Kill Bill 2 Movie Review

"The bride is back for the final cut."

The opening scene same with the vol 1, which is the bride shooting by the gun. However, Kill Bill 2 had mentioned about the relationship between the bride and Bill.

The using movement of the camera lens can bring different view and feeling to the audience.

Here is the analysis of using of camera lens movement for the opening scene:

For the opening, the director use whole black scene and subtitle to create the suspense. The director also use some disturbing and anxiety background music to evoke the curiosity of audience.

For the following scene, the director using close-up, black and white scene and tilt composition to show the bloody face of the bride. The director using black and white for this scene because he would like to stress that the terror of the bride and show the life as pale person. 

Lens movement

Opening and the end of the movement of the camera lens and the ending of the camera lens are mutually contrast. 

Start of the camera lens movement.

The camara lens pull back and then rise. When the lens is pull outside from the church, there are four killer shown at the scene. The movement of the camera lens rise and pullback to whole scene because the director want to avoid the bloody slaughter process which can cause audience feeling uncomfortable.

End of the camera lens movement


.
Bill is located on the left of the scene and the bride is located on the right of the scene.
These two scenes also formed a contrast

First, the director using close-up for the bride and she looked at Bill.

The next scene is the perspective of the bride look at Bill by using close-up.

Reference

Peter Tonguette(2004). Kill Bill: Vol.2 .Retrieved from http://www.thefilmjournal.com/issue9/killbill2.html.

Les Choristes Movie Review

Les Choristes is a French drama film directed by Christophe Barratier. This movie belong to drama and romantic genre.

The story of the Les Choristes is about a failed musician Clement Mathieu comes to a strict boys' boarding school. The tough headmaster Racine use the motto "Action - Reaction" to rule over the students. Therefore the students behave nicely in front of the teachers but always create a lot of trouble after that. Mr. Mathieu tries a different approach by introducing music into their lives to change their attitude. He forming a boy's choir to discover their musical talent. However, Mr. Mathieu like one of the troublemaker young boy's Pierre beautiful single mother which add some romantic genre into the movie.

The film was shown at the multiple international film festival  and the film also list on the highest- grossing film of 2005 worldwide. It shown that the film gain support from the audience.

However, the plot of the story had been critic as being formulaic because audience can predict what's going on happen next. The plot of the story quite alike with other films about inspirational teachers. " Their influence will change a life of the students" and we can see when the opening of the film. The movie seem cannot break from the formula of drama genre.

Reference

Edward Douglas (2005). The Chorus (Les Choristes). Retrieved from http://www.comingsoon.net/news/reviewsnews.php?id=7904.

Director Journal Week 11

Our group had finished for the shooting before week 10. This week we have to conduct the final edit for the short film- Zahirah. As a editor, I had been instructed by the director to edit the subtitle to the short film. I used the new software on the Mac that I haven’t learned before to edit the subtitle of the short film. However, I think I can handled the new software because I had been learned Adobe After Effect before.

Here is the translated script for Zahirah:

Mother:           She has become an ustazah. This has finally fulfilled me and my husband’s ambition in making her an Islamic teacher. Our efforts in nurturing her did not go to waste, Piah.

I am grateful for having a righteous daughter like Zahirah. She has self-respect, listens to the elderly and obey to religion rules. You have also seen it, right? From a small kid to a grown adult, it was not hard to teach her. She is brilliant. She was a clever student in school and became the apple of the eye of her teacher. After that, she went to Egypt to continue her studies. She was the top student there, (getting good results every semester).

Alhamdulilah.

Please have a drink, Piah.

For now, she does not want me to stay alone here. She wants to take care of me. That’s why she was willing to stay here with me. When she has more money in the future, she will bring me along to move to a bigger house.

Zahirah:           Assalamualaikum.

Mother:           Waalaikumsalam. Zahirah, there you are! We just only talked about you. Come in and greet Aunty Piah.

Zahirah:           I go in first, mother and Aunty Piah.

Mother:           Zahirah just came back from teaching, Piah. Now she owns a car, life is easier. This whole month was fruitful for her. Well, teaching religion studies gives great blessing and reward. How is your son now, Piah? Has he started working?

I replayed the short film many times in order to listen clearly the conversation between the character and put subtitle in the right timing. After editing the video, I think that learning video editing software is very important to media students. It is a skill for us to find a job outside the university. If you lazy to learn something new, you will lose at the beginning.

Director Journal Week 10

Dr Azlan asked us to pitch idea for short film. Only three sentences are needed.

So here is my first draft of the synopsis

CHANGE

A woman who called Jess always complaining about her appearance and she does not satisfy with her look. One day, she decided to do a plastic surgery.

When she woke up from the surgery, she realized that her face totally change even she also can’t recognize herself. Therefore, she started to live in a life that she didn’t expected.

She regrets for what that she had done because the surgery had changed her life upside down. At last, her life changed again. She decided to encourage those who are low self-esteem and become a successful motivational speaker.

After Dr.Azlan listened about the script, he asked me to add “twist” for the ending of the short film. Therefore, here is the edited version for my synopsis.

CHANGE

A woman who called Jess always complaining about her appearance and she does not satisfy with her look. One day, she decided to do a plastic surgery.

When she woke up from the surgery, she realized that her face totally change even she also can’t recognize herself.

One day, she met with a girl, Kim who had same face with her. They both shocked. After a long talk, they decided to exchange their living life because they had boring about the living life they had now. However, Jess doesn’t know Kim had an intention for this action. 

Director Journal Week 9

For this week, Dr Azlan requested us to explain about the slideshow that had been taught by him. Dr wanted to test us whether we understand with the lecture. However, it is quite hard for me to understand some of the concept because I don’t have much experience on film production. I think the best way of learning is we will apply the theory what had been taught by Dr when we face the problem during the process of the production.

Besides that, some of the members in our group had to attend the test which done by the lecturer from UPM. Although I didn’t take part in it but I still try to study some note about film production. Hope I can use these theories someday. 

Lizzie McGuire the Movie movie review

The Lizzie McGuire Movie is a comedy film and the film was released by Walt Disney Pictures.

This movie is the first Disney Channel Original Series to have theatrical film.

The Lizzie McGuire movie had reached number two in United States box office on 2003 because the film serves as a series to the television series.

The film is about Lizzie McGuire has graduated from middle school and takes a trip to Rome, Italy with her class. And what was supposed to be only a normal trip becomes a teenager's dream come true.

From the style of the movie, I think the main audience of the film are teenagers. Therefore, the movie use an interesting starting to attract their eye's ball.

The starting of the movie using the cartoon of Lizzie to create an interesting and funny atmosphere. 

The director using the animation of cartoon Lizzie to introduce the casting and the crew. 

Animated Lizzie represented the inner's thoughts of the Lizzie and addressing the audience directly in the manner of the Greek chorus. The advantages of the animation is to reflect a live-action character's innermost thoughts.The animated Lizzie can show visually illustrate the main character interior monologues.

The animated Lizzie was voiced by the main character, Hillary Duff.

The other interesting part of the opening part of the movie is the main character start with singing and dancing happily.

This scene had showed that Lizzie has a star dream. At last, she finally made it on the stage and shine on the stage. The opening of the movie can be said related to the end of the movie.

Reference

The Disney (2000). Animated Lizzie. Retrieved from http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Lizzie_McGuire.

Super 8 Movie Review

Act structure explains how a plot of a film story is composed. 

The three acts are labeled as act 1 setup, act 2 confrontation and act 3 resolution. 

The first act is usually used for exposition, to establish the main characters, their relationships and the world they live in. The first act usually comprises the first quarter of the screenplay around 30 minutes.

 In the movie Super 8, the first act refer to the start of the film. The mother of the main character Joe Lamb has been killed in an accident. Joe was more attached to his mom than his dad who is Deputy Jackson Lamb who never really been there for his son.

Later at the Lamb's house, Louis Dainard pays a visit. He was blamed for the death of Jackson wife's death and forced him out of his house and puts him in his squad car. As Joe watches his father take Louis away, his gaze shift to a silver locket in his hand.

Four months later, Joe and his friends Charle get summer break and they has been shooting a Super 8 film which is a detective story for a film festival in Cleveland. The crew include Cary, Preston and Martin. Charle had rewritten the story so the detective now has a wife. He invited Alice to play the character. 

The group arrives at the Lilian Train Station, where Charles intends to shoot a scene with Martin as the detective of his story, trying to get his wife Alice to leave a zombie infection. As they film the scene of the train thundering past the station, there is a explosion of the train. The train-wreck site scattered with strange little white cubes. Joe picked up one of the white cubes and the strange events started to happen around in his life.

The second act also referred to as rising action, typically depicts the main character's attempt to resolve the problem initiated by the first turning point, only to find  him or herself in ever worsening situations. The main reason of the main character seem unable to resolve their problems is because they do not yet have the skills to deal with the forces if antagonism that confront them. The second act comprises the next two quarter of the film around 60 minutes.

The town devolves into a state of crisis after the train- crash. There are many report about the missing household items and dogs. Later Jackson grows concerned when the Military begins to roll into Lilian through radio frequency.  

Shortly after hearing the transmission, Jackson encounters Alice's father Louis, who tells Jackson to keep Joe away from Alice. Jackson demands that Joe keep away from Alice, but Joe claims that Alice isnt like her father. They two reach a wordless impassses before Jackson under arrest and locked away by General Nelec.

Joe heads over to the cemetery after this, where he sits at the headstone of his Mother's grave. He hears some loud noises coming from a garage near the tombstones. He is surprised when Alice appears in his rooms. They watched the home movies of his mom and suddenly the strange white cube that Joe picked up at the crash site started to vibrate before shooting through a nearby wall and leaving a hole behind.

After that, Alice heads home and saw his father drunk and smoking. She rushed away from the home with bike because disgusted by his father. Alice was taken by a large creature at that time. Because of this incident, Joe intent to get back into town and rescue Alice. They discovered some secret of the large creature before they under arrest by General Nelec. They managed to escape and they rush off to the cemetery. 

They saw and heard strange things from the garage. Eventually, they found all the missing people at there and the large creature eating the limb of another human.

The third act features the resolution of the story and its subplots. The climax is the scene or sequence in which the main tensions of the story are brought to their most intense point and the dramatic question answered, leaving the main character and other characters with a new sense of who they really are. The third act comprises the final quarter of the film around final 30 minutes.

Joe, Alice and Cary return to the surface safely. As they do,a ll sorts of mechanical objects in the area become magnetized to the water tower's top area. The water tower burst after the locket of Joe flies up to the magnetized watertower, where he metallic objects and the white cubes morph into a spaceship. The creature climbs on top of the water tower and disappears. The watery content raining down on the people below and all of the family reunion again. Alice and his dad and Joe and his dad seem to remend their broken relationship because of this incident.

Reference

Sidney Lumet(2013).Three-act Structure. Retrieved from http://www.cod.edu/people/faculty/pruter/film/threeact.htm.

Stephen J. Cannell (1998). What is the Three Act Structure? Retrieved from http://www.writerswrite.com/screenwriting/lecture4.htm.

IMDb(2001). Super 8. Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1650062/synopsis?ref_=ttpl_pl_syn.

Director Journal Week 8

Our group had to finish the real shooting by this week. Therefore, I had got some advice from the senior in order to make sure the shooting go smoothly.

            The thing that he had mentioned was always have a back-up plan. If we ever organized shoot dates, no matter what plans that we had made, we might going to encounter some problem to extend the real shoot. For example, he told me that he planned to split up the shots at different place so there was a mix of difficult and easy sets- up.

            I think his advice is very useful therefore we might follow the advise that he gave to run our real shooting.

Director Journal week 7

The crew member set up for the living room.

Our rehearsal shooting run on last week and we conducted our rehearsal on the studio media faculty.

Before we started the rehearsal shooting, we had to prepare well all the props and camera setting.
We used main studio as living room and the pantry of the media faculty as kitchen.

We used around 3 hours for the rehearsal shooting. In the process, Ariff as the director and giving instruction to the camera man for the shooting angle.

After rehearsal shooting we realized that cooperation within the crew members can make the job finished in shorter time and do better.

Next time I think that we can do the best!