About Comedy Films Essay
About Comedy Films
Our exam topic is based on Comedy films. Comedy is very individual and subjective. Comedy is inherent, different audiences find different things funny. Recently we had just seen a movie called, "There's Something about Marry," starring Cameron Diaz and Ben Stiller. This is a prime example of a comedy film.
Comedy Films "make me laugh" – they elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are light–hearted dramas, designed to amuse and provoke laughter. The comedy genre exaggerates the situation, the language, action, and characters. Comedies observe the deficiencies, foibles, and frustrations of life, providing merriment. Providing a momentary escape from day–to–day life, they...show more content...
Screwball comedies, predominant from the mid–1930s to the mid–1940s, are light–hearted, often sophisticated, romantic stories, commonly focusing on a battle of the sexes in which both co–protagonists try to outwit or outmaneuver each other. They usually include visual gags, wacky characters, a fast–paced improbable plot, and rapid–fire, wise–cracking dialogue reflecting sexual tensions and conflicts in the blossoming of a relationship (or the patching up of a marriage) for an attractive couple with on–going, antagonistic differences. The couple is often a fairly eccentric, but well–to–do female interested in romance and a generally passive or weak male who resists romance. (Stereotypical men) However, after a twisting and turning plot, romantic love usually triumphs in the end.
Black Comedy is a popular sub genre of comedy films, these are dark, sarcastic, humorous, or sardonic stories that help us examine otherwise ignored darker serious, pessimistic subjects such as war, death, or illness.
Spoof films mock other movies. And a great example of this is a very recent film which has two parts to it, is Scary Movie. This film takes the mockery out of the horror genre. Spoof films normally called Parody movies, exaggerate and over play illogical in an existing film genre. They used to be teenage slasher movies.
Film Reflection
This summer has been an eye opener. Throughout this course, I have learned to look at films through a new perspective. My new perspective will forever change how I look at films. Before this class, I watched movies for their content as well as for entertainment and enjoyment. This summer, I have learned that you must analyze films to fully appreciate the work. I will no longer watch films for enjoyment, but I will watch them for all that they are worth. When watching films, my perspective has changed, causing me to analyze the camera work elements, and how the film ties into American life and culture.
Before this class, I never knew that there was so much work and detail put into producing films. The camera work was put into these films for a specific reason, and when I realized this my thought process changed. I realized that in many cases the camera work is what made the movie, not the plot. Once, I had this understanding, I started to break down the camera work into the many different elements that composed it. By doing so, I could fully appreciate and understand the purpose of each element. The camera shot that is visible on screen was thoughtfully designed. The type of shot used, whether it was a closeup, medium shot, American shot, or long shot had a reasoning behind it. The director had to decide whether he wanted to focus on the character or specific details about the character's actions or emotions as well as how much of the background to feature. The usage of only
Essay on Bollywood Movies
Bollywood movies are very popular for the "Romance" portrayed in their plot. Romance in Bollywood has evolved throughout the ages. But the one thing, that has remained constant are the unofficial and official ban on any depiction that may suggest something which is not a part of the "Indian" culture. Westernization was always shown as something negative and alien. Let's have a closer look at how Hindi cinema deals with this censorship code that has been set up. Bollywood adopted a new way to recreate the same passion that usually a 'kiss' would generate; they substitute these by song and dance routines.
Songs are basically a description of the passionate seen with no suggestive visual imagery to aid it. It's left to the audiences'...show more content...
For example in Shree 420(1950), Maya the female antagonist is shown as rich, westernized women, with no moral values. She is shown to wear explicitly revealing clothes and have short hair. She drinks alcohol and also smokes. Flirting with men and dancing while inappropriately clad around them, are also the other negative qualities she embodies. However, Vidya is the female protagonist who is completely the opposite, she's traditional and educated. Responsibilities that she holds are looking after her disabled father and running a school. Her hair is long and she is always traditionally dressed in saris. The contrasting visual imagery of Vidya and Maya lets the audience make a judgment of who portrays the negative character quite clearly. Do not fail to notice that this outward depiction of good and bad is only in terms of the women. Raj the male lead of the movie Shree 420, goes through a phase of corruption and greed, however, he is ultimately forgiven and given the benefit of the doubt.
This leads me to my next point about how 'Women" are sacrificed in movies just to pass out a social message. The message clearly states that any act which is not "culturally accepted" will have bad consequences. In the movie Kati Patang, you are taken through the story of Madhavi, who runs away to be with her lover on the day of her wedding. From that very moment, she encounters a series of unfortunate events. A secondary character from
Historical Accuracy in Films Essay
Historically accurate movies that are also captivating have an immense burden to meet. To capture the essence of the time through a personal story that captivates movie executives who regularly make movies with Steven Seagall and Bruce Willis seems an almost insurmountable task. But difficulties in sales aside, there are two crucial elements for movies about history to be the most effective they can be. These elements are historical accuracy in a personal story, and a sense of hope. <br><br>Historical accuracy does not mean trying to encompass everything that happened in a particular time period. Rather, it requires a story that highlights key elements of the period involved while containing nothing that could never have happened in the...show more content...
He has essentially risen from the dead life of being a slave to the land of the free, where the horses run as free as men. <u>The Last Supper</u> is a successful film on both emotional and intellectual levels because it panders to the heart with a personal incident and gives the mind hope to ponder.<br><br><u>Amistad</u> desperately wants to be as important in American culture as <u>The Last Supper</u> is in Cuban culture. Even though that success was not attained, it is still a very powerful historical epic. Again, the story is true, but embellished for the screen. And again, this is not a problem, because in its embellishment it has not truly distorted the realities of slavery in Southern society. And <u>Amistad</u>, even more than <u>The Last Supper</u>, has a very clear level of academic entertainment. The slavery in <u>Amistad</u> is fought on a purely ideological level. We are given a white man's court to decide the fate of the prisoners of the <u>Amistad</u> – it's a clear picture of the interaction between Europeans and Africans. The questions Spielberg poses are many: Should this be the proper way to handle justice on a people that do not understand or respect the system? How is it that justice could be served in this case without making the
Cinematography Essay examples
Today, the movie industry has become a huge moneymaker in the entertainment business. You cannot turn on the television without seeing advertisements for the next big blockbuster film. While most of the films these days entertain with amazing special effects or raunchy comedy, there are still films that thrive because of great acting, directing, and editing. Three films that I believe would be great examples of the way these aspects can cause a film to excel are ?Any Given Sunday?, ?The Cell?, and ?Almost Famous?. ?Any Given Sunday? shows how, by using editing, a movie can portray an intense situation realistically. In ?The Cell?, color is used to differentiate between how we see things in reality and how...show more content...
Panning shots of cheering fans and screaming coaches along with occasional shots of the game being broadcast on a television with commentators giving their take on the action send the viewer back to the reality that they are only watching the action and not participating in it. While watching this movie you truly feel like you are in the game.
?The Cell?, instead of focusing on accurately portraying reality, takes you to the dream world. Catherine Deane, played by Jennifer Lopez, is a child psychologist involved in an experimental project that allows her to travel inside the mind of coma victims to try to draw them away from their fears and thus out of their coma. This movie portrays the journey inside the mind much like you would depict a dream. When Deane is inside a young child, whose main concern seems to be a fear of the ?boogie man?, the world she enters is a beautiful desert scene where the sky is bright blue with puffy white clouds. She is always dressed in bright white dresses and seems to glow. This depicts that she has earned the child?s trust. All color is brighter in this dreamlike world. Even though these experiments had not been successful bringing the child out of the coma, Dean was able to learn a lot about the child. This caused a couple of detectives to approach her about entering the mind of a serial killer who had slipped into a coma with the goal of discovering the location of his most recent captive.
Film and video production Essay
Film and Video Production:
Becoming the Future of the Silver Screen
Every so often a movie is released with such tense anticipation and glamorous visual art that the public is drawn to this dramatic rendition of life in the theatre. For even just two hours or so, you are put into a different lifestyle. Action, drama or comedy it may be. We are thrust into a different way of thinking. We are forced to learn the characters thoughts and feelings. The hard work and artistic skill that goes into these magnificent films is not an easy thing to mimic. Out of the thousands of movies released worldwide each year only a handful are truly worthy of the label film art. Most of the great movies are either produced by a multi million dollar...show more content...
Even if one plans on becoming a director and not a screenwriter one needs to know what kind of scripts to look for. This is very important for a beginning small movie director since the reader will most likely be writing their own scripts to get some recognition. A script is a document that outlines every aural, visual, behavioral, and lingual element required to tell a story, according to the dictionary definition at www.Wikidpedia.org. It is crucial to remember that film is a visual medium. One doesn't tell the audience the story, one shows them. So what one will be writing is not a novel but more like explaining a dream on paper. One must learn to write a screenplay visually. As famed director Darren Aronofsky said in an interview with a struggling screenwriter trying to get published,
"Most of what one writes that doesn't work on screen will just be improvised on the movie set".
There are many important requirements for screenplays that may seem like minutia at first glance but the format of ones script is extremely important
since it will be submitted along with hundreds of others to one producer. For example, the main font in use in the U.S. by both publishers and the Hollywood film industry is Courier 12 pitch According to AFI (American Film Industry) the basics of screenwriting. Though this seems unimportant, when a publisher is looking at a manuscript he is going to look for things
The Evolution of Film Essay example
In the early times of narrative cinema there was litter pressure on the filmmakers for the evolution of film forms before nickelodeons (Salt, 31) as cinema had not become a mass cultural product and film was still just a novelty expected to die out like rock n roll. And so the demand was low and so the supply could remain unoriginal. Mary Jane's Mishap was made in 1903 when 'multi–scene films were becoming popular' (Salt, 32). Mary Jane's Mishap is notable for its use of experimental and inventive shot transitions. It used a vertical wipe to instead of 'separate successive scenes' (Salt, 32) (as it cuts to a shot width a wider frame of the same locale) but to change the zoom level. This frame is essentially an insert and borderline...show more content...
In big bold letter 'PARRAFIN' the flammable oil. Without this shot the viewer would be perplexed as to why she exploded and allows the narrative to flow as it could be water or any other fluid for all they know as cleverly Smith used this mise–en–scene to explain the narrative instead of an intertitle before the explosion which would have removed all suspense, tension and mystery especially after she moved to the cameras to show her gesturing a bright idea. Though this close–up could also be argued by Gunning of being of the cinema of attractions as 'For a time [in cinema] close–ups were only used as an attraction to see an images but larger than life but 'inciting visual curiosity' (Gunning, pg 58) rather being evolutionary towards narrative cinema. The close–ups heighten the 'only [tool they] they have at their disposal, a language of gestures' (Burch, 224) musser idea
Mary Jane's Mishap combined the cinema of attraction trick film with the viewers want for narrative. 'The decline in their [trick films] commercial importance was already evident by 1906' (Salt, 40) Smith used a jump cut to create the illusion of Mary Jane exploding into smoke by subtracting her and adding smoke in the successive shot. He also uses superimposition to create a ghost liken creature. Like an avatar for its day. This shows narratives cinema still being influenced by the cinema of attractions as to make an entertaining film.
The acting
Informative Movies Essay
As a digital Cinema student, I have learned a lot about the different types of movies that are created every year and what makes them successful, and unsuccessful. With this bit of insight, I have discovered that I take a strong interest and drive for documentary films. I find them to be meaningful, and more productive than other types of movies. Some documentaries are created to expose the reality of the world for what it is, and I think that with everything going on in this world, that is effective and necessary. It was not until this year that I was able to actually compose some short documentary films myself, and I found that I really enjoy it.
I watched the movie Food Inc, a film devoted to exposing the reality of the agriculture...show more content...
I think it is important that people are informed about the bad results of supporting this brand, so I created a video expressing the truth behind this "great" brand. Most of my shots are zooming in and out of the shelves within the store, with a few that have a person interacting with the products, or just every day I thought this variety would help show the viewer the differences in the choices they can make. With all the shots, I incorporated a voice over discussing the issue at hand. This was the most important aspect of my video, because it helped the viewer learn about what the problem is with "great value" products, and how it is affecting the world. I enjoy realistic artwork, so I thought I would try documentary films and see what I could do with it. I also want to try and influence people to second guess supporting this brand
The struggle with documentary films is getting the access that you need, and being able to document the real sources behind what the topic. I know when I was shooting, I did not want to get caught, because I knew Wal–Mart probably would not want me videoing their products, so I was extremely careful when I was shooting my footage. Kenner and his producer had a similar problem. When they were shooting they stated that they were unable to get access to a lot of the places they wanted to shoot, as well as