks head. I think Mr Grady is Jack but Delbert Grady is giving himself a different visual identity to himself and us as the audience being Jack as he doesn't want to think he is a different person or that he leads a different life, that he hasn't always being there because he lives 4 hours away. They are the same person, in the same time period which is 1970 as Mr Grady couldn't possibly still be alive if he put a gun in his mouth and killed himself. Thus I think Mr Grady is jack. The only things that don't match up to this are, Jack only has 1 child and is a son (this could also be part of the visual identity changing), that he failed to kill his wife and son and that he never killed himself with a gun, he froze to death. The end picture also says 1921 therefore this couldn't have taken place in 1970 as Jack/Mr Grady is on the front of that picture.

15/9/15 - Spaced

Firstly watching Rear window, Hitchcock 1954 I wrote a few notes on how we saw the first scene through the four relationships of editing which are Spacial, rhythmic, temporal and graphic. We realize that nothing is accidental through this shot from the sweat on the main characters face to the cat running up the stairs. This is quite a unique way of editing as it was one long shot, that had no cuts for minutes. This was done so we could see the environment, we can see it is morning as people are waking up, making breakfast, the milk man came and the cat coming back home in the morning. There was no dialogue although there was diegetic sound as there as music over the whole scene for the audience to hear. Looking at mise-en-scene here we can see by all the props what people do for a living such as, when we enter the main characters apartment through the rear window we see photographs all over the walls showing he likes photos but it then carries on to show his cameras, we then realize he is a photographer and as the camera carries on panning around to explore the apartment we see a photograph next to a pile of magazines. The photograph is the original one from the magazines which explains he is a magazine photographer. This was all done without one word. We then look at the colours used showing his earth like coloured clothes and walls which instantly make the audience like him. After we watched this Hitchcock scene we then moved on to watch an episode of a TV show called spaced. Again we looked at the way of editing through this and it was very different to the way Hitchcock filmed his first scene in Rear window. This episode of Spaced was a non-linear narrative as it started at the beginning with two characters running away from someone. It then flashed back to the beginning of the day just after they met up with a group of boys. It was cut many times throughout the first scene to show how fast and where they were running to. When it flashed back to that morning it showed the main character (Simon Pegg aka Tim) getting ready to go out on a date with his girlfriend but then she blows him off by saying she had to stay late at the office to work. As he was upset about this the main female character (Jessica Hynes aka Daisy) tries to cheer him up by suggesting that they could go out together. When asked what else he would do for the night there was a time-lapse of him sat playing a game on the TV in his imagination, to which he then agrees to go out instead. On their journey out they both have a different idea of what they want to do and when explaining both ideas they talk over pictures and drawings of what the night would consist of. As they could not decide they tossed a coin the one who guessed correct would do their idea. Tim tossed the coin to which we cut to the pub doing what Tim said thus them not needing to tell the audience who won, we figure that out by ourselves. This is called an ellipsis which means they took out the thins that weren't important but still making sense. We see the time pass through the night as they are still in the pub by the repeat of coins being slammed on the bar to order more and more drinks. There is also the repeat of the drinks being slammed on the table and the repeat of both of them becoming increasingly drunk. Until this stops and Tim goes to the bathroom, this is when he causes trouble with the boys he meets up with later in the episode. They leave the pub as they don't want to cause trouble with an old friend of Tim's. Leaving his keys we follow this, the boys and the grown man as the cuts through the rest of the scene e.g. the man throws Tim's keys on the back of the truck and as this passes we get a wipe in edit to show the boys, we then wipe again when Tim and Daisy are running away to the grown man again to which the grown man and the boys meet so Tim and Daisy can get away. The way we see the time pass is by the transition edits of the wipe.

8/9/15 - Sherlock

Looking at how we analyse films through the four relationships being sound, camerawork, editing and mise-en-scene watching Sherlock made it a lot easier to see how men and women are represented differently just by looking at colours, binary opposition, clothing and the few other elements within mise-en-scene. At the beginning of Sherlock there were three people, Sherlock himself, John Watson and the woman who answered to the door being the house keeper I suspect. The way Sherlock came across was frightened and upset as he had just been struck in the face by someone. Little did we know at the beginning that this was his ploy to get inside the house. Although looking away from Sherlock to the woman who answered the door, we see she is wearing both black and white to show both the good and bad within her, here the good took over more as she was willing to help but the bad showed as she didn't help to much only to show Sherlock and John as to where the kitchen and living area were. We then meet a third person a few seconds after we see Sherlock sat in the living area waiting on John to come and clear his cut on his face. A woman, nude from head to toe apart from her black and red shoes enters the room. Only a few moments later we figure that she has walked in nude to use this to her advantage against Sherlock to mess with his head and confuse him, to keep him from dominating the room and the people in it. This then makes the woman the dominant one, we also see this by the way she stands in the room, above Sherlock as if she has power over him. We as the audience are also miss-lead as we assume she is a kind person, due to her being nude this shows nature as if she is pure yet we can see the hidden side to her by the way she sits when she curls up in a chair to cover herself. This also puts a point across as if she were hiding something and/or secrets. What gives this woman's identity away to the audience that she is the evil one in the room is her shoes, finger nails and lipstick, they are all red and this colour defines evil. Also her hair is black which again shows this same outcome. When Sherlock finally gets his head together he becomes the dominant one, by standing above that woman, asking her the questions, there is no sign of stuttering and he is very confident as to the way he is acting, talking, walking and standing. He also becomes the dominant one when he dresses the woman by passing her his jacket. Which also has red cotton inside the black buttons to define her more evil side. Besides all this what he is wearing is what defines him. Although he is dressed in black which would normally make us suspect he is evil, we can see he is not. He comes across more mysterious than anything else, because he is. How he is dressed shows that he takes pride in himself and it is very smart. To point out also, his blue eyes show innocence as well as his curly hair, the curls in his hair make us think of a young child's hair thus being innocent.