Vampire Analysis by Muna1997

lighting

Identifying what the effect of lighting has on a movie

                        ICONOGRAPHY OF VAMPIRE MOVIES

Iconography analysis of vampires films done in form of a voice over.

new vampire film synopsis

Premonition:



Sienna Collins is a born artist. She is always drawing at any free moment she can. However one day-when she is 15- she drew something she couldn't explain. She drew a picture of her friend crossing the road talking on the phone and a car coming her way. She doesn't see it is coming. Sienna hadn't realized until she drew it that she had. And it scares her even more when the drawing comes to life the next day. She tries to tell her self that it is a coincident but she doesn't truly believe it herself; until the present day.

She is not 18 and is home alone. She is listening to music on her phone when suddenly she gets the urge to draw again. She picks up her sketch book and pencil and draws. She doesn’t realize what she is drawing until she is done. She sees that she has drawn picture of her in the park with a man; whose teeth are sank in her neck. As soon as she sees this she gets a flashback of her friend’s accident and the drawing. Upon seeing the connecting she drops her pencil and quickly rubs out the drawing. A few weeks after that, she avoids the park. She thinks she is being ridiculous and goes to the park. She sits on a bench and gets carried away sketching again when she feels a slight breeze on her neck. She turns to where the breeze is coming from when she comes face to face with a man, and the next thing she knows is she's being bitten just like what happened in her sketch.
 

Iconography Analysis

Nesferatu:

This movie has a few vampire iconographies. We get a sense of horror when we see a shadow, with long creepy fingers walking slowly towards the room. Where there is a female victim. Women are often represented in vampire films as those who need saving, a damsel in distress, and that is exactly what we see about the girl. She is wearing a white night gown indicating she's about to sleep. It also shows her vulnerability and the white suggest innocence.

Dracula:

The vampire iconography used in this film is violence as shown by the war. When we see the opening of the clip, we see a cross being covered by dark fog, this gave us a sense that it was a vampire movie because we vampires are usually vulnerable when they see a cross. Furthermore we see that the women who is Dracula's wife is represented as a weak, love-sick woman due to the fact that she can't live without her husband as shown by the way she kills herself because she was given the impression that Dracula died in the war. 

Mini Essay of "xXx"

How does the title of "xXx" establish Zander as a rebellious hero?

The Opening of the film shows us the car of the senator which has a bumper sticker at the back that says "skateboarding is a crime". This immediately gives us the idea that this guy isn't the hero. This is further proved by the way he talks to the person taking his car. We could assume it’s just a random character; however the fact that we only get a mid-shot of the senator showing just the shirt of the hidden character could give us a hint that he is the hero. That changes when we see the close up of his wrist which is covered in tattoos, and then the camera proceeds to show us the extreme close up of the tattoo. The director chose to use an extreme up because this shot is mainly used to zoom in on a specific feature, which in this case if the tattoo "xXx". The director is trying to tell us from this shot that this is the main character.

When see the chasing scene where our main character Zander is telling the audience exactly why he is stealing the car. The mostly used in this scene is a close up/mid shot. These shots are used for conversations, thus the fact that he is videotaping his speech shows that he engaging with the people who will see this soon. Therefore he is doing this for the people making him a hero. Also the non-diegetic sound of the scene where he jumps off the bridge is very fast and upbeat and is the kind of music you would hear when someone does something heroic in the movie, this makes him seem the hero. However, when the car is off the bridge, it is put in slow motion, and is also a long shot. These two things show that the main character Zander is making sure the senator sees his beloved make its journey down slowly which would seem quite torturous for him. This makes him seem like a villain.  

Every movie consists of a hero and an evil person but Zander is quite unique. He seems to be both. He is voicing the wrongs of the senator and telling him that video games, rock music, and skateboarding are not crimes and that it is not "diminishing the intelligence of our youth". This makes him a hero of some sorts. Alternatively it makes him an bad person because of his ways of putting his point across which is also quite hypercritical because by doing the stunt and also filming is -making everybody including kids see it- is putting the message out that it’s okay to do such things, even when doing it for the public, ultimately making him rebellious.

Horror movie

                              Scream!

 

 

The horror film I have chosen is “Scream”. This is because I have been able to identify many features in this film.

 
In the beginning we hear a non-diegetic sound which is a scream. this automatically shows us that this is going to be a horror film. The screaming is then cut off by the sound of a telephone ringing. The first scene is set in a big house where the women is alone and it is night time. This gives us the sense that something bad is going to happen to the women. We also hear another non-diegetic sound which is the soundtrack. the music has a lot of suspense and it continually builds up as the character continues to look for the intruder. The director choses to show us a close shot of all the victims so that we can see their scared facial expressions and hysteria. He also shows us a close up of when all the victims are stabbed Which enables us to notice that when the villain stabs her the knife not go in. we also notice that the victim has blood sprout the place she is stabbed (the heart) which makes believe that the victim is bleeding 

 

 

Script

               

Tears of Blood

 

Scene 1

 

A body of a dead girl is lying on the floor and soft, sad music is in the background.

Three days later - We are now in the office of Detective Scarlet. Close up of her in working. Suddenly knocking is heard.

 

Scarlet – Yeah, come in.

Jamie her assistant comes in with a file with a neutral expression on his face. 180 degrees shot between Scarlet and Jamie.

Jamie – Here’s your new case Miss

He hands her the file.

Scarlet – (she waves it off her eyes still on her work) just leave it to the side then.

Jamie – Actually I think you might want to read it now.

 

She pauses and looks up to Jamie

 

Scarlet – All right Jamie.

 

She takes the file. As she is reading we get a close of her facial expression which has a look of curiosity. 180 degrees rule continues. Music becomes tense.

 

Scarlet – So it’s been three days since the death of this girl…Olivia, right? (Suddenly becomes more interested)

Jamie – Yes Miss

Scarlet – So there’s bruise marks on her. (She starts to pace) Have any forensic scientists checked her out to see the cause of her death?

Jamie – I don’t know

Scarlet – You don’t know? Okay, go make yourself useful and get me a strong         mocha, actually, call a cab here and tell him the address ‘9 4 Waterway Street’.

Jamie – Right away.

End of scene.

        

Seven

In this I will be talking about the opening of the movie Seven.

 The first visual we see is a dull book being turned over. This automatically gives the audience a sense of mystery. However when as soon as we see the razor we find that it is not mysterious but it is scary. we see more mystery as we see more of this trailer as we see an unknown set of fingers. the person is cutting his skin with the razor. The mystery if this being that we don't know who this person is or why he is cutting himself with the razor.

The sense of mystery and horror continues as we only continue to see flashes of the unknown character doing random things, for instance writing a letter.However it did not seem that he was writing a letter, more like a book. the fact that he was threading pieces of paper together made me believe that he is writing a book. The director is probably intended for the audience to be convinced he is writing a book to indicate that the character is an isolated person.

Throughout the opening of the movie, the soundtrack and the abstract colours also made an impact on the audience. the music had been very diegetic to show suspense, tension and horror. The abstract colours also showed us that this film was not going to have a nice and happy opening but rather open in a bad note. Which in my belief the director intended for us to read in order to ask all these question as to what the character doing?, what is going to happen next?, etc.. The reason the director chose to use such a mysterious opening is to draw the audience and make them stay to watch the rest of the movie.

Children Of Man

During todays media studies class, were watching another opening of a film called “Children of man”. This film was made during 2006. 

When the movie starts we don’t get a visual. Instead we see a blank screen. However we do hear a news report.  As soon as we I heard the news report, I understand the purpose of the blank visual. The news report was to report a homicide and it was a way to show some respect of some sort. Where that is usually done by silence, we needed to know hear the report so a blank screen was the best way to do it.  This kind of thing would not have been done should it have been someone else, however the death was of the youngest person. This automatically gave me a sense of what the movie was about; the reason why the title is called “children of man”: humanity is becoming extinct. Therefore everyone is extremely upset that the youngest child has been killed.

Main characters of all movies stand out in one way or another. This is how I guessed the main character was. The scene where we hear the news report is at a coffee shop. People are gathered around the TV with sad expressions. This is when a man- whom I guess the main character is- comes in and buys a copy. He only glances at the TV, differentiating himself from everyone else. My other reason as to why I guess he is the main character is because of the fact that the camera follows him. My guess is that the director intended for us to find out that he Is the main character by this action.

The main character has said one or two words, which where to order his coffee, however we found out a great deal about him from when he leaves the coffee shop. When he exits he walks a bit and stop as he finds something to put his coffee on. He takes out a bottle of -what we assume is alcohol- and puts a bit in his coffee. This and his postures and his costume tell us that he is a very unhappy person. His costume is very dull, no bright colours. His posture un professional despite his profession which is yet to be told, however we know that it is a well paid job. These are all the things we could tell about his character without any words about himself.

Three Colours Blue

In class we have watched the french film three colours blue and discussed in pairs the importance of the opening scene and how much information you can get off just the start of the movie.

I think the most important shot in the opening scene is the part when they show the car break leaking, immediately telling us the story line is of the car crashing however the question being which character survives?

The shot where the car stops determines which actor/actress plays who. the man who stretches when he gets out of the car being the father and the women who calls for the child is the mother, and finally the child who runs out of the as soon as the car pulls over is the daughter. We establish the name of the child, who's name is the first word spoken. From what i gathered the girls name is Diana. As i said before we hearthe mother saying the little girls name however we don't see her.

The screen time at the right beginning of the movie shows us that the car going through the highway. This could imply that the passengers of the car are bored. My suspicion was confirmed whenb we see the shot of the girl in the car with an extremely bored and tired expression on  her face. An even more exact example would be when the girl yawned.

I personally believe that sound and picture is both very important. however you could tell so much from just the sound. For example, the start of the movie when the car is driving through the highway. If you haven't had watched it you would have assumed it was a plane on a runway. You can hear things so much clearly if you just focused on the sound and not the picture.

Movie Review

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones!

I recently went to the cinema and watched the brand new movie the Mortal Instruments. This movie was first a best selling book series written by Cassandra Claire and was turned into a movie because of how great all five books were selling.
This movie was AMAZING. It took a while for me to warm up to the books, however I immediately fell in love with the movie from the very beginning .

 This Movie is about Clary Fray (played by lily Collins) who is a shadow hunter (half angel, half human.  Their purpose is to hunt demons) but is oblivious to this information because her mother kept this from her for her entire life. That is until her mother gets attacked by a demon therefore forced to leave behind her human life and embrace her shadow hunter side, with the help of her new friend and love interest in the movie Jace Wayland (played by Jamie Campbell-Bower). Together along with Isabel Lightwood (played by Jemima West), Alec Lightwood (played by Kevin Zegers), and Clary’s best friend Simon (played by Robert Sheehan) they try to find Clary’s mother who has been kidnapped by a name that is feared in the underworld: Vladimir.  He is using Clary’s mother because he she hid the Mortal cup from him. The mortal is a mortal instrument that is extremely powerful and Vladimir will stop at nothing to get it.

I would highly recommend anyone to watch this movie. You would not regret it.