Incredibles

   Movement on film by showing the family running towards you in the middle of the screen and seeing the motion threw the streaking of the sides with blurred area. Another movement is seeing mom talking to dash in the car and you watch the trees and the buildings work their way through the background showing the effect of movement. This makes setting up the scene important and using the frame by frame makes it seem like movement in a three-dimensional stage. Another good movement shot is when they are panning the horizontal coastline going from right to left. Distance used to portray motion when they capture a picture of the plane flying towards the island and zooming out of the aircraft to give you the feeling of motion.  Seeing the waterfall and showing movement by sliding the camera on a horizontal movement and giving you the illusion of water falling down. Watching that film more for the content than the action made for seeing the work that goes into making motion on screen with animation.

Snow White

Snow White was made in 1937 and this movie helped launch Disney towards the success they have today. As the movie starts the main focus was on the queen as being in the spot light and self indulge. The elements of Mise en scene were relevant throughout the movie. When the Queen was looking into the mirror, this pushed your focus to the middle of the screen and on the queen. After the queen had instructed that Snow white be killed, you find the man lingering in on the distant hillside where the lighting made his seem as the bad guy with no face.   Throughout this movie you have multiple instances of these dominant features. Additionally you have lighting and scene changes from light happy times with singing to dark gloomy scary music with eyes staring at you and the trees seeming to reach out and grab you. Angles of the film and lighting were covered when the dwarfs were marching home and the shadows were 5 times the normal height.  Mystery was not seeing snow white bite the apple as well as not seeing the queen after she fell off the cliff. Knowing that evil was off the screen was indicated when the condors were looking over the cliff and their eyes were focused on the evil queen. This movie was a great representation of Mise en scene and animation.

Wizard of Oz

             Wizard of OZ – A musical made in 1939. This was a good movie of its time, but has also become a classic that is played every year and children enjoy watching even with the corky lines. The music would match up to the action on the screen through-out the entire movie where happy times matched with joyful music and when the neighbor or the wicked witch gave us the scary music.    

                The musical made it feel as if you were in a dream once the house was lifted into the tornado and landed in a colorful peaceful world. While Dorothy was unconscious the 3D motion of time as her faced moved around the screen which put you in a sense of dream land. As the little people came out of the flowers you noticed they had some unusual facial expressions. The voices were dubbed over with high pitched kid’s voices. Casting for these movies involved a large cast of people who could act and sing.

                The ability of the actors and writers to lead the lines into the upcoming musical line such as, when Dorothy was alone at the farm and then starting singing “somewhere over the rainbow” and when they were all in the woods “If I only had a heart, Brain, courage”.  Strong points for movie musicals.

                Many early blunders such as the string holding up the scare crow and the tail of the lion were visible to those who were watching closely. The backdrops were easily noticed and where they started and finished. Then you had the exotic bird walking around in the scary woods as well as one entering the woods.

                Overall this is a classic musical movie for children of all ages and with the corky lines that have survived the test of time and are still around today, “A horse of a different color”, “don’t mind the man behind the curtain”.  The multiple ways that “The wicked witch is dead” was said to define each word differently and by each character made this an eventful watch.    

"Citizen Kane"

      I recently got to review the movie “Citizen Kane”. This is not a movie I wouldn’t normally watch based on the title and era, but after seeing it for the first time it would still not be a movie I would watch.

     Being the time frame of the movie 1941 it had some interesting features. The fading in and out of scenes from one time era to another. Many of the lighting contrasts made the appearance of who was in charge or being forceful in the situation. The type and tone of music in-conjuction with the scene got more intense and the fluctuation of the music and the tone helped bring out the importance of that scene.  The scene as Kane was talking to his first wife and the scene flashed forward changing with different clothes, hair and the aging process, but the same dialog.   

      The flashbacks made it seem like a movie with in a movie. How their current time is relevant to the past and why it got to that point. Kane as a young boy and his mother seemed so distant when she let him go to boarding school. How this impacted the young Kane in his adult years. He went from being a child with a family to a child in a school with no family. The news broadcasts reports and how the times were and how Kane was a part of the era. The film started out like a haunted movie with showing a fence with a castle in the background and making it seem light gloom and doom bringing the audience into the movie.  The movie also ended just as it had started.