Crime Drama - Se7en

The last genre I looked at was crime drama. Crime drama was difficult for me to chose, because there are so many television shows and films in this day and age that comes under this genre. However in the end I chose the film Seven (Or sometimes written as Se7en.)

The story is about two detectives played by Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt. Who are uncovering some murders that have been done in the style (and not to mention they are also morbidly creative) of the seven deadly sins. The movie is very complex and there is a lot of development but the main idea is the detectives trying to catch the killer, John Doe, played amazingly by Kevin Spacey.

I have added two clips of this film as you can see below. However I found it difficult to just chose small clips from Youtube and talk about them. As the movie has so many elements. To get my analysis right, I actually watched the whole film and most of my analysis will be examples from when I watched the film.

Narrative Structure

The first thing is where to start. This film has so much narrative structure. It is not just the way the characters connect. But it's also how the story connects, the different sections of the story.

Primarily I felt like the film was put into these two sections. The first part of the film I felt was the murders. Uncovering them, finding out who did them and understanding the murders visually. For example, the infamous 'Sloth' murder was having someone tied to a bed for a year and fiendishly calling him lazy. I felt the second half of the film was getting closer into the characters, especially the murderer John Doe, his reason for committing his crimes (as you can hear briefly in the first clip) and how what he does and the murders tie in with the characters of Freeman and Pitt (no spoilers!). I felt like this was the overall Narrative structure to the film. But of course there was more within that.

The film does not really push forwards and back and forwards and back. It goes through like a straight timeline. In the beginning they are on the case and at the end they have came to a conclusion and finished the case. The crime genre is known to have equilibriums and dis equilibriums and  elements like that. Crime is known to also be a very twisty and turning type of genre. This film has these elements. But honestly in this film nothing turns good. And also the detectives, like said above come to an conclusion they never really resolve their feelings to everything that has happened, even if it meant winning. 

The ending also uses lots of conventions. It has an ending that could be explained as open but is also realativly closed. It feels open from Freeman's last line which is in fact 'I'll be around.' and you think, well what could this mean? how is he feeling? what happens next? However it is closed because we find out the secrets and we find out the meanings of things that were questioned in the beginning of the film. The film also ends with a voice over of Freeman's character, quoting Earnest Hemingway. I feel like voice overs are a great way to conclude a film. Sometimes they connect to the film. Other times they bring out a strong emotion to a film. 

Technical Aspects.

I love the technical aspects of this film. One of the reasons I used those two clips was to talk about the lighting. The first clip is shot outside in a car, so of course the lighting is bright. And the second clip is shown in a bar. Bars can sometimes be dark and dismal. So we have that element of a dark and dismal bar. But these contrasts are also super superb in the way that there is somewhat a type of angst in both scenes. And respective of what is going on, the lighting seems to work with both types of scenes.

The ending of the film is shot outside too. I love the shots they use at the ending of the film.

They do a lot of back and fourth close up shots to get characters reactions and the events that happen at the end of the movie. There are also high shots, far shots and they are all done super quickly.

They connect to the music in the scene. The music is kind of the orchestral, dramatic type of music that we see in lots of films. The thing I find amazing about the use of music in this ending is that the characters talk over the music. They still carry out the conversation. In my opinion this is a great use of script work. But also when it comes to the context on the film it makes you sit further to the edge of your seat. This film overall is very clever.

Comedy - The Office

For my comedy, I am going to look and analyse a show called The Office. The office began in the UK in the early 2000's. But I'm going to be looking at the US version of the show, that started around 2 years after the English show finished. The basic premise of the office is that it's about people who work in an office, and the things they do within the office including promotional work, ideas for different charities and all the other shinanagains you get with working in an office. We get to know the characters through a large sum of development, to make the show more interesting. The office is filmed in a kind of documentary style, and interviews with the characters.

This video is going to be used as my example. This video is a montage of moments seen in the The Office.

Narrative Structure

To start off with it's hard to explain the order in which everything happens in The Office. There are storylines that happen within time. For example the romantic relationships we see in the office bloom through time. We know it is set at present time but that is about it. The Office unlike the other two media pieces I have analysed takes into account other things that may be considered more important.

This is a completely different genre to the others. The Office is a comedy television show. Comedy has completely separate conventions to other genres, for example dramas and romance, which may have slight similarities in their content. The good thing about The Office is that it is not a hybrid comedy (mixing two genres together, for example rom com's) It's pure comedy and it has those conventions (for example kind of tasteless gags and stupidity by some of the characters) However The Office is known for it's unique style. Which it certainly has. I will go into detail more about how it is filmed when looking at the technical aspects, but for the time being it's also good to talk about when it comes to looking at other parts of it's narrative structure.

The cool thing about the show is the way it is shot. It makes the show look real. I also think the setting and the colour of the show gives of a realist perspective. However the content within, unlike This Is England and United 93 is completely non-realist. To start of with, This is a comedy. We live in a century of film and television series where anything is possible. And now a lot of films and Television shows can come off as real by dialogue, emotions and elements like that. However pure comedy has never been like that. The Office is pure comedy. It follows the conventions of that old fashion-type comedy style that is pretty rare to see these days. Therefore the way the characters act and the way their personalities come across are completely non-realistic. A good example is the character of Dwight in the show (the guy with the glasses) If you watch the clip above. Connecting to this point is the setting of the show. It's set in an office, and in all reality, a real office would not have people acting as unprofessionally as the people do in this office. So in conclusion, the show is completely non-realist.

But the show also has a unique way of putting together a structure. Something that really stands out in The Office for example is the character development and their connections. Sometimes, both things are done by them verbally talking to each other, but another way it is shown is by interviews with the characters, for example in the clip, you can see from the 05:30 - 05:36 marker. They are used for just about everything, They help develop the story in the particular episode, They tell us their opinions and they also sometimes (depending on the episode) bring the show to an end. They are small, and last no more than a minute. But it's a really good tongue and cheek way to bring lots of different conventions of the show together.

Techinical Aspects.
Here in technical aspects I am going to talk in more detail about the camera work and like I said about, the uniqueness of the show. To recap I said above how unique the way The Office is filmed and how it makes the show look like it's documented. From looking at the clip you can probably see what I am talking about. It's mainly done by the camera work. The camera is almost hand held. It's similar to the style of United 93. Just used in a different context.

I also talked about the colouring and setting of the television show briefly. I personally think the colouring on the show is very natural. We get those natural beige colours and those natural browns, of an office. It's not just the setting around them that gives off the colour but it is actually also how the people are dressed, to go with the colour of the setting. It's like a complete contrast to it's narrative structure of how the people really act. The setting, minus the colour, also is casual as well, for example, the clip you can see starting from 2:19. They are in a play park. It's not a swank area, it's not a business tight area, and it gives us the impression that they are playing normal people. So I think the technical aspects really bring out the narrative structure, Unlike the last two I analysed, it's nice to see a show sandwich these two components I have to analyse together.

Lastly is the Dialogue which I also talked briefly about. The Dialogue is very casual, and not thought of that much. Was this done on purpose? of course it was. From everything I have talked about above it makes perfect sense that the dialogue is casual as it gives us the feel that they are real people. It also makes it funnier and more realistic. The scripting must of been like two office buddies talking. The Office is very different to the last two films in analysed in the most retrospect but when it comes to dialogue I would agree it's very similar to the last two films. In the sense that it is not heavily scripted, if anything, knowing already that the show is comedy and contains famous Hollywood comedians, it's probably the most part improved. 

Drama-Documentary - United 93

United 93 can be classed as a drama-documentary. The whole point of most drama documentaries is that they dramatize/reinact  real events. The drama documentary i have chosen to analyse is called United 93. It is like i explained above, a dramatized telling of a real event. In this case United 93 tells the story of the 9/11 bombing of the twin towers in New York City. The clip i am going to use to back up my thought of the film is the last 7 minutes I found on Youtube.

Narrative Structure
Of course the film is in fact linear. The film has to be set in chronological order, because it is telling real events. This is similar to This Is England which i just analysed. For this type of film it is espcially important that it is shown in time order because there was a build up to the 9/11. In a way the build up in this film is much more intense and stronger, as for most people on the real flight is probably happened out of nowhere. But the film would not be full of drama and come to say it, it probably wouldn't even be a film!

Like This Is England the film is a realist. Not only does it make the audience feel like it's real and prove it's dramatizing real events but it also causes tension. Like This Is England makes you feel like your part of the skinhead gang, this film makes you feel like your on the plane with these people, going through what these people are going through. This is thanks to a lot of the technical qualities about this film which I was analyse with examples late on.

Unlike the other videos I have embeded this one contaians pretty much the end conclusion to the film. The ending of this film is basically the crash but it leaves it quite open to interpretation. When I say that I look back and think well I know what happend, and so do most people as the 9/11 was a huge turning point for the rest of the world. So why does the film leave me thinking something else is going to happen when pretty much nothing does happen after the crash becides what we have heard on the news? In my opinion this is pretty much a convention more of the hollywood side of things than the realism filmmaking side of the bat. But does it make the film better? I deffinatly think it makes you want to know more...

Technical Aspects
So there is no need to keep explaining what the genre of this film is but the main word to use for drama-documentary types of films is realism. And like This Is England this is conveyed though the tehcnical side of the film.

To start of with, the camera movement is very different to This Is England. It's more handheld and unsteady. When the plane crashes, the camera shakes violently. It's almost like someone is holding it and documenting everything that is happening on the plane. Again like said above, It makes everything more real. It makes everything more intense. It's like we are on the plane. I also like how the camera blurs when it is focusing in and out and changing.

The sound is also something I want to talk about quickly. There is hardly a music soundtrack. The film is very quiet in that retrospect. We just have the sounds of the plane and the people talking, which I want to talk about now...

Scripting is something I really noticed on this film. I would be surprised if this film needed a lot of scripting and thats a good thing. It wouldn't seem real if it was scripted and most drama documentaries have the convention of hardly any scripting. Examples in this clip is from is kind of the first minute of the clip where people are praying and talking on the phone to their loved ones. You can't really make out what they're saying, and even though things are frantic, In a way when people are speaking everyone seems casual. Even though there is drama going on within the film the people in the film are not that type of stage dramatic we see in hollywood blockbusters. In most drama documentaries you will find they don't really use hollywood actors and actresses that we all know about. So overall without going off topic too much. The film Has some really good scripting to make everything that little bit more realistic.

Period Drama - This Is England

I chose 'This Is England' for my peroid drama choice. The film was made in 2007 and directed by Shane Meadows. The story is based on his real life experience of growing up in the early 1980's England, when Margret Thatcher was in power and privitizing. But the main story of This Is England is about his run-in with the skinhead generation. He uses a young 12 year old boy called Shaun to tell his story, who is a boy who gets bullied a lot by in school. He meets a group of skinheads that take him under their wing, and from there the film takes some twists and turns.

Narrative Structure
This Is England is not just a made up story but it is an account of someone's life. For that reason the movie is very much linear. For example the begining of the movie starts off with Shaun as his normal self and gradually meeting the skinheads to the point where he turns into one, as we can see in the clip above. This clip is shown halfway through the movie. Everything happens in chronological order, there are no time skips in this film whatsoever. It would not make sense otherwise. The clip above is a very important part of the story. Combo, the skinhead talking throughout it shows his true colours in this scene, and it makes us beleive that Shaun has been brought into 'hanging' around with the wrong group of people. If this was shown in a flashback or something around those lines, It would not look the same nor would it feel the same, as feeling like you as a viewer is being there at the moment it is happening.

The film is very realistic. Im sure this is something Meadows as the director wanted it to be like. The film is very bland and gritty. Which is not a bad thing, This just makes the film more realistic. Overall we would call this film a realist. Everything in the film feels so real. Meadows make sure you really feel like you are there and thats the most you as a viewer wants. Like said above. The film does not jump, It has no gaps, it flows, like a straight line, from the begning to end. And it's like we are taking a journey with the characters. I can again use the clip as an example, the face that we watch the fight for a whole 5 minuites. The characters all have back stories (which we kind of find out about the the TV series) but do we get a flashback to how they feel? to what they have been through? No. We just watch the fight it it's entierty, Because this is a real account, not just a fictional story, where flashbacks would make more of a appearence.

Technical Aspects

So here is another clip I found so there are two to look at. It runs along the same lines as the first one, but it has a different setting and a different atmosphere, so when looking at the technical aspects i can compare/look at both analitically. To start of with the camerawork in the film is something I think is very different to a lot of British films I have seen. The camerawork is very still and very professional looking, it is never shaky and never misses something out. It always has a focal point. This is to do with the telling of the story, It wants us to focus on each character. It dosent want us to waste seconds going back and fourth to each little thing. The most important part of this film is the characters and the camerawork makes sure we know this.

Look at the lighting in this clip and the lighting in the clip above. They are both very different. One is more darker than the other but the thing is they both cover the same themes, Of this guys personality and his racial views and how it makes the other characters feel. I think this is a question you have to think about yourself. Personally in mu opinion i think it's because of the end scene, where there is again another fight and we again subjected to this dark and gritty feeling. So having another argument in a light manner gets you prepared for the more darker sensations to come. But that is my feelings about it. There could be many reasons why this was done.

I think the sound is very natural. When they are in a open building, like the clip above, their voices echo. It's part of the film being a realist film. There is not much else to understand.

What i think is amazing about this film is that there are minimal edits. Of course it cuts back and fourth from person to person, but the frames are deffinatly more prolonged than films I have seen in the past. Part of me feels like it is for realism, other parts of me have seen it in other British films, so weather this is just a convention I am not sure, but in this film weather or not that was planned it certainly gives effect.