Friday 26 April 2013
Wednesday 24 April 2013
Friday 19 April 2013
Monday 15 April 2013
Sunday 14 April 2013
Unit 4: Rough script/plot outline.
INT.
day, lab
FADE IN
Comic
book animated intro
Our
scientist is sitting at his desk looking into a microscope.
He
looks up at the camera and scratches his head
Scientist:
I must better understand these Eukaryotic cells...
He
jumps up out of his chair and begins to walk over to a chalk board on the wall.
Once
there the camera changes to a complete view of the board, which depicts the
cell cycle.
Scientist
scratches his head again
Scientist:
Sighs
He
starts to walk back to his desk.
He
trips on a co-workers chair leg, this prompts him to fall into his own desk and
land on the floor pulling items from the desk down with him. As he settles, the
microscope slides and falls onto his head knocking him out.
FADE TO BLACK.
Cell
cycle awakening
FADE IN
The
camera shimmers into the scientists face, his eyes are closed as if he is
asleep.
His
eyes slowly open, and his pupils become very large as he is in shock from what
he has awoken too.
The
camera fly’s backwards away from his face to reveal the environment and the
fact that he is just a floating head.
The
Camera now jumps to a view from behind the scientist, in the distance there are
stange faces coming towards him.
These
are the cells during their first stage. As they fly pass him the camera freezes
like an image and the cells name shown on screen. The text then fly off the
screen.
As
the cells fly past the scientist He is pushed up into the air and forced to
follow the path they are taking.
The
Cycle
Now
following the common path the cells take the scientist is at the front of the
current line. They begin to fly towards the hexagon-patterned wall.
Scientist
has a look of fear in his face as he thinks he is going to crash.
The
wall then proceeds to open up in a spiral motion, a tunle is reviled and the
cells start to poor into it along there current path.
They
near the end of the tunnel and the scientist is frusated out into a large
orange environment.
The
camera follows the path of the scientists vision.
He
looks in amazement as the walls begin to open to reviel a spiral pattern going
up and ending at an opening in the ceiling. The walls continue to open and
close, in a sort of heart beat motion.
The
camera cuts back to our scientist and he is now slowly drifting along towards
the centre of the environment, his gaze is still fixed upon the opening in the
ceiling.
Small
objects begin to rain from the opening, this is the cells food. He watches as
they fly around and gulp it down, almost in a similar fashion to how a fish
would eat.
After
a brief time watching the feeding the cells begin to group in the middle of the
room, they then start to move towards the sientist again and he is pushed
forward to wards the opening and closing wall, he notices theres and opening
behind the wall this time though.
As
he nears the wall he tries to time himself as not to get squashed by the
closing motion.
In
the next environment, the cells begin to grow and end up being double the size
of the scientist. He struggles to find a space as the ever growing cells beging
to take up a lot of the room in the environment.
He
manages to 'pop' out of the group but is propelled towards the next opening
like a rocket as the cells begin to move again.
It
begins to get very dark as the scientist flies out of an opening at the top of
the next room at high speed.
The
camera shows this by shooting from one side of the pitch-black environment, as
he fly's out of the light filled hole in the ceiling.
As
he nears the bottom of the dark hole the hole has become so small the it looks like
a small star in the sky at night, he looks up as the sky begins to fill ith
small glowing balls of light that drift slowly down towards him, they seem to
be increasing in amount as the get closer.
Once
they have reached a good viewing distance he realises that the balls of light
are actually the cells! They have started glow and become near transparent
allowing him to see what they are made o. He watches on as they split and
become two different cells, and then realises that he ha just gone through the
cell cycle, a brief flashback accours where he remembers each phase, and environment
he has just been through.
The
camera cuts back to our scientist but he doesn’t look so good! He has a look of
pain in his face, but all of a sudden his eyes burst open wide and he
freezes...
The
something magical happens, HE BEGIN TO DEVIDE HIMSELF! he pops in two, which
leave the original confused a nd worried, he faints as he looks at himself
moving around with all of the other new cells.
Lab
awakening
INT. day, lab
He
slowly opens his eyes, and relises that it was all just a dream, as he gets up
from the floor he picks up a pen, and walks over to the board where he has all
of his research. He starts to fill in all of the blank pieces he has been
looking for and smiles as he puts the pen down. The camera now shows the
completed board, whcih now shows a diagrame of the cell cycle and the different
phases a cells takes along its jorney.
The
end.
Thursday 11 April 2013
Review - Jaws
Jaws is a 1975 Thriller directed by Steven Spielberg it was based
on a novel by Peter Benchley that shared the same title. Jaws is often regarded
as the starting point for the movies industry’s yearly ‘summer Blockbuster’.
Jaws begins with a girl named Chrissie Watkins (Susan
Backlinie), she leaves a party on to go swimming. While she is out in the ocean
near a buoy, she is attacked by something from below, which in turns drags her
down under the water.
She ends up listed as missing and her gruesome remains are found
washed up on a beach by chief of police Martin Brody (Roy Scheider). The
medical examiner later concludes that a shark killed her. Brody then decides it
is a good idea to shut the beaches to avoid further incidents, but is overruled
by mayor Larry Vaughan (Murray Hamilton), because he doesn’t want to ruin the forthcoming
tourist season, the town's primary source of income. The medical examiner then
lies about the death claiming it to be nothing more than a boating accident.
Brody reluctantly has
no choice but to follow along with the lie, this however was a grave mistake as
the shark goes on to kill a young boy swimming along the shore. This leads to
the boy’s Mother placing a large bounty on the shark, sparking an amateur shark
hunting frenzy along the beach; however, a local professional shark hunter named
Quint (Robert Shaw) offers to kill the shark for $10,000. A large tiger shark
is caught by a group of fishermen, leading the town to believe the problem is over.
Brody asks to examine its stomach contents, but Vaughan refuses, as he wants
the whole thing to be over. Later that night Brody and Marine biologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss)secretly
open the tiger shark's stomach, only to discover it contains no human remains,
meaning it could not possibly be the attacker.
This leads to Brody, Quint and Hooper heading out to sea to find the
shark. Only to end up being hunted themselves.
One of the key factors that makes jaws such a successful
thriller are the cleaver use of camera angles to create suspense and shock
audiences. One key factor is the fact that the shark hardly has any physical on
screen time. The viewer’s instead get to see things from the sharks point of
view as he swims thru the water towards victims, watches on from a distance or
as he is eating. “We see the shark close
up, we look in its relentless eye, and it just plain feels like a shark.” (Ebert, 2000) Viewers are also led to fear
the sharks power by being shown the left overs from his destructive path. All
of this adds together to create very tense and scary moments, where you genuinely
fill that this could be happening, and is not just some cheesy robotic shark
nomming on actors. “Spielberg knows
exactly how the human mind works, and he uses that knowledge to plumb the
elemental fear buried deep within.” (Scott, 2012)
Sound wise, the film has a very good score composed by John
Williams, the music just before an attack is probably one of the most known
horror songs of all time and can instantly be recognised, and associated with
Jaws around the world. “The use of
silence is far more powerful and effective than the score” (Ewing, 2010).
However, complete silence often plays a huge role in horror movies and Jaws is
no exception. Scenes where it is dead quiet and all you can hear is the ocean
are often more chilling then some of the attack scenes. For example the scene
at the end of the movie with the trio battling the shark has very little music of
fake sound effects, this adds to the realism and great sense of danger these
men face in their struggle.
Quotes:
1: Roger Ebert: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/jaws-1975
3: James Blake Ewing: http://cinemasights.com/?p=3960
Images:
Tuesday 9 April 2013
Review - Psycho (1960)
Psycho is a 1960 horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock,
the film is bassed on a 1959 novel of the same title.
Marion Crane, played by Janet Leigh, is a secretary
living in Pheonix, arozona. One day she is intrusted to take $40.000 dollars
from one of her bosses clients to the bank, she however decides to steal the
money to help her money troubled ex-boyfriend, Sam Loomis, played by John
Gavin. She rents a car a runs away to California to see Sam, mid-way into her journey
she pulls over along side the road to rest. A highway patrol officer, who
becomes suspicious of her current state, later awakes her. He alter begins to
follow her, so she decides to switch cars in a nearby car dealership.
Later
that night she becomes tired from driving through heavy rain and decides to
stop at an isolated hotel called The Bates Motel. Its owner, Norman Bates,
played by Anthony Perkins, tells Marion he rarely has customers since the new
highway bypassed the place. He later invites her to have dinner with him in the
creepy looking house overlooking the hotel, this is where the movie begins to
take a turn into the land of horror.
“Alfred Hitchcock should be credited with making the first slasher film
for the ground-breaking narrative template he created for Psycho.” (Cole, 2009) Hitchcock’s unique style can be familiar sight for regular viewers of
his movies, but the films sudden jump into a horror ‘slasher’ film was a surprising
shock to viewers, as the first half of the movie completely leads the audience
away from the blunt scenes later on in the film. “What Psycho does is it
takes an audience right out of its “comfort zone” (Becker, 2012). This is of course why Psycho is considered to be Hitchcock's most successful
and famous film that has opened many doors for many of the future horror movie directors to follow.
The tension during the movie was created using a mixture
of single scenes and shots the heavily lead into the next. “With some of the most memorable iconic scenes in the
history of Cinema. Tense, horrific and a superb lesson in filmmaking, it offers
complex characters and revealing dialogue with a huge regard for details.” (Magalhães,
2010) Possibly one of the most known scenes in cinema is the ‘shower scene’
that shows the murder and later on the corpse of Marion, this scene has led to
much controversy and discussion because at the time nothing as graphic had been
seen before. And the shocking nature of the unexpected was masterfully down to
how Hitchcock shot the scene using nearly 70 shots ranging from a mixture of
shadows to extreme close-ups. Psycho
is arguably one of Hitchcock’s greatest movies, his cleaver use of techniques
and his ability to draw the audience in, is without question the work of a true
master of film.
Quotes
1: Cole Smithey (2009) http://www.colesmithey.com/capsules/2009/03/psycho-classic-film-pick.html
2: Dave Becker (2012) http://www.dvdinfatuation.com/2012/04/595-psycho-1960.html
3: Carlos Magalhães (2010) http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/132282-psycho-and-the-scene-that-changed-modern-horror-forever/
Images
Poster: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Psycho_(1960).jpg/215px-Psycho_(1960).jpg
.jpg/215px-Psycho_(1960).jpg){kind=link}
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