SUBMARINE Opening Scene Remake

SUBMARINE Cinematography

SUBMARINE

Jordana, the love interest of our main character, Oliver Tate, played by Craig Roberts, is his ideal image of a woman. He is completely willing to change himself for her benefit, and does so whether consciously or not through out the course of Submarine. In this specific frame, Jordana, played by Yasmin Paige, is shown in a close-up that emphasizes a warm orange glow across her face, the spectator or audience's eyes being immediately drawn both her saturated red coat which is used as a symbol of Oliver's love for her and her uniqueness contrasted to the bland school uniforms of every other character, and her face. Just like Oliver, we are exclusively focused on Jordana, as the background has an intensive blur of black white and orange lights.

Focusing specifically on the close-up element of this shot, the detail we see Jordana in compared to the rest of the frame is an effective technique that focuses all eyes on the point of interest, Jordana. We see her in the same way Oliver does, we see the entire film through his eyes, and he sees his entire life as a film.

The shot is also a low angle shot, the camera is literally looking up at Jordana, just like Oliver does in his weird little brain.

The colour of the shot, orange, black. white and red, despite all being warm colours (aside from black and which are neither warm or cold colours) show passion, love and hopelessness. Despite that being something of an oxymoron, it represents Oliver's feelings throughout the film. Red, his burning passion for Jordana. Orange, his dream-like perception of her. Black, his lack of understanding and hopelessness in actually talking to her or any other female, he doesn't know what to do, but he tries his best, even though he may be completely helpless. White, showing a gleam of possibility for their future. In general, Jordana is shown as very colourful and brings light in to Oliver's life.

 

 Now let's look at the less interesting aspect of Oliver's life which, as for many people, is school. The blue, grey, dull setting emphasizes the depression and feeling of being underwater Oliver Tate faces on a daily basis. In this specific wide-shot, you have a foreground, background and middle-ground. Unsurprisingly, our awkward lead character is in the middle-ground. He stands out while fitting in, he's not so exuberant and loud in his differences to others to stand out, but not quite normal enough to fit in.

To really hammer in the dullness of everything in his life at that moment, the eye level short makes for a stiff, non-dynamic scene. This sounds like an insult or critique, but given context, it makes complete sense. Oliver feels unimportant and small, so he's shown as just that. It almost looks like we're looking through the eyes of someone else in the class, looking back at Oliver. Despite the camera being very obvious with it's visual representation of Oliver's feelings of averageness, we still see him stand out from everyone due to the camera being blurred on some other faces, possibly showing Oliver's self obsession with himself and his peculiar movie world. 

Looking at the shapes in the room, they're all squares and rectangles with all negative space filled to the brim with detail. If you were to think of a boring shape, you would think square, everything, the tables, the doors, the windows, the posters, the boxes, the walls, everything is square and uninspired. Oliver finds school and academic activities to be menial and boring, so what better way to demonstrate that than the setting being all boring and menial.

The school uniforms are identical, but the way characters wear them gives us insight in to their personalities. Look at Oliver for example, with his neatly presented tie, blazer and jumper presented with pride. Then look at his friend, Chips, who has his blazer off with a poorly tied tie. He is shown as a slack, rebellious character which cares little for school rules. The teacher is just grey, dull, mid-toned, grey.

In conclusion, Oliver Tate is shown as depressed and lost in his drowning world, a common theme in the film, made to be bland and hidden.

(low quality, not much I could do about it - sorry)

Coming of Age movies

t

Horror Mise-en-Scene

Art//Commodity - Entertainment//Education

Bodyguard Mise-en-Scene

Edward Scissorhands Ice Dance Scene \\\ Mise-en-Scene ///

The white, pure clothes traditionally associated with angels (What Edward Scissorhands is making) and a wedding dress represents the beauty of Kim in Edward's eyes. Throughout the film, people have been trying to change Edward, but as this all starts to unravel his clothes get ripped apart while carving the statue of Kim. He now has a hybrid costume of his original clothes and his new clothes. This could represent how his obsession with Kim has both made him and broken him.

Kim's hair is large and puffy, almost as if it's floating. It moves slowly with Kim's movement and could be a sign of her elegance. Her makeup is not very obvious, it's only used to make her skin look smoother, whereas Edward has this pale, abrasive makeup applied with huge crazy hair, very representative of his strange character and creates sharp contrast between the two characters and subtly makes the audience be more interested in their love story as two polar opposite personalities in a difficult situation.

There's a strong use of green and red in the natural and peaceful surroundings, covered by fake snow and Christmas lights that gently bring out the nice surroundings. It may be worth noting that the only real snow is Edward's, showing that although he is the strangest person in the town, he may also be the most real person in touch with himself. (Even if he's not in touch with others) When Anthony Hall (Jim) arrives and aggressively demands for Winona Ryder (Kim), the background is dark and sinister in usual Tim Burton style.

Edward's sharp, deadly knife fingers carve a beautiful statue, Tim Burton is once again creating contrast with this idea. Piling on to the avalanche of contrast, Kim and Edward's hands are vastly different, and during the scene, Edward's hands are pointing to the right with and are framed on the left hand side of the screen, with loads of negative space on the right, which according to the cinematography law-book, is typically a technique for somebody staring and directing their attention to the area with negative space. Then a sharp cut to Winona Ryder's hand on the right hand of the screen, with negative space on the left hand of the frame. This shows that Johnny Depp is looking at Winona Ryder, and yet carving a statue, as if he's modeling it off of her. Kim's hand then drifts to the left towards Edward, and though they cant hold hands, it's a good use of visual storytelling to build their bond.

As Kim steps out of her comfort zone, or, house, the orange glow on her face turns to a natural white light from the moon beaming down to her face, creating a rim light around her head as if she has a halo. She's lit very angelically where-as Edward is lit devilishly with a hint of light showering him, a beam of purity. Outside, all the lights come from street lamps and the Christmas lights plastered around the town, giving the world a magical , fun feeling to it.

Edward is concentrating purely on his sculpture seemingly, but his eyes are slightly off kilter, as if he's focusing more on Winona Ryder than his sculpture, creating art from life. He's got a very distressed, concentrated expression plastered across his face, and moves with precise yet sweeping motions of his arms, carving away at the ice, creating snow that Kim is moving slowly and elegantly to, with a slightly bent backwards hand like she's from a renaissance era painting in a big cathedral, suiting the angel vibes. She makes almost ballerina-like movements, very precise and slow with sweeping movements.

Kes

Kes (1969) is known as a classic, innovate film that was a huge experiment at the time and was met to critical acclaim.

How does it hold up in 2018?

First, I'll discuss the structure of the film, which has some issues purely because of the time it was released and the lack of technology that would usually be utilized to fix these things today. 
Act 1 is structured differently to the others and is kind of messy. This can be due to the poor audio and thick accents stopping some from being able to understand cues and dialogue vital to the story. Also, most of the scenes are very varied in length that leads to a kind of confusing struggle to understand the plot. This all picks up after Act 1, when the scenes are more consistent and easier to follow.

This film's plot is simple, a boy has a bird and it dies, but it suits the hyper-realistic vibe it aspires to achieve. It's one of those "nothing happens" films along the lines of "Boy" by Taika Wattiti. It's infused with politics, messaging of the middle to upper class ignoring the lower class British people. The messaging isn't forced into the movie either, it's more of an insight in to their lives to spread awareness.

The character's are for the most part pretty complex, with the exception of a few less interesting people. The protagonist himself is at first a pretty unlikable kid, but as we find out more about him his personality unravels and we see the deeper side of him. His brother is a bully, he ends up killing Kes. His character is kind of unsatisfactory, it's not bad, but it's underdeveloped slightly. He's kind of an evil slate, not unrealistic, but mean.


Kes and the boy's relationship is interesting, the idea of a young child so interested in something he knows is completely unattached to him but still he cares for it so much. This concept peaked my interest the most when the relationship with the boy and his English teacher emerges. I was hoping for more development on this, as since the kid never had a real father, it could have been a nice father figure situation, but it never went anywhere. The more I think about it, it's probably for the better. The film is harsh and real, and life doesn't always work out like a movie.
 

 The ending of Kes is a strange one. Kes is buried in the mud, and you're expecting another scene to wrap up all the loose ends in the movie, but it never comes. The movie just ends. This makes me think that maybe, despite the film focusing on the boy, it's about the boy and bird's relationship. Sure the film is named after the bird, but the bird is in the film for probably 20 minutes of it's almost 2 hour run time. When the bird dies, so does the relationship, and the film ends. It's jarring and interesting.

So how does the film hold up in 2018?
It still holds up as a good movie. Sure it's flawed in quite a few areas, but it's interesting story-line and intriguing premises really propels it to be something special.  
8/10

welcome

welcome to the blog?

i like this film

it's good