Week 8 assignment: essay – interrelationships reflection apa format | Applied Sciences homework help
- Using a video camera, experiment with shooting the same visual information with the lens wide-angled, and then at different stages of zoom until you reach the end of your lens’s zoom range. Review the product and comment on the way the cam- era treats visual space.
Sometimes technique can take over a film by becoming the most interesting aspect of the cinematic experience. The Academy Award winner 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Star Wars (1977–2017), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), ET (1982), and the seven Star Trek films of the 1970s and 1980s have similar themes, concentrating on space, the future, and fantastic situations. All include shots of marvelous technical achievements, such as the images of the computer-guided cameras that follow the space vehicles of Luke Skywalker and han Solo in the dramatic conclusion of the original Star Wars (Figure 12-7). But some critics have argued that these technical achievements were ends rather than means to artistic revelation. jac16871_ch12_299-329.indd 309 12/11/17 11:58 AM 310 ChApTEr 12 violence anD filM Because it is so easy to shoot a scene in various ways, a good director is constantly choosing the shot that he or she hopes has the most meaning within the total struc- ture of the film. When Luis Buñuel briefly shows us the razoring of a woman’s eyeball in Un Chien Andalou (1928) (it is really a slaughtered cow’s eyeball), he is counting on our personal horror at actually seeing such an act, but the scene is artistically justifi- able because Buñuel carefully integrated the scene into the total structure. Unfortu- nately, many films show sheer violence without any attempt to inform—for example, Nightmare on Elm Street (1985) and its many sequels, the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Predator (1988), and similar films. Kill Bill (2003, 2004), both volumes, as well as A History of Violence (2005) move in a somewhat different direction, in that they are not specifically horror films despite their depiction of violence. These have been nominated for a number of awards in recognition of their seriousness. A film that was ahead of its time in portraying violence, Reservoir Dogs (1992), won Quentin Tarantino the respect of movie critics and the movie public. Taran- tino followed up with Pulp Fiction (1994), three related tales set in Los Angeles and FIGURE 12-7 Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). In the film, George Lucas used a number of powerful special effects, as in this threatening attack with a light saber. ©photo 12/Alamy PERCEPTION KEY Technique and Film 1. Are the technical triumphs of films such as Star Wars used as means or ends? If they are the ends, then are they the subject matter? What kind of problem does such a possibility raise for our appreciation of the film?