eden’s film blog

the helicopter scene begins with 'Ride of the Valkyries' - a non-diagetic sound used effectively to highlight the immensity of the scene. A squadron of helicopters with soldiers in them wearing expressions of such purpose fly towards a Vietnamese village, which is shown to us in the next cut. The music cuts out as we are shown a peaceful school with children singing and playing. This cut spotlights the ironies that accompanied the Vietnam War in particular and western culture and imperialism in general.  They are strangers in a strange land, yet they act as if they own it, staking out territory and firing without provocation. The scene is not a battle, it is a one - sided attack. 'Ride of the Valkyries' playing each time we see the helicopters emphasises this. Coppola clearly depicts the death and destruction that result directly from US intervention. Instead of helping innocent civilians, American troops kill them. In the arriving at the beach scene, Kilgore barely not...

 - there is no imagery, first thing we get is sound - the sound of a helicopter which we would associate with the war and with the epic context of a war movie. sound is kind of manipulated, feels kind of dream like and hallucinatory - first image ;lush tropical inviting imagery; associated with studio system, technical colour was brought in to encourage people to come to watch movies at the cinema, was seen as a wonderful joyous kind of thing, but Coppola subverts this, as its in fact absolute destruction that emerges from that image - wide angle lens to give sense of epic vision - smoke coming in from the side, we are robbed of context. usually the establishing shot provides context but we are simply given brightly coloured smoke coming from nowhere, emphasising the feeling of surrealness, maybe even nightmarish - Song 'The End' by band 'The Doors' which is associated with drug culture helps to present Captain Willard's state of mental alteration during the film - ...

  Wes Anderson One aspect of Wes Anderson's cinematography is the stark flatness of his compositions - in every film he directs, everything is lined up directly in front of him. He doesn't use awkward angles and when the camera moves, it creates a new flat composition. These flat compositions create lines, which create symmetry. Wes likes to centre his subject perfectly in the middle of his shot. He also uses sharp transitions. You find yourself moving through the imagery quickly, but when you move onto the next scene, the whole thing is completely static. Using sharp transitions like this creates comedy, but also generates a bit of emotional inertia - we are still reacting to the previous images while applying our emotional knowledge to new and seemingly unrelated visuals. His cutaways sometimes break a scene in half, like a flashback or a cutaway joke. Anderson's signature style is really brought out in his use of colour palettes for his film. He uses a lot of different c...

  New Hollywood - New Hollywood was a movement in American film history from the early 1960s to the early 1980s - the 1950s and early 1960s saw a Hollywood dominated by musicals, historical epics, and other films that benefited from larger screens, wider framing and improved sound. audiences attention began to dwindle and so 'old Hollywood' was rapidly losing money in the 1960s. - a generation of young film makers such as Woody Allen and Robert Altman came into prominence and influenced the types of film produced, their production and marketing, and the way major studios approached film-making.  - a defining film of the new Hollywood generation was bonnie and Clyde in 1967  - it was the director, rather than the studio that took on the authorial role -films made in this movement are stylistically characterised in that their narrative often strongly deviated from classical norms Francis Ford Coppola - his key films were: The Rain People (1969) , The Godfather (1972), The C...

Begins with three friends: Rachel, Jessie and Max beginning their school day and discussing the events of the last few nights that they had heard on the news. There had been a series of missing persons over the last week, every missing person had last been seen around or entering The Moorey woods. They used to play in the woods when they were younger, particularly around the large hammock in the clearing of the woods. They discuss how the local authorities have done nothing to investigate what is going on. Jessie is the most curious about what's going on and suggests that the three of them take a look. Max seems slightly less enthusiastic but agrees. Rachel remains relatively quiet throughout the conversation, avoiding eye contact with her two friends by staring blankly at the floor, but nods occasionally in agreement. They organise to meet in the mid-afternoon outside the woods so they have time to investigate before it gets dark.  Max and Jessie are at the entrance first, slightl...