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Casablanca

Casablanca

Mise-en-scene 

Much of the mise-en-scene is realist using period clothing and the setting and props being from that era, however there is a recurring theme of stripes. These are used to give a sense of imprisonment as they are all trapped in Casablanca.

Lighting

The lighting is quite formalist and though the film was made in a time when they could not film in colour they extend their use of black and white to using chiaroscuro lighting, which emphasizes the contrast between light and shadow. Ingmar Bergman's face is lit up to exaggerate her beauty. Sometimes it even seems like she's illuminated in the darkness, like an angel. 

Camerawork

The camerawork clearly used a lot of cameras to get all the different angles shot in many of the scene. Instead of zooming in or panning it cuts to another camera, which gives you a more realistic view of the area because you cannot zoom into things in real life.  For Ingmar Bergman much of the camerawork is shot from her left side as it was her preferred side. This makes the film seem more staged and gives it a slight formalist tinge. Another formalist aspect is the fact that they use a lot of close ups on facial expressions.

Editing

Actors

The leading male of the film is Humphrey Bogart who's career peak was in Casablanca. His rise to stardom began in 1941 when he starred in High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon and from these he became a cultural icon. Beforehand he was known for playing hard faced arrogant gangstars but his early 40's films completly changed that.

Based on a play.

Classic Hollywood Cinema

3 Classic Hollywood Cinema Films

1. Some like it hot
   
2. maltese falcon
   
3. monkey buisness

One of the main formalist features of classic hollywood cinema is that it uses continuity editing to minimlise the idea of there being a camera and soundwork. Continuity editing is when narrative fragments are joined so that the editing/joining up is not noticed. Much of it also uses chiarscuro lighting e.g. some like it hot, and crosscutting, which involves cuttin across seperate scenes to show that they are linked.

German Expressionism

German Expressionism was a style around in the early 1920's to 30's.  The lack of technology in those times, i think, influenced the films as they could not have used colour or grand sets as we now can. They use dark and dull colours which give it a creepy and damper feeling. Parts of the background are also highlighted by being an extreme of the black or white e.g. Nosferatu's creepy face is highlighted because it is a pale white which contrasts with his dark clothing. One of the main elements of GE films is the sound. They use intense sound to create the atmosphere in the scene, the music rises and falls to fit the mood and I think tells the emotional stories of the films. There is also a use of close ups to exaggerate elements e.g. the exaggerated facial expresions. Another key feature is the background.  I find the background very surrealist often with distorted features and spiky elements to it.  

• music to tell story of emotion and feeling. climax 
  
• dark and dull colours 
  
• close ups show exaggerated facial expressions
  
• shadows painted onto background
  
• surrealist background- looks drawn, very spiked. 
  

Much of Tim Burton's work is influenced by German Expressionism. He uses surrealist background-trees- makes them creepy. 

Run Lola Run

Run Lola Run is a german film which tells the story of one event 3 times , however the action and end result changes each time. The film has many aspects similar to a formalist film, however many of the situations are more realistic or could happen. For example the fact that Minner has got himself in with bad people and the situation with Lola's parents are both realistic situations. The setting is also realistic, it's not distorted or in an unusual place like many formalist films, its recognizable as a modern day city.  Much of the lighting is also realistic except there is a running theme of the colour red which is highlighted where possible, e.g. Lola's bright red hair, the red ambulance, red telephone, and the red money bag. Also in the trailer for it, half way through there is a sequence of flashing clips between Lola and mug like shots of people against a red background and ends on the red telephone. The most obvious use of red is the tinted lighting in the dream sequences in between each repetition, i think they emphasize the red in the mise en scene because it connotes danger and there is a running theme of danger in the film. The telephone is the beginning of the danger when Lola starts of on her task to get 100,000 marks and the red bag of money is at the point when Manni gets run over. 

The film does in fact use a variety of formalist elements within the camerawork, editing and narrative. It has a formalist narrative in which it repeats a sequence of her getting one hundred thousand pounds in 20 minutes 3 times until it reaches a good outcome.  Each time there are small changes in what happens to her and this effects the people around her. I think the way they show snap-shots of peoples life's is formalist because its incorporating other stories through an unrealistic form. Another formalist form that is used is the use of animation in the beginning credits and the beginning of each repetition of the story.  

The editing of the camera work is done to give the film a quick pace but it also makes it look very formalist. They use many jump cuts between birds eye-views and extreme close ups and the beginning shot  zooms in from the sky and tracks into Lola's bedroom.  The beginning of the film is shot from a low point of view in a faded out crowd, which i think uses a more advanced version of the distorted background element of German expressionism. It fades out the background so that you can see only the peoples body's (apart from in the extreme close up of the police mans face), which is similar to the use of shadows in German Expressionism. 

Overall I would consider Run Lola Run to be written and produced as a formalist film as the narrative and setting are exaggerated forms of realism in which the camerawork and editing creates a surreal atmosphere because of the repetition of the sequence 3 times.

The Moving Man Final Cut

Today we finally saw the complete cut of our footage.  From seeing the uncut footage of The Moving Man I was expecting something some what different from the final cut. I found many aspects had been improved by the style of editing and addition of sound.  Previously to editing I did not like the use of the lighter green lighting, but in the final cut they cut it out and used the darker colours which created a more sinister tone. The tone however was slightly ruined by the adding of titles which said things like 'tee hee' and 'what do you think i'm doing'.  One aspect I really liked was the sound. I thought the use of creepy classical music really worked with the tone of the film and expressed a sadness about the character, showing his loneliness as all he had was a dog but even that seemed unreal because it was not in the form of a dog.

The Moving Man

This week we've began to create a formalist film called The Moving Man, which was influenced by The cabinet of Dr Caligari. We'd been looking at formalism and realism and had to create a formalist film to show our understanding of the genre. To make it easier we allocated everyone parts e.g. mise en scene, camerawork, editing, sound and lighting. I took mise en scene along with Amber and Olivia. At first we wanted to use a mannequin to represent the man but were not able to find one. Our next idea was slightly easier; we decided to use a man in a mask. This gave our film an abstract and unreal element. Also the mask we choose was of a creepy looking old man who had facial features similar to the faces of those in The cabinet of Dr Caligari. As homework we had to bring in any props for the film, i brought in the mask and some large monster feet. I also brought in a selection of ties because another of our ideas was to have the man wearing one of the ties and everytime he moved it would move to a different position. However once he (or i should say she) was in costume it became a sort of inconvinent extra which would provoke all sorts of filming problems.

The film was created by turning a normal acivity of walking a dog into an abstract form. We did this by using different objects to represent the dog. First we used a Knight (chess peice) which looks quite similar to a dog and then moved onto using more abstract forms e.g. a flipper and a doll. In the rough cut we used darkness to cover up the man moving. I think the doll worked really well because we used the lighting to make it scare the audience. At this point the lights went off and when they came back on it was a close up of the creepy mask stroking the doll.

For my film my main work on the mise en scene will not be on the clothing and props but the landscapes and positioning of things unlike our film. However I can use this as a practice run for my film, which will help me be mire organized next time. 

Hi, Becca Stewart here.
I'm creating a blog as a sort of diary for my Moving Image AS level. We're using them to record a production diary on what we do for the AS. Hopefully this will turn out alright.

See you next time
Becca
xxx