The cinematography of Life of Pi

                                                                         Life of Pi

This is a film about an Indian man whose second name called pi, telling his life story and how he tries to survival in the ocean on the boat with a Bengal tiger. To narrate an aspect of challenge, the cinematography gives the audience a realistic and wandering aspect of everyday life on the ocean. The cinematography of this film involves lots of different kind of form to support the audience to understand the emotion out of the animals and the character deeply.

Life of Pi employs handheld digital video techniques to describe a unstable situation of the ocean. This helps the audience anticipate in a harsh condition and experience anxious expression through the the storm. This subjective point of view encourages the audience place themselves as the third person onto this boat and helps them blend into the scene in this particular angel whereas the shot is taken at the part of the boat.

This scene uses handheld shots which shows the audience a unstable and dangerous environment condition that Pi is in so that the audience may can experiences the life of thriller smoothly. Additional the handheld shot may try to indicate Pi’s unstable emotion.

The brown color of this mask is different from the normal mask whereas the color is black. By using this color of mask, it gives the audience a idea of the line of Pi’s vision. Onscreen space “directing our attention or determining our attitude toward what is being represented.”(Corrigain and White,108) For example the scene represents Pi’ s point of view which means the audience can mainly focus on what Pi is staring, it supports the audience pay attention to the tiger. 

 Camera angles can sometimes indicate psychological, moral, or political meanings in a film, as when victims are seen from above and oppressors from below( Corrigan and White,112) This sentence just successfully explains what happens in this scene. This particular angle indicates Pi owns the leading position. Additionally, the shot refocuses to highlight Pi’s ferocious expression against the blurry tiger. This expresses the intensely survival instinct Pi has. 

The cinematographer uses particular shot to show the audience Pi grows up into a powerful and brave person. It highlights the strength of the character and express the essence of never giving up on life. To narrate the story, the film involves lots of handheld shot to express the tension and the frightened atmosphere surround the scene. To depict a intensely fight, the cinematographer uses changes the depth of field and the angle of the camera. The cinematography helps the film content make sense to the audience.

Works Cited

Corrigan, Timothy and Patricia White. The Film Experience: An Introduction. Third Edition. New York: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2012. Print.

Life of Pi. Dir. Any Lee. Fox 2000 Pictures, 2012. Film.

The cinematography of Rise Of The Legend

                                                      Rise of the Legend 

This is a film content about a passionate hero who rescues the poor people that are suffering from the sinister forces step by step. In this action film, Roy Chow often uses a element of slow motion and recreates the perspective of character through the camera position. Some movements of a action represents clearly in a way that cinematography can enhance. For instance taking a slow motion to the action in a fight scene sometimes can make the audience notice the detail that they ignore in daily and realize the power that a hero possesses. Entirely the director uses different range of cinematography to depict a undaunted heroically biography of Wong Fei Hong.

  

In this action scene the director uses slow motion when the hero smashes stone, it may tries to drive people extremely focus on the expression of the hero and the strength that the hero has in order let the audience blend into the scene and experience the violent attack. Slow motion sometimes can emphasize the intensely powerful effort that the character puts in the fight. It shows a detail clearly about the moment when the column is smashed into little pieces, this helps the audience feel the powerful strength and read character’s hatred to the sinister forces.  

Camera angles can sometimes indicate psychological, moral, or political meanings in a film, as when victims are seen from above and oppressors from below,(Corrigan and White,112) This high angle slightly indicates a psychological meaning. The camera position is rising as when the poor masses are seen from below in a point of view of “god”. The camera slowly moves above from those people’s head to establish a crane shot to pretend something is looking down on them. This creates an intense mood around the scene and intelligently expresses the distress of the society in a excellence way. The high angle expresses the emotion of the Masses who are extremely indignant about the world and the suffering they are struggling with.

The director uses different camera distance to give us a great experience about the action. He uses close up of the actor’s foot or of the powerful action to express a magnificent act of heroism and an intense heartening scene. I discover that the director often develops a reverse close up shot when two characters are having conversation whereas the director of the Bird Man uses spinning shot when they are having conversation. As regards this content of action films I want to recommend that reverse close up establishes the intense emotion even outstanding whereas spinning shot can easily lose the character’s expression. In a reverse close up the audience can clearly receive the underlined message that shows on the character’s face and give the director the result he expected.

Works Cited

Rise of the Legend. Dir. Roy Chow. Edko Films, 2014. Film. 

Bird Man. Dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu. Regency Enterprises, 2014. Film.

Corrigan, Timothy and Patricia White. The Film Experience: An Introduction. Third Edition. New York: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2012. Print.

The cinematography of Fallen Angels

In Fallen Angels, Wong Kar-Wai uses a wide angel to distort most of the scene including the characters and the environment and makes the object look different and peculiar. This is one of the interesting use to represent his intense content . Approximately every technique that gets involved in the film is trying to explore the way of presenting the world and means of the community in HongKong. Additionally, the way of using cinematography is against the tradition.

The cinematographer shots the back of the character in a wide angel and pretends as a stranger from behind closely. The scene establishes a subjective point of view. A subjective point of view re-creates the perspective of the character through camera placement. ( Corrigan and White, 105) Which means that as soon as the the audience is experiencing the atmosphere, they are gradually receiving the sense of urgency in this particular isolation which is the distance between the girl and the camera. The scene seem a little bit jolted when the cinematographer uses handheld camera to follow the girl. This shaky frame produces a tremendous suspense and spreads a intense and anxious mood to the audience.  

Wong Kar-Wai uses fast motion shot to depict the estranged indifferent world and the unstable situation in life. The fight scene gives a effect of intense emotion on the viewer because the use of fast motion makes the audience hardly focus on the character at the same time as the flickered effect drives people get into a muddle.This use of cinematography assist the story to reveal a deformed modern world. 

Wong Kar-Wai uses a special lens to make the scene seem a bit odd and twisted. As being that, the closer object will be twisted and the further away object will seem remote. For example there is a scene that shows a train passing through. The train is in an awkward position and towards somewhere beyond the city. This scene may makes the audience notice the transience of time.

The interesting point for me is that the photographer creates an extremely close up of the character giving her a strange twisted face. This slightly implies a social misfits that the character’s role is playing. The close up also can clearly shows the character is in the depths of despair so that the audience smoothly experiences the scene and empathizes the strong emotional states. In this way, the audience can easily read character’s minds and observe the cold hollow world that surrounds people in HongKong.

Fallen Angel is taking at night, this can emphasize the powerful emotional states in a particular scene. The used of cinematography is a enhancement, it depicts a relation which is in a “intersecting and paralleling trajectories of the characters”(Wright). This means people come and go easily, nothing in life will be permanent in the story. The director utilizes extensive cinematography skill and paints the lifeless and depressed community in Hong Kong in a lifelike way.

Work Sited

Corrigan, Timothy and Patricia White. The Film Experience: An Introduction. Third Edition. New York: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2012. Print.

Fallen angel. Dir. Wong Kar-wai.1995. Film.

Wright,Elizabeth.“WongKar-Wai”.Sensesof Cinema. Internet. Accessed 23 April 2015

 http://sensesofcinema.com/2002/great-directors/wong/

The cinematography of Bird Man

I’m going to discuss and analyzed the relation between the film form and the film content from the aspect of cinematography. The function of long shots is present the story as realistic as possible. The special feature of cinematography of Bird Man is its cinematography. The director utilizes several high technically long shots through the almost whole setting. Bird Man has quite a lot scene that need to be shot on the opening stage and its narrative structure imitates a style of a theater which requires everything to be one take. Long shot also has a documentary specification which makes the film feel closer to the viewers because long shot keep a story represent as a truth situation. 

A long shot mobile frame often used on following to show a character passes through a long gloomy corridor. There are lots of information captured by the framing and those informations gave the audience a different experience. Framing’s cinematography involves careful construction by filmmaker and rewards close observation by viewers. (The Film Experience, 106)  )For example when Riggan passes through the narrow corridor, the camera turn to another side and close up to the woman that Riggan meets by. The scene has not been cut to give a close up shot on the woman separately. Seen from this aspect this framing develop a point of view and represent a realistic story in a lifelike way to the audience. Then the camera keep following and capturing Riggan’s shoulder or the back of him. Some extra actor will quickly appear in the frame but without disrupting the shot. This shows the reality of the sequence and give the audience a real experience. The color of the frame often presents a very gloomy and stuffy surrounds. This motivation behind the color tries to create a emotional effecting on the audience and make them empathize with Riggan’s depressed feeling.   

The camera is always in two positions which are following a person and spinning. The camera follows as soon as the person moves, the framing often gives lots of noisy and pointless background information to the audience. During the long take shot the cinematographer adjusts the the camera distance subtly without changing any depth of filed in order to slightly confuse the audience on what to focus on. As soon as the characters stop moving the camera will spin around them and the audience cannot receive the message that is shown in front of them. However when the camera stops moving, the things that the audience needs to be focus suddenly become clear. Then the camera distance will change from medium to a close up shot to make a clear point of view of the character’s perspective. 

For instance this camera is spinning around the table when four characters are having a conversation. 

The camera keep moving closer to develop a close up shot on Riggan to give the audience a expression of Riggan. This makes the audience extremely focused on Riggan and to empathize the isolation and the emotion of Riggan.  A long shot at the same time as close up shows a process of mood changing of the character. Between close-ups and long shots, a medium shot describes a middle ground in which we see the human body from the waist or hips up, as in The Maltese Fal-con(1941), while a medium long shot slightly increases the distance between the camera and the subject. (Corrigan and White, 110)In this case the combination of long shot and close-up help the film form describe the film content better than cut to close up shot because a close up shot just to show a character’s faces where a long take shows the process of changing expression.

For the entire film, long shot help the film perform as a real experience. It decreases the isolation between the film and the reality and imbued with strong artistry in the scene. The color in the frame are always dim and surrounding antiquated environment. This establishes a gloomy and anxious mood overall. On my perspective I think the setting can help the film perform a excellence representation. For instance the corridor always been shape by perpendicular line. They develop a expression of Riggan’s disturbing and his anxious depressed and struggling feeling. The whole film is in a perspective of Riggan and the gloomy pathetic style has shown.

Works Cited

Bird Man. Dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu. Regency Enterprises, 2014. Film.

Corrigan, Timothy and Patricia White. The Film Experience: An Introduction. Third Edition. New York: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2012. Print.