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.