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Week 3

The 400 Blows

The 400 Blows, directed by Francois Truffaut, is a defining film of the French New Wave. The story throughout The 400 blows shows the events of Truffaut’s own childhood through the portrayal of Antoine Doinel experiencing a very close version of Truffaut’s own childhood. The recreation of ones own life through film creates the feeling of an autobiography and this technique is given the specific name, Camera-stylo, which means to create a film that expresses the filmmaker as if they have a pen and from that pen flows the emotion of the filmmaker creating the film itself. This technique is extremely personal to the director themselves and as such, every director using Camera-stylo has their own ecriture, which can be thought of the individualized pen the director uses to express their emotions throughout the film. The French new wave is very well known for having very realistic scenes by using non-actors and the use of long takes. A long take is when the filmmaker uses a scene that is one long continuous scene, such as Antoine running away from the boarding school. The 400 blows capture both of these principles perfectly through the use of a regular high school student as the lead and then having several long takes throughout the film. The 400 blows truly define the French new wave through Truffaut’s excellent use of Camera-stylo to show the emotions of his own childhood and Truffaut’s abiding nature to the principles of the French new wave through use of non-actors and long takes.

Week 6

The Bicycle Thief

The Bicycle Thief, directed by Vittoria De Sica, is a classic film of Italian neorealism. Italian neorealism focuses on portraying reality over fiction and shows the range of emotions humans feel on a daily basis. While going against Hollywood on portraying reality, The Bicycle Thief still follows the structure of a Hollywood movie. The film is set in post-war Rome, where poverty is clearly present and crime runs rampant. The Bicycle Thief focuses on the main character, Antonio Ricci, as he tries to gain work to provide for his family during times of poverty, but once Antonio has found work through the purchase of a bicycle. While Antonio is working and unattended to the bicycle, the bicycle gets stolen and carried off. The film now follows Antonio as he tries to retrieve his bicycle from the man who stole it. It follows the structure of a Hollywood Movie in this section of the film by following a very linear and straight forward plot, where time elapses at a steady rate with little gaps in between scenes and the lack of going back and forth through time. The film is also similar to a Hollywood movie because the viewer experiences the emotions of the main character as the story progresses in a linear fashion. The film then differs from Hollywood movies in its ending, by not giving a happy ending to the story, which is very fitting for the style of neorealism. The filmmaker decided to not provide a happy ending because the goal of Italian neorealism is to portray reality and reality often times does not have a happy ending.

Week 5

Metropolis

Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang, is a gem of the German Expressionist movement in film. The German expressionist movement focused more on the abstract, such as finding ways to cause violent emotions in the viewer, such as fear, anger, and sadness. Filmmakers of the German Expressionist movement, such as Fritz Lang, achieved this goal through various cinematic techniques, such as using color to make the viewer feel a certain emotion, extreme use of chiaroscuro, and masterful implementation of the mis en scene. Metropolis is a highly regarded science fiction film that uses dystopic themes to portray how technology can take over human society and drain society of all emotion leaving only despair. The film takes on technology as if it were an enemy of human emotion, which corresponds to the nature of romantics who also focus on the expression of human emotions. Lang was an absolute master of the techniques of the German Expressionist movement. Throughout Metropolis the use of dramatic camera angles that create a disposition across the screen and the use of dark shadows to create an amazing chiaroscuro effect can be seen very heavily. Lang beautifully implements the mise en scene throughout Metropolis. The mise en scene is a very abstract concept and can not be easily defined in a concise definition but in a general view, the mise en scene is how the filmmaker can transform a scene in a film into a beautifully composed piece of art. Filmmakers use the same techniques as artists to create a visually stunning composition, except the media the filmmaker works with is the scene and the actors. Lang creates visually mesmerizing compositions in the scenes of metropolis perfectly capturing the idea of mise en scene.

Week 4

The Man With The Movie Camera

The Man With The Movie Camera, directed by Dziga Vertov, is all about breaking outside the bounds of what people think a movie should be. The movie was filmed in 1929 and at this time Hollywood was already known for having genre specific films that often told stories of fantasy, but Vertov and the film group he was apart of, The Kinok Group, very much opposed the portrayal of unrealistic or fantasy stories and believed that film should represent reality and the varying parts of modern life. They also felt as though Hollywood films were too formulaic and needed to have a much less linear progression through the story, which is easily seen in The Man With The Movie Camera by the distinct lack of plot. Vertov capitalizes on the lack of plot in The Man With The Movie Camera by having the film almost seemingly focused primarily on trying to achieve the perfect cinematic shot. The Man With The Movie Camera demonstrates the sophistication of cinematic shooting by using advanced cinematic techniques, such as jump cuts, fast and slow motion, freeze frames, close ups, stop motion animation, and a whole lot more. Also, along side trying to capture the perfect cinematic shot, it was often required to film from a very dangerous place to get the correct angle, such as shooting from under a moving train. Film without plot and only consisting of perplexing cinematic shots might seem very disjointed and not flowing at first, but Vertov creates a beautiful flow through out The Man With The Movie Camera by pairing the movement and emotions of the shots with the tempo and melody of the music playing in the background.

Introduce Yourself (Example Post)

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
What topics do you think you’ll write about?
Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.