Senior Final Exams

Welcome to the end of senior year. I hope your time in film class has been enlightening. You have just one more task to take care of before you go...your final exam.

Your task is to thoughtfully and thoroughly analyze a single frame of film. You should include everything we've learned this year: camera angle, mis en scene, color, contrast, staging...you know, everything. Use your notes. Go all the way. Too much is just enough. Along with the nitty-gritty film elements you've recorded in your notes, you may want to cover the following topics:

• What is the subject of the frame, and how do we know?
• What is the tone of the frame, and how do we know?
• What story is the frame telling, and how do we know?
• If possible, include the context of the frame as well as the minute and second the frame in the film occurs.

What frame should you use, and from what film? That is totally up to you. If you would like to capture your own frame, just be sure to either e-mail it to your instructor or print it off and turn it in along with your essay. Or you may select one of the frames provided below. Some are from films we have watched in class, some are from films with which you are familiar regardless, and some are from films you have never even heard of. The more familiar you are with the film, the easier the task is going to be, but the choice is yours.

A hard copy of your final exam essay is due AT THE START OF CLASS on Wednesday, MAY 30. You must personally turn it in. Emails will not be accepted. 

I've written an example of what I'm looking for. It can be found HERE. Here are some links to a few more examples crafted by past students:

• Fight Club
• Can't Hardly Wait
• Zombieland
• Shutter Island

And here some frames you may wish to choose from:

 Boogie Nights

 Cool Hand Luke

 The Descent

Gladiator

 The Grifters

 House of Flying Daggers

 The Maltese Falcon

 The Matrix

 Memento

Mississippi Burning 

 Pan's Labyrinth

 Pulp Fiction

 Rear Window

 The Shawshank Redemption

 Speed

 Sword of the Beast

 Touch of Evil

 Unforgiven

 Walk the Like

Return of the Dragon

Captured by the Frame - Part II

A few posts ago we were discussion how in his Invasion of the Body Snatchers Don Siegel used the frame itself to create a sense of paranoia and claustrophobia. There is literally no way out for the characters – they are hunted by the camera and blocked in by the image itself. In the comments, someone mentioned that The Descent did a good job of this as well, and I said I’d get some images up. Well, here they are. (Click on them to make them bigger.)

Pretty scrunched in, huh? She's not merely in a cave, she's being crushed by its mass. But it gets better. check these out...

See how the darkness just literally crushes them with black? Most filmmakers don't have the nerve to show this much black on the screen for this amount of time. In most cave movies, there's lots of blue light, and lots of close ups and medium shots. Heck,  I bet most filmmakers wouldn't even have enough imagination to consider showing long shots in a cave. Also, notice how the characters in these shots are far off center. I'm not sure, but I almost think the negative space becomes the subject of these shots, not the characters themselves.

Here's my favorite shot of the movie. A woman climbing a hill of bones towards the light.

I've watched the movie in the theater and at home. I have to say, this is definately one film in which the lardgess and darkness of a theater adds to effect of the film - that sense of despair and hopelessness. I'd be curious, have any of you seen The Descent? And if so, did you find the cinematography effective in terms of creating a sense of dread and fear? The rest of you, do these shots make you want to see the film, or are you put off by how much you don't get to see?

P.S. Yes, this is a monster movie. And yes, there are monsters. And they're everywhere...in the dark...where you can't see them. That's another reason why there's so much dark - because there are so many monsters.