Part One:

While I deviated slightly from the original storyboard- that is that there should be no cut between Sterling and Nathaniel (Nath) between the initial phone call, I personally believe that this interplay between Nath and Sterling hanging up their mobile phones further strengthens their otherwise tenuous bond. From the short scene, we are given, the development is short but concrete, I believe we’ve been able to have out ‘actors’ act this particular scene. Personally, what I find useful, as a director trying to have someone not so comfortable in front of a camera, is having that actor portray an emotion more so than give them hard and fast ideas of what you (as a director) want to ‘see’ from this scene,

From the clip itself, I feel as though the timing is ‘right’ between cuts and transitions, although something that I’m striving to learn more about this semester is colour grading. In this particular clip, I attempted to boost the contrast and blues so that the short has an overall more sinister/otherworldly vibe. Taking inspiration from Bonnie ceC, I wanted to try and recreate her deep shadows and punch of colour.

Part Two:

Jacques Tati’s 1967 film Playtime is overall a satirical comment on ‘modern day life’. By analysing the shot where the young tourist, or Barbara, enters the flight agency and surveys the posters  (00:42:52 – 00:43:27), I will demonstrate how Tati has constructed this shot in order to convey his interpretation of modern life.

This particular shot from Playtime highlights Tati’s almost distaste of the ‘herd mentality’, whereby everyone follows the crowd. This is shown throughout the film in many forms, from the copy-paste office cubicles to the gadgets exposition. In the opening of this shot, we see a group of American tourists flood the frame, representing the majority, or herd, that Tati comments on throughout the film. Every one of the women pictured is dressed in muted colours- greys, khakis- and almost identically; all wearing hats, gloves, black kitten-heeled shoes, long coats and holding a bag. This tour group blends into the set colours of the shot, again very dull and grey, in order to convey the monotony of life. The colour pallet in question allows the viewer, whether consciously or subconsciously, to connect everything in the scene as ‘one’. By creating this cohesion between both humans and non-organic life, Tati virtually dehumanises these women, or this ‘herd’, into nothing but robotic consumers.

This is only more grounded by the fact that the tour leader leads the group off to frame left with the motioning of his hand, implying that the crowd does not have autonomous thought and thus plays into Tati’s view of the consumerist nature of the world. Although, while this tour group guide may seem as though he is the ‘leader’ in this shot given his apparent authority over the women who follow him, the fact that he too is dressed in such muted and dulled colours as the rest of the world highlights to the viewer that he is also trapped in this revolving door mentality.