When I think of musicals, I think of films such as The Sound of Music, Grease, Across the Universe, and my personal favorite since I grew up in the 2000s, High School Musical. This week in class we watched a Japanese musical called The Memories of Matsuko. Having these other films in mind and this film being Japanese, I didn’t really see it as a musical at first. After thinking about it, it really is just that, a musical.

The Memories of Matsuko was actually a really sad story. The story begins with Sho’s father visiting him and telling him that his sister was murdered, Sho’s aunt that he did not know about. He asks Sho if he can go clean out her apartment. He does and as he does this he starts discovering things about her life, since he had no idea about her or her life as she had left home and vanished from her family 30 years prior. Growing up, Matsuko longed for her fathers affection but all of his affection was given to her sister who was chronically ill. When she got older she became a middle school choir teacher as she loved to sing. One of her students, Ryu, committed a crime and stole money, she tried to fix his mistake but only ended up making a bigger mess out of it, while also getting sexually harassed by her vice principal. All of this along with her family problems forced her to leave. In the following years, she had quite a few love interests. All of her relationships were very violent and she eventually became a prostitute. She also went to prison for about 8 years for murdering a pimp. After prison, she became a hairstylist and even reconnected with her student, Ryu. She learned that Ryu was actually in love with her all this time but he was deep into a life of crime. He goes to prison and Matsuko waits for him. He believed that Matsuko was better off without him and he did what he could to keep her away from him. This loss really affected Matsuko and her life spiraled downhill even more after the loss of Ryu. While Sho is discovering more about his aunts life, Ryu had just been released from prison again and was looking for Matsuko, to come back to her – after she already died.

This film is a musical because without the musical sequences, the film would be missing a lot of plot points and the story wouldn’t make sense. While the musicals I am used to are the same way, I just saw this differently for some reason. My favorite, High School Musical, is truly centered around music because it’s about an actual high school musical. When I think of musicals, it’s the first thing I think of, but Memories of Matsuko really is a musical. For example, when Matsuko is in prison, the whole scene showing that she is in prison is a musical number. During this musical number we see how she is living life in prison and had it not been for this musical number – we would have missed that entire time. That number showed all of her years in prison. Another example would be when she worked as a prostitute. That entire scene was also a musical number. There are other scenes like these that are also musical numbers, but these are the two that really stood out to me. If it hadn’t been for these numbers, we would be missing a lot from the story as a whole. This is what makes Memories of Matsuko a musical.

I really enjoyed getting to watch this film and see a musical film that is from a different part of the world. In the beginning, this film seemed to me like it was going to be really weird and cheesy – which some parts were just that – I really ended up liking it. In some ways, it is really different from my favorite musicals, but also similar to them. This was definitely one of my favorite films we have watched this semester.

In class this week we learned about production design. We defined production design as everything you see within the frame besides the performer, special effects, or natural occurrences. Production design includes things such as set design, location, props, wardrobe, hair and makeup, and possibly things like paintings and sculptures.

To help us understand production design we watched the 1989 Batman. This Batman film was directed by Tim Burton, who seems to be better known for directing animated films because of his very distinct illustration style and he is known to use mostly blacks and whites in his color palettes.

This adaptation of Batman casts Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne/Batman and Jack Nicholson as Jack Napier/The Joker. This film also includes many other notable characters from Batman such as Alfred Pennyworth, Vicki Vale, James Gordon, and Harvey Dent. Batman takes place in Gotham City. This is the place where Batman lives and was born and raised. A lot of this film does take place in the streets of Gotham City, and it is a very dark city. A lot of the scenes in the city are very dull and gray. Another place where a few scenes take place is at Wayne Manor, which also appears very dark and dull. Below Wayne Manor is Batman’s headquarters, aka the Bat Cave. The Bat Cave is very dark and seems as though it is wet, with bats flying around. Batmans outfit is all black, with a gold belt and it casts yellow as the background of his bat logo that is on his chest. Even the other characters seem to wear a lot of black and gray, very neutral colors. However, one character in particular is very colorful. The Joker has very white skin with green hair, and his lips are red. He wears very deep purple and green. Even before he became the Joker, as Jack Napier, he still wore colorful suits. His character strays away from the whole color palette of the rest of the film. He is very bright, whereas everything else in the film is very dark.

This film was very helpful in learning about production design. I liked watching this film for this subject because Batman is something that I am already familiar with. While watching this film, I couldn’t remember actually watching this adaptation of Batman but I have seen other Batman films and cartoons and know a lot about Batman. I enjoyed watching this movie and I liked thinking about how the production design of this film is different from other film that I have seen.

Last week in class we watched the film There Will Be Blood. This film was inspired by the book Oil! by Upton Sinclair. It is about a man named Daniel Plainview, played by Daniel Day-Lewis. Daniel has his own drilling company and works along side his business partner, and son, HW. A man, Paul Sunday, came to meet with Daniel to tell him about an oil deposit underneath his family’s property and Daniel tries to buy the property from his family so that he can drill the oil from the property and from here, the film takes off.

Daniel Plainview has many different traits, positive and negative ones. In the beginning of the movie, when him and his crew found oil, his crew had died and one man left behind a baby. Daniel takes in this baby and raises him as his own, his name is HW. Daniel, at times, seems to really care about and love HW. However, later on HW loses his hearing during and explosion and after this happens it seems as though Daniel doesn’t care about him anymore. I really liked seeing that caring dad side of him but it quickly went away. Daniel is also very greedy, manipulative and selfish. All he wants to do it get rich off of oil and he manipulates people out of their land so that he can strike the oil that is under their property. I am a person who actually really likes the “villain” of a movie because it’s something that I cannot relate to at all and they’re just interesting to me. But if this was not a movie and Daniel Plainview was a real person, I would absolutely despise him.

From the beginning of the film, Daniel Plainview is just a no one. He works as prospector and he is alone. He finds some silver in a mine and gets a certificate for it, later establishing his own drilling company. He adopted HW and is deemed as a “family man” to his clients. At first, I thought he was a truly loving father but that changes and we see that throughout the film. We see that Daniel becomes very greedy and manipulative to get what he wants – the oil, so that he can become rich. He does whatever it takes to get this. By the end of the film, he is once again alone and very hateful. He has turned to alcoholism and HW has abandoned him just as he did before to HW. There is a scene at the end of the film when HW comes to see Daniel and cut off their partnership so that HW can start up his own drilling company in Mexico with his wife. This is where we see just how hateful Daniel has become, or always was. I believe that Daniel changed a lot from the first scene to the last scene.

Daniel Day-Lewis is a method actor and extremely selective about the roles that he plays. For the roles he has played, he has researched immensely and has transformed himself into those characters. For a lot of his roles, he has stayed in character the whole time during filming, even when the cameras were not rolling. So while Daniel Day-Lewis is not like Daniel Plainview, he did a lot to prepare for the role. He prepared to play as Daniel Plainview for 3 years. One of his 3 Academy Awards for Best Actor was won for this role. Daniel Day-Lewis is an outstanding actor, and I thoroughly enjoy every film I see with him in it.

There Will Be Blood is a very good film, one of my favorites we have watched in class thus far. I think it had a lot to do with Day-Lewis’s acting in the film, but I really enjoyed watching this.

This week in class our guest lecturer, Rexx, showed us the film Road to Perdition. This film is set in the 1930s during the Great Depression. It follows a man, Michael, who is in the mob, and his son, Michael, on their journey to seek vengeance against a fellow mobster, Michael Sr.’s brother by adoption, who murdered his wife and son. On their journey they are wanting to reach a relatives beach house in a town called Perdition. In religion, perdition is a state of eternal punishment and damnation – or Hell.

  For this week, we were learning about cinematography. Cinematography is the science or art of a motion-picture photography by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically or chemically. There were many notable cinematography techniques used in this film. I believe the main one being that any violence in the film was shown out of the camera shot. This film was meant to be very violent, it is about men in the mob after all, but all the violent scenes occurred out of the shot of the camera.

The most notable scene in the film not showing the violence was when Tom Hanks character – Michael was standing at the end of a street as Rooney came out with his men to get into his car. It is raining and the end of the road where Michael is very dark, so much so that you cannot see him. But then suddenly you just hear the gunshots and see Rooney’s men dropping to the ground. After all his men are dead, Michael comes walking down the street with his shotgun in his hands and all that is left is standing is Rooney. When Michael shoots Rooney all you see is Michaels face. You don’t see Rooney getting shot or actually see Michael shooting the gun at him, you just see his face and you can watch his expression as he kills his adoptive father. I thought that this was a very neat technique to use in a film that in a way centers around violence. As someone who is not very into violence – I liked that the cinematographers did this.

After doing a little research on the film and it’s cinematography, another technique I thought was neat, and something I realized after reading this, is that in the daylight scenes, the cinematographers placed a piece of black silk over the lens to filter out the light. It made sense to me after realizing how dark the film actually was. The cinematographers also shot at wide apertures to keep the depth of field sharply focused.

One more very notable thing that the cinematographers of the film did was that in the beginning of the film, they took farther shots of Michael. They showed in a lot through doorways and hallways, across a room. They kept him out of a lot of shots in the beginning to show that he is kind of distanced from his family due to being in the mob. I think another thing that this portrays would be the perspective of his father through the son Michael’s eyes, how he sees his father in the beginning of the film. He did not have a very close relationship with his father in the beginning. It wasn’t really until his mother and brother were murdered that he started having a real relationship with his father.

One more thing that we spoke about in class that I thought was cool was that they framed the characters a lot. There would be shots of characters down a hallway for example, and the way the hallways was, it would kind of lead down to the characters standing at the end of the hallway. They would also frame them in doorways. For instance, when Michael Sr. returns from murdering his brother to come back to get Michael Jr. to finally go to Perdition, they framed Michael Sr. in the hallway coming back and then Michael Jr. was framed in a doorway sitting on a bed waiting for his father.

There was a lot of action happening in this film and I really enjoyed seeing and getting to learn about these cinematography techniques. I don’t think I really paid attention to these things in films before, but I think that from now on I will.

This week in class we watched the film Memento. This is about a man named Leonard who has anterograde amnesia, meaning he cannot make new memories. He suffered this from an attack by a man that raped and killed his wife. He is on a mission to find the man responsible for the death of his wife and this film follows him on his journey to do just that.

Leonard suffers memory loss from a hit to his head by his wife’s attacker. He is unable to make new memories, he can only remember things from before his accident. Because of this there are characters that take advantage of this and they manipulate him. Natalie manipulates Leonard by fighting with him and she gets him to hit her and he won’t remember it. When he sees her again she tells him that someone else did this to her and he should go after the man who did it and he does, which he will again, not remember. Teddy is another character that uses his condition against him. Teddy is a cop but keeps this from Leonard. He uses Leonard to get information to find the man who killed his wife so that Leonard can get his revenge on the man. He does, but again does not remember so Teddy uses the information again to find someone else who fits the description to hopefully give Leonard some type of satisfaction that he killed his wife’s attacker. Burt, the man who works the front desk of the hotel, also used Leonard’s condition to manipulate him. He does this by renting out additional rooms in Leonard’s name to make more money from him.

Compared to Raging Bull which we watched in class the previous week, Memento is a much faster paced film. Raging Bull is linear edited, which means that there are more breaths in between takes and there are longer takes. Memento is non-linear edited.

There is a particular flash cut that appears toward the end of the film that reveals a major revelation about Leonard’s character. A flash cut refers to several consecutive shots that convey a lot of information quickly or implies energy or chaos. In this flash cut, Sammy, one of Leonard’s insurance clients from before his accident who also suffered from the same memory loss as him, is shown sitting in a wheelchair. A nurse walks past him and for a brief second, you see Leonard sitting in the chair instead of Sammy. This reveals that when Leonard was telling stories about Sammy, he was actually talking about himself. He got himself confused with Sammy and what happened with Sammy actually happened to him.

While watching this movie, I was a little confused as to what was happening at times. I’m not sure when or where in the movie, but suddenly everything started making sense to me. The movie is a little hard to follow at times because it is not in chronological order. It intrigues you and leaves you asking a lot of questions. However, I don’t think that the film would be as interesting as it is if it was in chronological order. There are a lot of flashbacks and some of them give you clues or answer the questions you have while watching. While it would be easier to follow in chronological order, the film was still really interesting and would not be as good if it were in chronological order.

Primacy/recency is a theory that in a sequence, you will remember the first things that happen because they occur first. That is the primacy aspect of it. Then recency, you will retain what happened at the end the best and the middle will kind of just blur together. The film uses this idea because it begins and need in the same place. The movie starts with Leonard’s last kill at that abandoned building, but it ends with his first kill at this building. The movie would be a lot more confusing if it did not use this theory. There are a lot of repeated scenes but they are repeated because the very beginning of one sequence is the ending of the next sequence.

This film uses black and white to show what occurs before a killing which leads to a moment, and the color scenes lead back to a moment. This film also uses many other editing techniques such as montage, cross cutting, match cuts, smash cuts, and jump cuts. A montage is a sequence of shots assembled in juxtaposition of one another to create emotional impact, condense a story or to convey an idea. The film uses a couple montages. One example being, at the end of the film where Leonard is driving away and closes his eyes while driving. Another being a dream sequence of his wife being killed, which then results in a smash cut because it becomes a nightmare. Another technique used is a jump cut. A jump cut is an abrupt cut that creates lack of continuity between shots by leaving out parts of the action. There is a jump cut montage that occurs when Leonard tells Jimmy to strip off his clothes and then he begins to put on his clothes. Cross cutting is also used when Leonard is on the phone talking about Sammy, and then it cuts back to him being on the phone again. It also occurs when memories are shown and when he has dreams of remembering his wife. Cross cutting gives the illusion that two story lines of action are happening at the same time by rapidly cutting back and forth between them. A match cut is a cut that joins two shots with matching compositional elements and helps establish a strong continuity of action. Match cuts are used when the black and white to color sequences come together. Going back to smash cuts, this is when one scene abruptly cuts to another for aesthetic, narrative, or emotional purpose. This typically occurs during a crucial scene where a cut would not typically occur. This happens in the nightmare sequences, and scenes where it transitions from calm to crazy. Another example is when Leonard is sitting in a booth and cuts to him running away from a guy shooting at him.

This film is continuity edited. Continuity means that one thing flows to the next thing. Even though this film moves backwards, it still all flows together and the sequences go together with the exception of the montages.

This week in class we watched two films that display a lot of special effects. Special effects are defined as illusions or visual tricks used in film, television, theatre, video games, and simulator industries to simulate the imagined events in a story or virtual world. Special effects are then broken into two categories — visual effects and practical effects. Visual effects are generally added in post-production, while practical effects are effects actors can interact with and are generally performed in front of the camera. In the two films, A Trip to the Moon and Star Wars, there were many special effects techniques used.

 

A Trip to the Moon was made in 1902, at the very beginning of film and special effects. There were many visual effects and a few practical effects present in this film. The main visual effect in this film is rotoscoping. Color films didn’t exist at this time, so this movie would have been in black and white, but the scenes were painted over so that it would appear in color. Another effect used was hidden cuts. These hidden cuts occurred in the scene when the umbrella hits and the scene with the poofs of dust. They also used map paintings in the backgrounds. There was a particular background with the sailboat and when the moon was spinning. Miniatures, double exposure, and dissolves were also used often in this film. There were a few visual effects missing from this film. One being chroma key. Chroma key did not exist at the time that this film was made. Instead, compositing was used which means that one piece of footage is layered over another piece of footage. Close ups also did not exist at this time. Another effect missing was intertitles. Because this is a silent film, intertitles would have been effective. Because there were none, there’s no way to tell what is actually happening, or where we are at in the story. We know that characters were speaking and interacting with each other, but again, we can’t tell what they are saying to each other. The practical effects of this film include pyrotechnics, when the bullet is shot and also old age makeup for the characters and alien makeup. The film A Trip to the Moon was way ahead of its time because it appeared in color. No films at this time were in color.

Star Wars also contained many visual effects and a few practical effects. Chroma key was a major special effect used in this film. Green screens are used a lot because this film mainly takes place in space. For the stars in space, map paintings were used instead of particle effects. 3D modeling was also used to show us the Millennium Falcon, which was also a big part of this film. Miniatures were used for the other ships that are in the film. Rotoscoping was used to display the lights of the light sabers and lasers used by the characters. Compositing, hidden cuts, and dissolves were other visual effects used. These were used to display holograms and ghost-like effects, such as when Obi Wan Kenobi dies and turns into nothing. Practical effects like pyrotechnics were used. Pyrotechnics were present in explosions of the ships and the explosion of the Death Star. Makeup was also clearly present because there are aliens in the film.

Since the films release in 1977, Star Wars creator George Lucas has made a few special editions of this film along with the other two movies in the original trilogy that kind of enhances some things and changes some things in the film. I have researched this topic before because I am actually very passionate about Star Wars. It was said that Lucas created these special editions to appeal more to the younger generation and to the children of the fans of the original film. It was to show a fresh take on the story with newer and improved technology of the time, as the special edition came 20 years after the original. With these special editions also came changes to some scenes of the movie. The biggest scene change has caused a heated debate over the years between fans of the original film and fans of the special edition. In the original version of the film, after Luke and Obi Wan Kenobi meet Han Solo and Chewbacca at Mos Eisley Cantina, there is a scene where Han is confronted by a bounty hunter named Greedo. Han owes money to Jabba the Hutt and Greedo has come to collect. They sit down and talk and originally, Han pulls his blaster on Greedo and shoots him, killing him. In the special edition the same thing happens, however it is Greedo that shoots at Han first and Han responds with a shot, still killing Greedo. Also, in the original film we never see Jabba the Hutt, we just hear of him. In the special edition, there is a scene where Jabba and Han are talking to each other in front of the Millennium Falcon. With the special edition, CGI has added additional characters and creatures. They also added a slight censorship on the shootings. The lightsabers, lasers, and explosions were also enhanced and redone. Out of these, I of course prefer the original. When I was younger I had only seen these special editions, and I’ll occasionally watch them if they appear on tv. My dad has been a Star Wars fan from the beginning so I’ve grown up on it and all I’ve ever heard is him gripe about how they ruined the films by making these special editions. Quite a few years ago, he found the original theatrical versions online and bought them so now in my house all we watch are those versions, unless of course they are on tv and we happen to turn them on. The originals are much better.

With these special editions existing instead of the original films, there are many problems. Yes, the special edition is an enhanced version of the film, but it’s different. Many people prefer the original to the special edition because there were changes made to the story in the special edition. The special edition changed the character of Han Solo. Han Solo is supposed to be this cocky smuggler, who doesn’t care about anything and in the special edition the scene change with Greedo, in a way, makes Han seem a little kinder. Another problem with this is that Star Wars won a lot of awards. These awards were for special effects and art direction. But because the negatives of the original film were destroyed and now only these special editions exist, the work of the people of the original film was just destroyed and then it was all redone. I believe that the originals should exist somewhere solely just because the hard work of the people on the film was just destroyed. It’s almost as if they didn’t do anything with the original film because that work is gone. It’s fine that there are special editions, but I think that the originals should be available somewhere.

The film Blackfish is a documentary about SeaWorld and the capturing of killer whales, mainly centering around a male killer whale named Tilikum. The film shows the processes of capturing killer whales in the wild and the practices of SeaWorld and other parks, Sealand of the Pacific and Loro Parque, and how Tilikum was involved in the deaths of three people. 

The documentary Blackfish is an expose. This is clear because the film is attempting to expose the practices of SeaWorld and the other parks discussed in the film. The filmmakers want to expose these parks for capturing the killer whales from the wild and using them to breed and using them for entertainment purposes in the ‘Shamu shows’, while housing them in pools instead of letting them be free in their natural habitats.

To expose SeaWorld, the filmmakers use documentary conventions such as interviews, statistics, and archival footage. They conducted and filmed interviews with former trainers and directors of SeaWorld, Sealand, and Loro Parque. There were also a few interviews with some of the family of the victims of Tilikum. The main statistic used in this film were about the lifespan of killer whales in the wild versus being in captivity. There is footage of SeaWorld employees telling visitors that killer whales have a longer lifespan while in captivity, around 35-40 years, than they do while in the wild. There were interviews with scientists and experts claim that the lifespan of killer whales in the wild is equivalent to the lifespan of a human. The other convention used in this film was archival footage that shows the capturing of Tilikum from the wild, training and performance videos of the Shamu shows that took place in SeaWorld. There were also clips from the news reports surrounding the killings of Tilikum and ads from the different parks.

The film delivered its exposition by using the videos, news reports, and interviews. The film started out with the former employees of SeaWorld talking about their dreams of working at the park and then they shifted to talking about the attacks by Tilikum. They would also show the interviewees answering questions about one thing and then shift to a new topic. Another tactic used in the film was using titles and texts. Some times things were said in text instead of aloud and titles were used to move onto new topics.

This film used primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. The primary source would be the clips of the Tilikum attacks. The filmmakers used these clips while they were edited and it was hard to tell exactly what happened in these clips. There was no sound from the videos, they used music for dramatic effect or they would use audio from the interviews to play over the clips. The secondary source was the interviews. A lot of the interviews were with the former employees of SeaWorld and they describe the things that they witnessed while they worked there. The tertiary source was the documentary and the filmmakers themselves. The documentary was the interpretation of SeaWorld and its practices based from the clips of the attacks and the interviews. Between the secondary source and the tertiary source, I found the tertiary source to be the most effective. I thought it was the most effective because the film itself is a compilation of the other sources to give us all of the information as a whole.

The filmmakers of Blackfish can be seen as both explicitly biased and implicitly biased. I believe they are explicitly biased because they value the life of both humans and whales the same. They could also be considered as implicitly biased because of their ‘environmentalist’ viewpoints in the film.

This documentary can also be viewed as propaganda, depending on the person watching it. SeaWorld itself wrote a review of the film stating that it is indeed propaganda against them, not just a documentary. I can see the ways in which SeaWorld has this point of view of the film, but at the same time, that’s not how I saw it. I just viewed it as a film trying to educate people on the real practices and techniques of a place that makes their money off of keeping these animals in captivity – which to some people would be considered propaganda, but I just saw it as them showing us the facts.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton