Reflections Off a Mirror

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Month: August 2016

Exploding Genre – Week #6

Musicals were always not part of my film vocabulary until I enrolled for this studio, Exploding Genre. I thought it would come second nature to me to identify what makes a musical (coming from a music and audio background from my tertiary days in Singapore). But I was so wrong…

What really goes into making a musical? The readings talked about having a musical film or a film musical? Film musicals tend to have a song number in an artificial space, take the film, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” directed by Howard Hawks, it starts off with a musical number to set the mood for the rest of the film where two girls singing on a cabaret stage to an audience, dominated with males and one in particular was a rich men who was soon to be one of the lead actress’s husband.

The readings also mention that the musical genre is the only genre that breaks the classical narrative rules of rigid logic due to its emotional situation. Characters break into songs and dance to emote their feelings and cue certain emotions from within the viewers. From the type of song they sing, to their intricate dance moves, to the location where they are performing, all adds up to providing an emotional experience to the viewer to express what the characters are feeling at that point.

This week has really opened my to the whole Musical genre. Re-looking into what makes a musical and some musicals mentioned in class did appeal to me and made my list of films to watch.

Exploding Genre – Week #5

THE HORROR! THE HORROR!

I was never a big fan of horror for obvious reasons like jump scares, the old folk tale about something that lurks in the dark and haunts kids, all these tend to just stay in my head and my imagination would go wild whenever I’m alone and I end up scarring myself from within.

For my Project Brief 2, I decided to confront my fears and do a little research on the whole horror genre and why people enjoy the thrills of getting frightened countless number of times to the edge of their cinema seats. My findings came up to the fact that people enjoy and want to be scared, it’s the chase for the adrenaline rush you get when you’ve been faced with a supernatural being under a save and confined space. Having stimulated in a fight or flight (or in this case, fight or fright) scenarios, your body releases adrenalines into your bloodstream and you feel contended, satisfied having known you have survived what was presented to you. And filmmakers exploit that idea behind frightening their audience, at a micro level of the mise-en-scene of a particular shot, to the entire plot. Audience just want to see how the evil being gets destroyed or banished, in return for causing all the problems and struggles the protagonist might have faced. And again, it’s that sense of satisfaction they have survived a horror film that people chase, quite similar to that of surviving a roller coaster right.

The screening for this week was Berberian Sound Studio (2012) directed by Peter Strickland. I was following the film pretty much all the way until the main character, played by Toby Jones, started speaking Italian, as throughout the film he was an English man brought in by an Italian filmmaker to do some foley recording for his upcoming horror film. The film doesn’t seem to resolve properly and for the rest of the day, I kept replaying the film in my head to make some sense out of it. To no avail, I couldn’t draw any conclusions, until we talked about it in class on Thursday that it was a psycho-horror and the filmmaker was playing the minds of the audience. We don’t know if we were in his head the whole time, until he spoke Italian, or vice versa.

Coming from a music and audio background, I could relate to the film at a personal level, when I saw the slashing of vegetables, voice acting, and going take after take after take, it reminded me of the days when I was pursuing my diploma back in Singapore where we had to do such things for our assignments. And I could relate to the frustration of Toby Jones’ character when he can’t seem to get the take right or when other people interferes with his work. Sometimes when egos collide in the studio, creative things could happen, other times it could just bring down an entire production. Having said that, I liked how Strickland leaves out any footages of the horror film that the Italian director was working on, but yet, we as the audience, can roughly make out what the horror film is about.

Horror has been around since the 1930s, and it’s still ongoing, we have seen it take different forms and shapes from depending on the country that produces it, but the common elements that make a horror film stays. The suspense and anticipation of the monster jumping out of the closet, the dissonant chord progression soundtrack, and heavy use of makeup and special effects. After understanding horror a little better from the research I have done for PB2, I can safely say that I now know why I would stay away from horror films. And no better way to remind myself why I loathe the horror genre than some movie clips being shown in class from the Exorcists.

Exploding Genre – Week #4

This week we exploded Sci-Fi in class. The screening for this week was Aliens (1986) directed by James Cameron, which to me was more of action than anything else. The only thing that made it Sci-Fi was probably it took place in outer space and the protagonist, Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, was asleep for more than 50 over years. Oh and of course, the existence of Aliens.

The filmed had very strong military themes. The fact that they had the whole hierarchy of military ranks and they address each other by their ranks instead of appointment (which is how it is normally in real life), points in the direction that it is very much a war film. The way the characters prepped for their mission to exterminate the aliens, and not forgetting the weak leader who let the team into their deaths who was soon overshadowed and taken over by a Corporal (the next in command), all just seemed to familiar to that of a war film, with just the twitch of changing the opposing force to extraterrestrial beings.

However, Hollywood being Hollywood, we see various plot lines over arching each other, the story of mum and daughter, man and woman, and of course the final battle between both queen alien and the “robot” Ripley as she maneuvers a hydraulic unit to fight against the queen alien. Personally, I thought that scene was redundant, and it made the film a little draggy.

During the second half of the week with our practical session, we had a in-class debate if Aliens was a Sci-Fi film or not. We had an interesting discussion with different genre tropes tossed into the mixed to show that Aliens is more than just a Sci-Fi film, but it was countered with someone saying that Sci-Fi takes different elements of various genres and putting it into a “futuristic” context with science and technology themes to bring it into a Sci-Fi world. I thought that was quite a strong statement, and it somewhat neutralised the other debate team’s argument in every aspect. In Singapore we have this term, “win liao lor”, and that’s pretty much how the other debate team felt, putting up the white flag, and argued that genre was just created by the studios to sell films as a marketing strategy and it actually doesn’t exist.

The saying about Sci-Fi taking different elements from other genres and putting into a Sci-Fi dimension could basically work for other genres too. Like horror, we could just take a romantic love story, but instead of a man and woman love, we could have ghost and woman relationship and all sorts of creepy stuff in the way to make it a horror film. It is well known that artistes and writers are known to be thieves, “stealing” ideas from one another and making it their own, that’s where art inspires more art and I guess it’s an ever changing form.

Exploding Genre – Reflection Post – Week #3

Romantic Comedy aka Rom-Com.

This week’s screening was Sleepless in Seattle directed by Nora Ephron, starring Tom Hanks, whom is one of my favourite actors. Watching it for the first time, I personally enjoyed it. Having your typical Classical Hollywood narrative, 3 act structure, a situation, a problem and a resolution, with comical elements such as Tom Hanks’ use of sarcasm throughout the film. One in particular I recall is when he was on a date with another lady (I think it was Victoria), and he got a phone call from his son, Jonah, and at that point in the film, he seemed pretty annoyed with Jonah. When he got back to the table with Victoria, he went on to ask her if she has kids, and her respond was no, and he went to ask her “Do you wanna have mine?”. That line struck my humour bone as it had a pun in it while being sarcastic. Usually people would ask celebrities to have their kids as a way of saying they would like to sleep with them, and this seems like a link being placed in the context that their on a first date and he was getting to know her, but at the same time it was him finding a way to vend his annoyance of his child, putting his son up for grabs.

Rom-com has entertained viewers with cliched plot lines, dialogue and “happily ever after” endings. But what keeps us coming back for more ,despite knowing the end of the story where the 2 were destined to be together? It is the use of repetition and variation the filmmakers employ in their films to draw viewers. We as the audience want to see the struggles the protagonist(s) go through, just to be together with their other half. The stronger the filmmaker can “trick” the audience into believing the 2 are not going to be together, the greater the effect of the resolution when they finally meet up and “live happily ever after”.

Having said that, I believe this might just apply to any genre be it rom-com, horror, murder/mystery, action… The tougher the struggles the protagonist have to go through, the more satisfaction the viewer gets at the end of the film when everything is resolved. Using songwriting as an example, most pop music today would resolve on a particular chord in a chord progression to cue listeners that it is the end of the song or a verse/chorus. It is that resolution that does not leave the listeners hanging, hence giving that “hook” effect that is stuck in your head. And this songwriting technique is employed in most popular genres, especially in pop songs today.

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