Creative Critical Reflection
Gone Dark - Film Introduction
Screenplay
Gone Dark
By
Mark Tucker, Karli Johntry, Brent Buckles
Date: February 13, 2024
Mark Tucker, ,Karli Johntry Brent Buckles
901 State Rte 100, Florahome, FL 32140
Girl Stretching on a paved pathway
CHARACTER 1(Karli Johntry)
*No Dialogue*
Opening, Running Trails in the forest
*Close up shot of Character 1 putting in headphones then pressing play on music*
Hold On, We're Going Home plays by Drake
EXT. Trails,(park)- Mid day,cloudy
CHARACTER 1
She starts running down the path.
CHARACTER 1
Makes her way down a staircase that leads to a darker more secluded trail.
CHARACTER 1
Continues running down the pavement
Character 2 (The watcher)?
(Breathing Heavily)
*Camera ShotThrough the lenses of their eyes watching the girl.*
*Many shots of the girl running and being watched later*
CHARACTER 2
Runs up behind the girl while shes taking a rest break, Knocks the girl out and picks her up and carries her away*
Cut to: Parking Lot, shown carrying body to white car.
CHARACTER 2
Puts girl in white car trunk
*Car Drives off*(scene ends)
Killing Eve
In class we watch the opening to an episode of “Killing Eve” in order to pull information from the camera shots and mise-en-scene. The opening scene takes place in an ice cream parlor somewhere in Vienna, with somewhat off putting music playing in the background. The camera mainly focuses on 2 people with the exception of the ice cream scooper. A majority of the shots are exchanged between a little girl and Villanelle that gradually grow closer building tension between the two, and ultimately ends with Villanelle knocking the little girl's ice cream into her lap. For the mise-en-scene, the ice cream parlor gives off a kind of vintage/nostalgic feel with the dim lights, plaid tablecloths, and neon colors. After finishing the clip, we tried to figure out what kind of personality traits the character Villanelle might have, coming to the conclusion that she’s probably a sociopath, apathetic, and just kind of crazy in general.
Mise-en-scene
Genre Research: Mystery Thriller
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
"Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery" (2022) is a mystery/crime film that mainly takes place on a billionaires private Greek island. The movie begins with the name of the film company, and the goes to a black screen.
The black screen is accompanied by a knock on the door and then cuts to the actual opening of the movie which is actually very similar to the opening of the first "Home Alone", having a mother answer the who also has a somewhat chaotic household.
After opening the door the mother quickly signs a paper and grabs a mysterious box from the mailman and sits it down in the kitchen, hastily preparing for her news interview taking place in her house. We find out after the interview that each of the womans friends have also received the same kind of box leading to question. The beginning of this movie doesn't really have any indications that this is a mystery movie besides the box given to each person, as well as any person who has seen a "Knives' Out" film before.
Shutter Island
"Shutter Island" (2010) is a thriller/mystery film that takes place in 1954. After showing the film company, the opening fades to a black screen which has text saying the date and location. "1954. Boston Harbor Islands".
The black then fades into a light gray with the sound of waves and a deep foghorn like undertone playing in the background. Out of that light gray screen we see a ship appear out of it, finding out that it wasn't a single colored screen but was actually fog.
After seeing the ship come out of the fog, the film cuts to a nicely dressed man feeling what we could only assume as sea sick, almost throwing up. Then walking out to the deck of the ship to meet with someone. The beginning of this film immediately has an eerie kind of feel to it whenever you hear and see the ship come out of the fog, and you can tell that this is some sort of mystery thriller movie.
Film Score Final Project
In our mini-film me and partner (Josilyn) decided to scrap our original idea of having a mysterious book fall off the shelf and have the character go to investigate since it seemed to be a common idea among a few other groups in the class, so instead we decided to go with the main character of our mini-film sitting down on a bean bag and then searching through it because it felt kind of funny/off after sitting down on it. I filmed the entire process and Josilyn was the actor in it, and we both helped edit the video. It was kind of hard trying to convey the feelings that the music was supposed to give off since we didn't have a lot of time given that we restarted, and that the video may have seemed a little confusing/unconvincing. I know our film definitely wasn't the best out of our class, but I feel as though it was okay. We tried with the time we had.
The peer-reviews helped us realize that we definitely needed better acting and ideas. We'll probably just stick with our original idea next time even if it's not that unique.
Sound Scores
This past week, we transitioned from looking at representation in film and television and began researching how film scores impact a scene. We were tasked with creating a 45-75 second sequence where we could apply two different scores to change the impact on our audience.
For our sequence we have our character be walking through a library when a book falls off the shelf, and open onto the floor. The character then goes and looks at the book, and that is when our scene is supposed to end.
In our first shot we will be focusing mainly on our character. Our character will be walking through the library looking for a book to read, running out of luck and time, a book will suddenly fall off the shelf leaving our character to investigate.
In our next shot our character will be standing over the booking looking at it. We will have 2 different angles for the shots being used in this scene. One will be over the shoulder facing down towards the book, and the other will be floor level facing up from the perspective of the book.
Our last shot is going to have the character focusing on the book, looking at its contents as 2 different genres of music play in the background. The type of music will most likely be a kind of mysterious and magical sound, and the other will be a more ominous and sinister one.
Are Hallmark Movies Offensive?
Throughout the month we’ve been trying to watch different clips and episodes from shows and movies but haven’t really been able to due to the restrictions that the school district has set for us. Mr. Bergen ended up having to email Mr. Theobold multiple times and after about a week of going back and forth over email, we just decided that we would instead watch a Hallmark movie on DVD since DVD’s were the only things that we were allowed to use.
When a workaholic business woman named Holly Crosby is forced to take off work on Christmas to go take care of her injured father who loves her and is very excited to have her come visit. Holly only plans on staying for a few days before she goes back to work, but eventually she finds out that her father is in need of significant financial help for Santaville and is forced to stay a little longer than expected. In search of financial aid, she meets a guy named Ben while going to meet up with one of her old friends. During this process we are reintroduced to a character named Peter who had actually met Holly a long time ago and was shown at the beginning of the movie during a flashback.
Ben reveals to Holly that he may be able to help her and her father and offers them a contract in which they sign. Holly eventually goes on a “date” with Ben to discuss their options for Santaville where he then goes outside to take a call. Holly follows him outside and ovehears that he was planning on scamming her father out of Santaville, Holly is furious but doesn’t confront him about it with her walking off afterwards.
The gang finds a solution to recover Santville by selling Peters nutcrackers, in doing so they come just short of the $50,000 that they need. This is when Holly’s boss calls and offers to buy all of Peter's nutcrackers for his toy company. They then buy back Santaville and Holly decides to stay and live there with Peter and her father as the head of sales for the nutcrackers, and that’s basically how it all ends.
Is the formula that is used in these movies offensive?
Well some of the drawbacks that may come with this formula are that it may not have enough representation for certain groups of people, but some might think that that’s actually a good thing since the movies aren’t trying to be “woke”, and are just meant to be enjoyable.
You shouldn’t really expect much from movies that are just supposed to be fun and loveable. They aren’t meant to change the world, they’re just meant to make people happy.
The movie may not have much representation for many groups, but it’s in no way offensive. It’s just meant to be a fun little story for everyone to enjoy.
I don’t think there should be anything changed about this formula, and that it should stay the same, even if they’re corny.
Representation
Music Video Reflection
Last week in our Media Studies class, me and Josilyn (my partner) finished up our music video and submitted it to our blogs. On Thursday, we watched all of the other music videos that were made, in class.
Our planning and brainstorming process really only consisted of us trying to find out what we wanted to do for our project. Once we decided that we wanted to do the dancing scene from Pulp Fiction, it wasn’t too hard to try and recreate the moves. It took a few attempts to try and get each shot to look right, and even when we were finished filming, there were still a couple scenes where it didn’t look quite right.
For our filming location we tried to find a place that resembled the setting in the actual scene the most. Since there weren’t really any stages that were indoors available to us, we went and used one which was outside. We got help filming from Karli Johntry. While we danced she took the same kind of shots that were used in the real scene.
In order to edit our music video we just used CapCut. It wasn’t very complicated to use and we got the editing done within about 30 minutes. For the credits of our video, I downloaded the same font that was used in the movie title, to try and add to the resemblance of it.
Overall, I think we did a good job of reenacting the original video. Everything came together pretty well, even though there were a few problems with the floor we were dancing on. I ended up with holes in my socks from twisting on the concrete. But other than that everything went fine.
Many other videos that were made also had some interesting techniques that were used in them, even if they weren’t intentional. For example, in William Hudspeth and Kaleb Akins music video, there is a scene where you see the shadows on the wall appear before the characters do. This helps add a sort of dramatic effect to the shot. There’s also another music video where there is a reflection shown in a window. I don’t really know how to describe what happened but it was cool.
Music Video
Our chosen song is You Never Can Tell by Chuck Berry
Our reasoning for choosing this song is because we want to recreate the scene in Pulp Fiction of Mia Wallace(Uma Thurman) and Vincent Vega(John Travolta) dancing.
Our chosen genre is rock/blues. Some attributes of this genre are the instrumental sound and upbeat rhythm of the song
For our color palette we are going to do warm to cool tones to contrast with one another.
Shots that we will be using are full shots, mid shots and a few close up shots.
Storyboard
Forrest Gump
In the film's opening scene, the camera follows a feather throughout a city which eventually lands at Forrest’s feet whilst he is sitting on a bench. After the feather lands, Forrest picks up the feather and places it in his book. This feather may be used to represent a new cycle of life. Later on in the movie, the same feather falls out of the book emphasizing a new start, this new start being for little Forrest.
In the scene where Forrest’s mom is dying she talks about her destiny, and how she was destined to be Forrest’s mother. This scene turns out to be one of the biggest conversations about destiny and taking control of it. When Forrest asks his mother what his destiny is, she can’t really tell him the answer to the question and just tells him that he would have to find that out for himself. Later on in the movie, after Jenny’s death, Forrest once again wonders what his destiny is, eventually coming to a conclusion that they all may just be floating around randomly.
The theme was introduced in the opening scene, with the feather. The feather is a representation of how fate or destiny works. The feather is aimlessly floating around until it ends up at forests’ feet, representing that we don’t necessarily have control of our fate or destiny. The feather is the blueprint for the whole movie foreshadowing how destiny will occur throughout the movie. The feather adds a full circle effect from the beginning of the movie when the feather floats down to forest feet to the end of the movie when Forest sends his son off on the bus.
Top Gun: Maverick
How do directors define genre in the first few minutes of a film? This week in Media Studies, we set out to answer that very question by viewing the opening scenes of Top Gun: Maverick (2022) and Forrest Gump (1994). We viewed each of these film openings several times and through several lenses to understand how genre was conveyed. For each viewing, we focused on camera work, editing,sound and mise-en-scene.
Our exploration into genre began with Top Gun: Maverick (2022).
Top Gun: Maverick (2022) defines the movie's genre in the opening credits by using a masculine looking font for the title. Most of the shots have an intense and dramatic overtone while the crew on the aircraft carrier are preparing the jets. The opening scene is given its feel of action by the use of the song “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins about halfway through the scene. Many of the shots that are shown in the movie are filmed in ⅓ ‘s and don’t really have a main focus of character; as the scene continues the shots get shown progressively faster. These shots are also aided by the scene taking place at dawn, which gives it a beautiful and dramatic look.
The movie Forrest Gump (1994) is mainly filmed using thirds, especially when the main focus of the scene is Forrest himself. Each shot that was filmed in thirds was smooth and continuous. In the opening scene while the feather is falling, there is a slow and subtle piano track playing in the background. As the feather gets closer to the ground the real sounds of the city start to set in. The music in this scene ends as soon as the shot does.
