The main actors in the film, The Devil Wears Prada, are Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt.
I found Meryl to be a impersonator actress in this film because it it based on a true story, and she plays the part so well.
Impersonator: “Considered somewhat demeaning in the acting world, suggesting that the actor has simply copied the manner, dialect, and behavior of a character instead of creating the character” (Goodykoontz&Jacobs, 2014).
Meryl plays the role of Miranda, who is the head editor at the most well-known fashion magazine, Runway. Her character is a very demanding person who wants things done quickly and correctly, and if working for her she will make you multi-task like it is easy when it’s not.
Below is a clip that shows just how demanding the magazine office can be with Miranda in charge, it also shows how Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt’s characters are involved in the film with their different personalities as wildcard actresses.
Wildcard: “An actor who is difficult to classify as one certain type, often because he or she can play a wide variety of characters equally well without becoming typecast” (Jacobs, 2014).
In this movie I find that Anne and Emily have both wildcard traits because they are able to play a fun quirky movie like The Devil Wears Prada, but also change the emotions in the film and other films that they have been assigned to. Anne has grown to more mature roles in the films that she signs on to now, but I think she is still great at that small town girl charm.
Focusing on Meryl Streep, I do think that she belongs in both the impersonator and wildcard categories because of the more realistic films that she plays in. Take the movie Julia&Julia, she played Julia Child in that movie and really made her character come to life and become like Julia Child. This is definitely and example of an impersonator because she is copying the characteristics of the true person Julia was.
Meryl can be defined as wildcard because she can play other types of roles such as in The Devil Wears Prada, she jumped right into what the stereotypical editor in chief would seem like at a high end fashion magazine.
All actors and actresses have their own category that they fit into, and some more than others because of their skill and their experience. I think this is what makes the movie industry so glamorous, because there are so many different people and you never know what you are going to get.
There are three basic categories of sound: dialogue, sound effects and music.
Dialogue: “Characters talking to one another in films, is not so much part of the movie experience that audiences take it for granted” (Goodykoontz & Jacobs, 2014). Dialogue can be used in so many different ways in a film, but it is more effective when it is used in conjunction with actions going on in the scene and entire film.
Sound effects: The way that scenes play out have a lot to do with the different types of sound effects such as objects hitting each other or exploding in a battle scene. Many times the sound effects will be enhanced after the movie is done filming, or even added in completely at the end of editing.
Music: Is “so important was its use that over time directors began inserting indications for specific music to be played at specific times” (Goodykoontz & Jacobs, 2014).
In Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, the theme is established by sound by creating whimsical moments using sound effects that influence different characters development throughout the film. As an example, the clip below is when Alice is joining in on the mad tea party; the Mad Hatter’s dialogue along with the sound effects creates the perfect scene to understand his character. This clip features a lot of clanking and breaking of tea cups and tea pots and it really creates that crazy mad type of setting.
The sounds in this film creates a dream like atmosphere, and creates a type of adventurous mood throughout the film. The music plays a large part in making that mood come alive because the whimsical symphony orchestra music that plays in more serious and intense scenes. The clip below shows when Alice is being proposed to in real life, and then she sees the white rabbit, and continues to follow him down the rabbit hole to Wonderland. The music gets more intense and loud as she runs to find him and then to the adventure down the hole. When she is falling, many sound effects take place as Alice is hitting things and objects are being thrown, etc.
This film is identified in the fantasy genre, but with fantasy like movies it isn’t just one specific sound category that necessarily unify it into the genre. For me, I think that the whimsical symphony orchestra music plays a large factor because it puts the audience in a adventurous type of mood that makes you think of magic and fun. In the clips that I have displayed you can hear that type of music and it can make you feel anxious, like in the battle scene, or curious like in the rabbit hole scene.
I think both of the scenes that I have shown would not benefit from any continuous soft playing music, or loud sound effects because it is a fantasy genre movie, and the sound in all categories need to be larger than life so that the audience can experience something new and imaginative.
References:
Goodykoontz, B., & Jacobs, C. P. (2014). Film: From watching to seeing (2nd ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. (Chapter 8)
Videos are provided by YouTube: “AnimationIL”, “Disney UK”
Writer: Johnathan Lemkin (Screenplay), Stephen Hunter (Novel)
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Year: 2007
Actors: Mark Wahlberg (Bob Lee Swagger), Michael Pena (Nick Memphis), Danny Glover (Colonel Isaac Johnson), Kate Mera (Sarah Fenn)
This week I will be analyzing the action film, Shooter. This movie has many different action scenes, and the lighting in this film is very important to the details of emotions throughout the film. Lighting has a meaning in Mise en Scene, which is a french term that means “placed in a scene” (Goodykoontz &Jacobs, 2014).
Below is a clip of an action scene from the film when Mark Wahlberg’s character, Bob Lee Swagger, trying to survive an attack from the US military. His character knew too much information about operations that were going on overseas with the government and military, and he wanted to clear his name from the set up earlier in the film.
The clip also shows how the low-key lighting is used more than any other style of lighting in this film because of how intense the action scenes are. Most of these action scenes get you up off your seat because you never know what will happen next, and the way the emotions come through in the low-key lighting benefit the thrill factor in this film.
The benefits of low-key lighting is to show the emotions in the characters because most of the scenes in an action movie like this are very dramatic scenes. The shadows that are cast in most action scenes due to the lighting also bring a mysterious aspect to the audience to keep them guessing about what will happen next.
The lighting in the movie Shooter really makes it a brilliant action film whether it be a close up shots of a plan being made to survive, or even the scenes that are taken from far away to show the intensity of the battle scenes, it all holds more meaning. The clip below shows part two to the scene posted above.
If this film was shot in a different style lighting such as high-key style, I do not think that the character development would have been as strong because the intensity levels would have been off. High-key lighting is when the lighting is “very bright over everything else” (Goodykoontz &Jacobs, 2014). The action scenes in Shooter would have not been as great unless shot in the low-key lighting form, which it was.
References:
Writer and Director Information: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0822854/?ref_=nv_sr_1
Scenes from YouTube from “MOVIECIPS”
Goodykoontz, B., & Jacobs, C. P. (2014). Film: From watching to seeing (2nd ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.
Writer: Lewis Carroll (based off of ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’)
Producer: Walt Disney
Year: 1951
Actors: Kathryn Beaumont (Voice of Alice), Ed Wynn (Voice of Mad Hatter), Sterling Holloway (Voice of Cheshire Cat).
Story: Alice in Wonderland is a film about a young girl who was passing time by listening to a story read by her sister, and she slips into a deep sleep and discovers another world, wonderland. Alice comes across many new faces throughout her adventures, but each character that she meets has a different story and a different perspective on life. Alice discovers her true self in the ending of her adventure and learns to stand up for what she believes in, but also takes advice from the interesting things that she has encountered.
Plot: The story begins in a large meadow set in the 1800’s, and there is Alice not paying attention to her sister reading a book about kings and queens in history. Alice starts to daydream about a world that she says is full of nonsense, she begins to sing to her cat about how her world would be. Alice then spots something she has never seen before, a white rabbit dressed up in coattails and carrying a large pocket watch, she wants to know where he is going but he has no time to waste as he declares many times that he is late. Alice then falls into the rabbit hole that the rabbit went into, and says farewell to her cat for now. Going through the rabbit hole, Alice floats and falls into objects such as chairs and a grandfather clock, until landing hard on the ground next to a glass table with items that says “Eat Me” and “Drink Me”. She is curious and she eats the treat and grows so huge that she can barely move, she spots a door that would lead her out but she is too big to get through the door, so she drinks the other object in which she then shrinks. When she realizes that she left the door key on the glass table to get through the door, she begins to cry and she eventually floats out of the keyhole of the door. She then runs into characters, TweedleDee and TweedleDum, who tell her the story of the Walrus. This is a story that she learns that not everything is what it seems, and to never trust anyone too closely.
Alice then sees the white rabbit again going into a home, and once again she eats the object that says “Eat Me” and she grows so large that her arms and legs are coming out of the house. She eventually finds something else that will make her shrink and she eats it just until she is the right size of everyone else in Wonderland.
Alice discovers the talking flowers that do not like her because she is not a flower, even though she claimed to be, she is pushed out of the flower garden and onto the talking Caterpillar who keeps asking who she is; but he is not getting the response he wants from her. Alice gets more upset in return because nobody will tell her how to get out of wonderland and back home.
Alice meets the Cheshire Cat in the crossroads of Wonderland, and she does not know which way to go, and the cat tells her which way the rabbit went but confuses her on who she should talk to so she can find a way out of Wonderland, he suggests the Mad Hatter and the March Hare. The clip below is the moment where Alice meets the Cheshire Cat.
When Alice finds the way to the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, they are celebrating UnBirthday’s, and are just plain mad.
After this mad encounter, Alice sees the white rabbit again and follows him into the Queen of Hearts courtyard, where there is a deck of playing cards that have come alive and are painting the white roses red, because the queen only likes red roses. They are caught by the Red Queen, and are taken into the court of the Red Queen,and her very soft spoken King who is the judge, The court was very biased, and every witness somehow was on the Queen’s side after they all testified they did not know who Alice was and that she was running a muck in Wonderland. Alice decides to make her escape to the door where she first entered, as it appears randomly, and she then wakes up and is back where she was with her sister and cat, and they decide it was enough reading for the day and go have afternoon tea.
Chronology: This film was presented in chronological order, and it definitely made a difference on how each stories characters played out because of the ways that Alice went in her time in Wonderland. Now if it was presented in non-linearly form, I do not think it would have been too much different because Alice was meeting different characters along the way in no particular order, but made sense to the beginning and ending of the plot.
In this movie character development played a large role in the storytelling. Alice grew as a character from start to finish because she was learning more and more about people, and how they react to things they are not used to. This helped Alice gain confidence in herself, and confidence in her thoughts about what is right and what is wrong. This story really makes you think about the people you meet and the impact that they can have on your life and the reason why you might change your outlook on things as you go through the future.
Resources:
freedogshampoo. (2007, April 15). (Original 1951) Alice In Wonderland Trailer. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLIqErnQCuw
M. (2007, December 2). Alice in Wonderland-Cheshire Cat. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUnqbBgYZmI
Writer and Producer retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_in_Wonderland_%281951_film%29
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