HELL IS ROUND THE CORNER

Moving Image Text:

Below is our finished film, Hell is round the Corner:

The Big Shave, Martin Scorsese, 1967

Genre Conventions Research: The Big Shave

Fading in from white, Scorsese begins his seminal film The Big Shave by presenting us with several shots of various appliances and objects situated in and around a common family bathroom, such as water faucets, a sink, a shower head, etc. These shots are edited together in time with Bunny Berigan’s seminal jazz hit  I Can’t Get Started (With You). This song, which is grand, booming and grandiose in its’ nature, serves almost as a stark contrast to the boring, bland and banal images which we are seeing. The music and the visuals simply do not match. There is a strangeness and an oddness here. Scorsese, through the use of the visuals and the music, could be inferring that something bizarre is about to unfold.

The music then builds in tempo as we see a young man, dressed in a white vest, enter the bathroom. He is shown to be yawning and scratching his hair. Scorsese, through establishing this unnamed character, along with the images of the bathroom, may be trying to establish verisimilitude, and to give the events depicted as realistic and random a sense as possible.

The young man is then shown taking off his vest. This action is repeated three times, each time from a different angle. This use of repetition may be Scorsese attempting to draw our attention, and trying to imply that the taking off of the vest is key, and that something is going to happen as a result of this, by implication, perhaps the big shave of the title?

The young man is then shown applying shaving foam. This action is presented through use of regular cuts and shots, with no emphasis being given by Scorsese. It could be interpreted as Scorsese wanting to maintain the sense of verisimilitude he has so far established, and that this is just a random, boring occurrence which happens every morning.

Scorsese then presents us with close ups of the specific parts of the young man’s face which he is shaving, for instance his cheeks or his chin. There are also cutaways to the young man putting the razor underneath the tap to clean it off. This is done with emphasis, as it is also edited in time with Berigan’s music. Scorsese, possibly, is attempting to draw us into what he is doing, and possibly give us a clue as to the consequence of his actions.

We then cut to an extreme close up of the young man looking into a mirror. Only the top half of his face is seen. We can see that he is moving about and possibly touching his face, but we do not know why. We then see he is applying more shaving cream. The desired effect here may be to create confusion – we cannot comprehend why anyone would want to shave straight after they just have done. This starts becoming more and more confusing and surreal and the music itself, by just being included in the film becomes more and more unnerving.

We are then presented with more close ups of the specific parts of his face that he is shaving. When he reaches his moustache, the camera pulls back and we see a very thick and long line of blood on the right side of his face, underneath his ear. By Scorsese employing this “big reveal,” he may be trying to set the wheels in motion and imply that the big shave of the title is about to be seen.
We are then presented with a close up of the young man's face in profile followed by a pull back which reveals more bloody nicks and cuts. His face appears almost to be overcome with these cuts, and that the red of the blood is slowly replacing the white of the shaving foam. It would seem, perhaps, that Scorsese is trying to convey the idea of purity verses violence, a theme prevalent throughout his entire body of work.

The idea of purity versus violence is emphasised by continuous cutaways to the sink over which the young man stands. The pristine white of the sink is slowly beset with a flood of scarlet red blood. This unnerves us. The viewers cannot understand why he is doing this to himself. The violence, the infliction of pain upon himself is mindless and senseless. We cannot, as viewers, possibly comprehend why he is doing this to himself, but maybe it is in the meaninglessness and the pointlessness of the violence where the meaning and the point of what Scorsese is presenting to us can be located.

With the onslaught of violence and self-harm seen throughout the course of the film, it could be argued that Scorsese, by building verisimilitude, through the bland, boring, pristine white bathroom and the young man seemingly going about his daily routine is, as the film goes on, and as more blood is spilt, he seeks to destroy it. Perhaps Scorsese wished to blindside us - we could not expect this to happen, and so when it does, it is all the more shocking.

The film ends with the young man running the blade of the razor against the neck, essentially slitting his throat. This happens at a point where both the music and the violence on screen reaches its' crescendo. Scorsese could have used the music for a number of reasons: firstly, as a framing device - the film starts and ends exactly when the song does, and so the events seen in the film, the way they are edited, and the way they are presented, are almost constructed using the song as a guideline; secondly, as a way of establishing black humour. The nature of the song, verses the nature of what is seen on screen, reinforce each other in such a way that it, rather than making us enjoy the piece, it makes us recoil in disgust, and the song could have been used by Scorsese to make the impact of the piece all the more shocking.

The film, which has no plot to speak of, is surreal in its narrative, due to the events seen on screen, but not surreal in the sense where the events seen are over exaggerated. Scorsese employs camera shots and editing techniques which, while being to the point and matter of fact, also give us humour, humour in the darkness of what it seen on screen.

The film left me feeling raw, bitter, confused and shocked. It felt almost as if the violence was shown just because Scorsese wanted to experiment and create “the bloodbath to end all bloodbaths.” However, the more I read into the making of the film, and the circumstances and context of the Vietnam War which surrounded it, the more it seemed that, when taken as an anti-war film, The Big Shave is very well constructed and extremely effective, and, perhaps, a perfect example of how we as humans are capable of complete destruction, to ourselves, most of all, for no other reason other than we have the power to do so.

The Black Hole

Genre Conventions Research: The Black Hole

The film The Black Hole begins with an iris out revealing a desolate office, presumably sometime at night. The camera travels past a cluttered desk over to a medium close up of a man, standing by a photocopier, looking dejected and tired. The colour scheme of the film features heavy use of grey and black. This could possibly be to convey a sense of how the man is feeling – he is extremely bored, exhausted and clearly wants to be anywhere but at work.

The beeping of the copy button is the only sound heard, and it is heard at a very loud volume. It may have been presented to us in this way so that it may add to the irritation of the man not being able to work it properly and to make us feel sympathetic to his plight.

A piece of paper with a large black hole printed on it is shown sliding out on to the printing cradle from a high angle. As the paper with the black hole on it slides out on to the cradle, the shot slows down somewhat, possibly to add emphasis on and draw the audience’s attention to the piece of paper – this is the black hole of the title, and something odd and eerie may be about to happen.

There is a close up of the man’s face, which is filled with confusion and alarm. The filmmakers may be trying to convey, through the character of the man, what they possibly want the audience to be feeling, and that they are following the events with the man and seeing them unfold with him.

The use of camera shots and sound become more bizarre and elaborate after the man is shown dropping a coffee cup through the black hole. The man is shown peering over the black hole, looking down at us from the black hole’s point of view. This possibly presents a shift in power – the black hole, in some way, is in charge here, and it is slowly drawing the man in, possibly leading him to meet a dire end. There is also a low, ominous drone which accompanies the black hole. This adds emphasis to the idea that there is something not quiet right about the black hole’s existence.

The drone of the black hole becomes heightened and more apparent as the man puts his arm through it to retrieve the cup. The drone may have been utilisied by the filmmakers in order for it to act as a form of dialogue, saying more about the weird and abnormal nature of the black hole better than any other sound could or would.

The man is then presented as taking the black hole over to a vending machine and using it to steal a bar of chocolate. This is a key character change in that the filmmakers now establish the man’s greed and glutinous nature and sets up the events which are about to ensue. The decision by the filmmakers to show the man in this light is possibly to pose the question to us, as viewers, if we would do the same if we had an object of power such as this, and if we would, would we do more?

There is a tight close up of the man as he stares greedily and covetously at a door reading “Keep Out.” This further makes his greedy nature apparent, and also perhaps infers the idea that a terrible and awful occurrence is about to take place.

A medium close up follows of the man shown entering the room, turning the lights on (which flicker, ominously, giving out an eerie, strange, and truly bad feeling to the audience) and sticking the black hole over the door of a safe which is locked inside the room. The man is then portrayed as looking about him suspiciously, possibly paranoid that he is being watched. This, again, indicates his greedy nature, and also the idea that there is some guilt in him over what he is about to do.

The man is then shown to take out bundles of cash from out of the safe, via the black hole. These actions are shown in a repetitive pattern, with a shot of the money followed by a medium close up of the man's face, brimming with guilty delight. This repetitive pattern possibly heightens the character's sense of greed and his hunger for this money building with each successive shot. Also, throughout this scene, the drone of the black hole becomes increasingly creepy and apparent in the scene, which helps to add to the disturbing atmosphere of the piece.

The man is then shown, through a single tight shot, crawling through the black hole, in to the safe, wanting the last of the money. The filmmakers show his crawling in an uninterrupted take, presenting to us the full extent of his greed and where his endeavours are about to take him.

The paper with the black hole printed on it then falls, keeping the man seemingly trapped in the safe for good. The camera begins to pull back away from the safe, until it is at a fair distance from it. The sound of the man tapping on the door from the inside, along with the beeping of the copy machine, fuse together to create one final burst of sound before cutting to black, cutting to an unending black hole, in a way. The camera pulling back could possibly be so that the audience finally understand the full weight of what has happened to the man and that we can no longer be a part of it.

The film, which has a very surreal feel to it, comes full circle with the ending. It ends in the only way it could, that is with the destruction of man as a result of his curiosity. The film left me feeling very impressed, as it managed to convey a very serious message about the greedy nature of man in only a couple of minutes and still managed to be extremely effective at the same time.

Blood and Chips

Genre Conventions Research: Blood and Chips

The Blood and Chips film extract opens with establishing shots of a cafe setting along with light hearted non-diegetic sound creating verisimilitude and a realistic atmosphere. The next shot shows a close up of some pies and an out of focus shot of a weary worker expressing the feeling of fatigue.

The next shot of chips being thrown into the deep fryer highlights the heat intensity and may act as representation of the atmosphere as being hot and intense. This may also be used as a form of foreshadowing events to come. Again shots of other characters in the cafe suffering from what seems to be humidity, particularly a black man who we get a close up of and as he exits the feeling that something underlining is going to happen is comfirmed when he accidently bumps into a white character and receives hostility, again foreshadowing that something bad may happen.

When we first see the white male character he is a rude and disrespectful character as he addresses the cafe worker without any form of politeness. The second indication that the white character brings negativity to the atmosphere is the manner in which the paid for the chips by rudely throwing the money on the table showing a disregard of manners or respect for the worker. His costume connotes that he is a cock-sure type of character and doesn't associate himself with the rest of the characters seen in the type of hat he wears despite it being humid in the cafe.

The camera switches to two young children shouting and arguing and typically intense situations over lapping conversations add to the build up in a tense atmosphere. The Children go quiet after being told to 'shut the fuck up' by another character who seems to be of low social economic class due to the vest he is wearing, his quite rugged facial features and his reading 'The Sun' newspaper which is often often aimed and associated with working class people. The white character takes this as an opportunity to vent the anger he'd been feeling, with shots of him scrunching cigarette express this feeling. The camera gives us extreme close up shots of his eyes surveying the cafe's Chinese clocks and figures and again the camera switches back to chips being thrown in the fryer, all of which connote and indicate the emotion and feeling the white character is having. The shots of him surverying the Chinese figures starts to show that racial tensions are coming to a head, and this is again confirmed when he believes that he can share his racist views with the other white male character, due to the fact that he described the two childern as 'animals'. 'This should be a British business' is again reflective of his racial discrimination, even dispite of the fact the Chinese worker spoken in a British accent 'open or wrapped, mate?', he disregards this.

The film makers focuses on using close up shots to present the bad feeling between the white character and the two childern, close up shots of his eye looking at their dark features shows his dislike. Then again a close up of him cleaning the sweat off his throat, throughout the extract the film makers concentrate on build-up using small connotations in order to give a complete picture at the end. The camera then uses a shallow depth of focus on the childern fighting and a close up of his venting his anger of black people and presenting him as being powerful in the extract. References to blacks being 'monkeys' gives a stereotypical view of racist beliefs, the face of the other white character smiles however sarcastically.

Then the view sees a shift in power as the two childern talk to the white man and call him 'dad'. Again a close up of the racist character is seen to highlight his stupidity as he comes to the realisation that he had been talking to their father the whole time. Shot reverse shots of the two white men looking at each other shows the fear that the racist man feel and the shows the disgust that the other man feels. The racist character is now protrayed as weak as the childern say good bye to the Chinese worker Albert, a traditional English name and all speaking in a Cockney accent to highlight how English they are and shows their togetherness.

The racist character just looks at the white man and the Chinese woker helplessly, then attempts to run out of the chip shop however ironically he bumps into the same black character again, however again to show the shift in power he apologizes then runs out as quick as he can. The film maker cleverly use the location of a chip shop which again has Britsh connotations to create irony and to create a place which a able to be stereotypically subverted and is also a neutral public place so the issues being raised can be highlighted to great effect.

Pound

Genre Conventions Research: Pound

As the film Pound begins, we see that the title of the film has been presented to us in the form of graffiti which has been spray painted on the floor. This, possibly, innovative style of displaying the title of the film helps to stay in keeping with the subject matter, style and tone of the film, and helps to give off a very laidback and ‘cool,’ feel.

The film begins with the camera tracking alongside a young man dressed in a green stripped shirt and jeans. This young man is Mike. The filmmakers decision to dress Mike in such a way maybe to connote an urban feel about him, and that he is in an urban area, and has had an upbringing very much of the City. Also, the decision to open the film with a tracking shot of him may be to infer that he is the main character of the piece, and that the events shown in the film are going to be told from his perspective.

In addition to Mike’s urban attire, the filmmakers have also added a repetitive hip-hop beat, which is playing very clearly in the background and is playing at a constant and consistent level. The use of the beat helps to further establish the urban scene, mood and character of the piece. The beat sounds very new and modern, and as such, it helps to create verisimilitude in that this music is not dissimilar to the type of music most youths listen to in this day and age.

The filmmakers then show our two leading characters, Mike and Dante, meeting outside an urban coffee shop. In addition to Mike’s aforementioned urban attire, Dante is presented by the filmmakers as being dressed in a blue tracksuit and baseball cap. This, again, is a very urban way of dressing, and it is also very ‘cool,’ and stylish. Therefore, the decision to dress Dante in this way may have been utilised by the filmmakers to not only further establish the sense of urban mood and character, but also possibly to perpetuate a stereotype amongst today’s youth as wanting to be dressed in the very best of clothes.

There then follows an exchange of dialogue, with the two characters greeting each other, both addressing each other with 'What’s up, man?' This is a very informal way of two friends greeting with one another, and this may have been utilised to, again, help to reinforce a sense of urban verisimilitude.

Following this is an uninterrupted take of their greeting. They are both positioned in the centre of the screen (possibly to imply that these characters and their actions which we are now seeing are central to the overall effect of the piece). The uninterrupted take lends to the endless feel of their greeting. It incorporates such moves as fist and elbow bumps, high fives, feet stomps, etc, which all come across as highly choreograph and balletic; almost a dance in and of itself. This greeting adds to the urban feel of the piece, though it is heightened and exaggerated (and perhaps intentionally so, possibly wanting to become a parody of urban life/youth). Also, the idea of both characters swapping hats during the greeting helps to add a sense of camaraderie and friendship between them.

The two characters exchange dialogue, which is presented by the filmmakers under strict adherence of the 180 degree rule; “What’s up, man?” “Nuthin’, what’s up with you, man?” “Nothin’” “A’ite...” Following the dialogue break, the two characters then descend back into their greeting, which is now a farewell, complete with the same moves as before. This adds to the humour of the piece, and is once again an interrupted, seemingly endless take.

The two characters take leave of one another, and the camera tracks alongside Mike once again, and as he turns a corner into another street, which is presented as a match on action, he spots another friend, called Dean, dressed in all black urban attire, leaning up against a car, reading a magazine. When Mike turns the corner, they spot each other and call out each other’s names. This establishes repetition, as the use of shots and dialogue is very similar to what we have just been shown between Mike and Dante.

The filmmakers then present Mike and Dean meeting in the centre of the screen, and as they are about to go into their routine, there is a cut to credits, though we do hear the sounds of their greeting, especially the sound of the high fives and the feet stomps, which are superimposed over the credits, therefore giving us no doubt that what we have just seen between Mike and Dante is happening once again.

I enjoyed this film. I thought it was very humorous, light-hearted and good-natured, and though it did not have a serious point to make, it was highly effective as a parody of urban life.

Occupied

Genre Conventions Research: Occupied


This sequence from the film Occupied begins with a female character entering an airplane toilet. We then see a close up shot of the sign 'Occupied' along with a loud locking sound, placing high emphasis on the idea that she wants privacy. With the door locked, the viewer immediately hears non-diegetic sound. This connotes strategic actions and gives the impression that her next actions are premeditated. The quick cuts and fast paced sound all add to the fast pace feel to the film.

We then see her remove, what initially looks like a burger out of her top only to reveal a hidden blade and card. This makes the viewer think that she has sinister plans. A high angle shot is used in showing her open a compartment in which electricals are found and cutting through a wire this shot estabishes that she has hidden motives giving the extract a 'ames Bond style feel of espionage. A close up of her undoing her top is shown, and this immediately gives us sexual connotations and is an example of her using her sexuality to fulfill her goal (this can be argued due to her withdrawing a image detailing the structure of the toilet).

The film extract does not present her as comforming to the stereotypical view that women cannot carry out highly complex tasks. The extract, in fact, subverts this and makes her sexuality part of her strengths as seen when we see another close up shot of her legs and a hidden object strapped to her leg. The extract subverts every trace of femininity being a form of hindrance to the task she is doing and presents it as an advantage to her, from her bra, legs, shoes, lipstick and pants all are used to aid her goal. However her femininity is always present through her clothes and the fact that a mirror shot is often used maybe to again suggest an element of vanity, in addition to the difficulty she finds in pressing and object into shape. She seals the vents with tape then reaches for the lighter; as she lights the cigarette and relaxes now she can smoke, the viewer now understands that all she wanted was to smoke and realise how effectively their expectations have been played with.

Nicole kidman Chanel/Brand Identity

Genre Conventions Research: Chanel Brand Identity

The extract opens with a male character sitting on a Chanel sign with non-diegetic sound playing in the background as he begins to narrate the story. He is framed on the right making him seem isolated and missing something. The camera switchs to a tall building which arguably is the empire state building with the iconic 'chanel' logo at the top of it. This is important in terms of brand identity as at such an early start of the film the address are already being given indirect hints to aim of the short film. In extension it could be said that placing the logo at the top of such a tall phallic building again to highlight and indirectly advertise their brand.

Brand identity aims its advertising at a particular audience as seen in our extract that they have used different ways of doing this. The extract uses very romantic non-diegetic sound to set the scene in addition to the slow motion cuts and uses a lot of out of synch camera shots to represent the confusion and isolation she feels.

In order to make Chanel recogniseable they feminise the extract, using long pink costumes on the female character and still having the iconic Chanel logo in the background. Dissolves and fades are ever present, and this may suggest that the relationship the male and female characters have is not solid, it is almost like they are dreaming important as they can not be together. Also Chanel uses such a recognisable actress in order to promote their brand as fans will see her being associated with the brand and will be more inclined to buy the product.

Using Chanel as a link between the two lovers is seen thoughout the extract giving the viewer the impression that chanel equals love. The non-diegetic sound is very important in adding to the feeling of love and at the same time it sounds sad as they can not be together. The ending voice-over "Her kiss, her smile, her perfume..." acts as a final selling point by concluding that love can be found when using the Chanel product.